Category: Albuquerque

What in the Sam Hill?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Sam Hillborne recovers from its efforts in the sunny entryway at El Rancho Pendejo.

Yesterday was a Rivendell kind of day. The trails are usually crawling like anthills on a weekend, and the roads were busy, too. Plus I didn’t feel like doing anything of a serious nature, having chores on the schedule.

So Sam Hillborne and I pooted around on side streets and the Tramway bike path for a spell, just keeping the legs loose.

Some nitwit impatient to make a right turn honked at me as I proceeded through an intersection, with the light and pedestrian crossing signal working in my favor, and I reflected once again how concealed carry is a bad idea on a bicycle, if only for the sag a Ruger Model 3701 puts in a jersey pocket.

Afterward I mowed the weeds and retrieved some video from the old Canon ZR500 MiniDV camcorder, which Herself is eBaying along with a few metric shit-tons of other lightly used and heavily forgotten items cluttering up the nooks and crannies at El Rancho Pendejo.

The process of acquiring video from an old cassette camcorder is time-consuming and irksome, but proved rewarding in this instance. I unearthed some ancient footage of an elderly Chairman Meow and a very young Turkish, back when we still thought he was a she. So stay tuned for a short video trip down memory lane.

Map my ride

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
One of the bridges that spares cyclists from more than a few Crossings of Doom in the Duke City.

I got my chores done early this morning, hopped on the rim-brake Soma Saga, and logged two-point-five hours of saddle time in the sun today. Fat city.

Quite a bit of the ride was on segregated multipurpose path. If you’ll have a squint at the city’s bike map you can trace my route:

• South on the segregated Tramway Boulevard path to the bike-ped bridge (above), which crosses Tramway and hooks up with the Paseo de la Montañas trail, which parallels a drainage canal all the way to Interstate 40.

• Southwest on the P de la M trail to another bike-ped bridge, this one over I-40. After a short run through a pocket park and a residential area you find yourself on the Indian School Road bike lane, an on-street deal.

The view from underneath one of the many bridges crossing the North Diversion Channel Trail.

• West on Indian School to the UNM golf course, where I picked up the North Diversion Channel Trail.

• North on the NDCT to Balloon Fiesta Park (and with a fine tailwind, I might add).

• From the park I headed northeast through a light industrial area and indulged in a bit of lawlessness, riding against one-way traffic on the I-25 frontage road to get to the Tramway Road bike lane. This is a popular stretch with the local road toads; it rises from 5,200 feet at I-25 to 6,120 feet at the County Line Barbecue, and there are only two stoplights, both early on. It’s a nice, steady, half-hour climb that steepens up a bit around the 5-mile marker. Well, a half-hour for me, anyway.

• At this point you can get back to El Rancho Pendejo any number of ways, depending upon how the legs feel and what else needs doing once you get off the bike. I chose the least attractive but most direct route — the bike lane on Tramway Boulevard proper rather than the segregated path to the east — and added one last little climb at Manitoba that loops around just below the Embudito trailhead to Comanche Road and home, where the lawnmower was waiting.

April showers (March edition)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
‘Twas a fine soft day at El Rancho Pendejo.

Boy, can I pick a day for a birthday ride or what?

Yesterday, three hours of cycling in spring kit; today, 40 minutes of trail running in tights, long-sleeved polypro, rain jacket, tuque and woolen glove liners.

But hey, I’m not complaining. This is the upper Chihuahuan Desert and we’ll take all the aqua fria we can get and then some.

Plus I got to watch the neighbors’ 2-year-old splashing happily in the puddles, and heard the first hummingbird of 2017 while walking The Boo. It’s all good.

 

First blow, then snow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
"Forget about that California dam, hon', we got a real problem right here at home."
“Forget about that California dam, hon’, we got a real problem right here at home.”

Well, it ain’t much of a snow. But the blow more than made up for it. We had to corral wandering bits and pieces of lawn art yesterday, which beats watching Stephen Miller lie on the Sunday shows like a creepy baldheaded teenager caught with a spank mag under his mattress. (“Uh, I read it for the articles? And anyway, the terrorists put it there!”)

Where does Beelzebozo find these alleged people? If you saw Miller lurking around a school playground, you’d probably call the law, amirite? The only video of this penis with ears should come from a vice cop’s lapel cam.

“Hands where I can see ’em, pally. And let’s get the mouse back in his house, a’ight?”

Meanwhile, the National Security Council is taking on Stooge-esque overtones, and not of the Iggy variety, either. Who knew we’d still be dealing with Russian stooges 53 years after “Dr. Strangelove?”

“Sir, you can’t let him in here. He’ll see everything! He’ll see the Big Board!”