Category: Albuquerque

Wash and rinse

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Arroyo, with a side of agua fria, coming up.

I had just turned into the cul-de-sac when it started raining.

My timing couldn’t have been better. I had left El Rancho Pendejo 90 minutes earlier for a brisk morning march along various foothills trails, because the weather wizards were predicting thundershowers. And when I turned around, up by Embudo Dam, I saw that they did not lie.

The Sandman cometh.

So I cranked up the pace a bit as the skies darkened, and then darkened some more. The wind sprang up, as it will, out of the north. Onward.

Finally, just past Candelaria on Trail 365, I broke into a run. Or what I call a run, anyway. A runner might disagree, or perhaps just laugh out loud.

And then, boom, just as I got home, the skies opened up and pissed rain … for a solid minute. Maybe two.

Oh, well. In the desert, two minutes of rain is better than none.

Smooth as glass

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
This section of Tramway didn’t get the upgrade.

I was out dicking around on the bike this morning when I thought I’d ride the recently resurfaced Tramway Boulevard, just for the hell of it.*

Nothing stays shiny and new for long around here, whether it’s bottles or boulevards.

There are other ways to get north and/or south on this side of town, and I normally use them.

But when a reader wrote to the Albuquerque Journal‘s “Road Warrior” column to praise the work that had been done on this death march of a high-speed, multilane, median-divided thoroughfare, well, shit, I figured I owed it to journalism to give it a look-see.

So I rode Tramway north from El Rancho Pendejo to just past the climb to Juan Tabo Picnic Grounds, then turned around and scoped out the southbound leg down to Cloudview before reversing course yet again for the trek back to the rancheroo.

And I’m with the Journal‘s happy reader. Well done, fellas. The new blacktop really makes the broken glass stand out.

* “Just for the hell of it.” In case you’ve never ridden Tramway, that’s a joke, son!

Desert crapshoot

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
We’re a little light on shade out here in the foothills.

“It’s been a pretty sad monsoon season across New Mexico,” says weather wizard Daniel Porter over to the Albuquerque Journal.

Truer words, etc. Water use has risen in one of the driest summers in a decade. And the phrase “hot as balls” gets used almost daily at El Rancho Pendejo, because somebody around here has a predilection for coarse language.

A sudden deluge has a go at pounding down the dust.

I wore a big-ass Carhartt boonie hat and plenty of sunscreen for my five-mile hike yesterday, well above the haze drifting along the Rio Grande. I’ll pay attention to an air-quality alert when I can’t see my shoes through the smoke and my shorts are on fire.

Still, it was as hot as balls out there. I forgot a handkerchief and had to lift my lid periodically to drag a paw across my soggy noggin.

Come evening the universe decided we deserved a break. Out of nowhere it suddenly rained good and hard, if only for a short while, and we threw open the windows and doors to let the cool breeze blast through the joint.

Nothing is likely to cool the fevered lowbrows at the GOP ‘s Nuremberg rally, alas. Short of putting the lot of ’em in the deep freeze for a few dozen campaign cycles, that is. Don’t look for links. They’re all missing. Badaboom, badabing.

Ash Thursday?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Looping around to the west-northwest and the Indian School trailhead.

A fine haze hovered above the Rio as I hiked around the Foothills trails yesterday.

A neighbor remarked that it looked like a “Star Wars” scene set on Tatooine.

And come evening, all that vaporized forest certainly made for a thrilling sunset.

The photo really doesn’t do it justice. The sun was as red as Sauron’s Eye, and it vanished long before the actual horizon in an impenetrable cloud of smoke. Whether it came from the Medio fire near Santa Fe or one of the many, many others scattered around the West, I have no idea.

I had been thinking about a nice long road ride this morning, but now I’m not so sure. I like my air a little less chewy.