The May weather has weirded up on us here in Dog Country. The folks up Santa Fe way got a shit-pot full of hail the other day, and yesterday we enjoyed the sort of winds that ordinarily are restricted to Wyoming. Plus rain.
But nobody in his right mind who lives in a desert bitches about rain. This adage may or may not apply to me.
Going up. …
I got a nice little ride in Monday on the Rivendell Joe Appaloosa, grunting my way up to La Cueva Picnic Area off Tramway.
Tuesday looked ugly, and I had a bunch of things to do, so I went for a short run early before the winds got busy.
But as it turns out I might have been better served by riding yesterday, ’cause today is one gray, chilly, breezy sumbitch.
Maybe I’ll deploy a cyclo-cross bike and chase myself around Piedra Lisa for a bit.
Or maybe I’ll just stay inside and try to make me some hay while the sun ain’t shining.
Looking west from the North Diversion Channel Trail from the saddle of the Soma Double Cross.
Friday? Already? ‘Bout fuggin’ time, is what.
It seems to have been an active week. Ace shooter Casey B. Gibson blew through town en route to the Tour of the Gila and we got together at El Bruno’s to eat chile and wonder why all these sullen young punks are moping around on our lawns. Mister Boo continues to have a leaky faucet. One deadline was confirmed and another beaten into submission, if barely. Call it a TKO.
The old DBR Axis TT takes five along Trail 365, a few miles southeast of El Rancho Pendejo.
The Giro d’Italia got under way, but not without a hiccup at Live Update Guy.
The software pulled a Rip Van Wankel on us and Consigliere Pelkey had to deploy the Taser to encourage vigorous if financially unrewarding activity.
Hey, it was a 9.8km time trial; no wonder the 1s and 0s nodded off, along with most of what proved to be a very small audience.
And there was healthful outdoor exercise. Various elements of the Universe conspired against my fitness regimen for much of April, but May is off to a better start — this week I’ve logged two runs and three rides, all of which featured old bikes, blue skies and tailwinds home.
This afternoon I required a short nap on the sofa for some reason. Happily, The Boo needed a snooze, too, and he kept it corked, which I call progress.
Every silver lining has a dark cloud, of course, and ours at the moment is the aforementioned wind — a thunderous gale that has triggered a wind advisory, a red-flag warning and my allergies.
P’raps Der Trumpenführer is giving an address somewhere? That would explain all this hot air.
Oh, lawd, the old tee-hees are proving elusive these days around El Rancho Pendejo.
Mister Boo’s post-surgical recuperation from bladder surgery last Wednesday has been both messier and noisier than I anticipated, and it has not helped that Herself has pissed off to New Orleans for a week on a work junket that just happens to occur in the middle of Jazz Fest.
The Big Easy, this place she is not, cher. Les bon temps, they do not rouler.
There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel. This morning The Boo took the last of his antibiotics and pain meds, and tomorrow the Cone of Shame comes off. The peeing and pooping is occurring mostly outdoors, which is nice. But I laid in another 50-pack of Boots & Barkley extra-large training pads anyway, just in case the flood returns to Katrinaesque proportions.
Well, I wish I was in New Orleans … I can see it in my dreams. …
Me, I’ve been fooling around with a Rivendell Joe Appaloosa, and a very nice machine it is, too. No down-tube shifters, but thumbshifters, and a handlebar so upright and swept back that you can see yourself coming from miles away.
None of them devilish discs, neither. Tektro V-brakes, thank you very much. In point of fact, the José is so retro I had to buy myself a hipsterish red-plaid shirt to ride around in (the baggy shorts I already own). When aboard the USS José Appaloosa the uniform of the day is very much not the skintight Lycra.
Riding a bike with nice grippy V-brakes reminded me of how much I still dislike the Shimano cantilevers on my Soma Double Cross, and in a fit of pique I pulled them off, planning to replace them with the Paul’s Neo-Retro and Touring cantis on a Steelman Eurocross that I haven’t been riding much.
I forget how old these Spookys are … probably nearly as old as the bike they now adorn.
Alas, it turned out that the Paul’s are in need of maintenance … a missing O-ring here, a scored brake pivot there, and some really old pads — and thus I found myself staring at two brakeless bikes to no particular purpose.
Then, eureka! I remembered having an old set of barely used Spooky cantis with Kool-Stop pads squirreled away in a box somewhere in the garage. And soon, hey presto! They were on the Steelman, because black and red are the key components of the Mad Dog livery. And off I went for another installment of Ride Your Own Damn Bike Day.
The crowds were sparse at the 2016 Tramway-Roubaix.
After Charles Pelkey and I wrapped up Live Update Guy’s coverage of Paris-Roubaix yesterday I pedaled off for my own little adventure.
See the cobbles off to the right there alongside Tramway? Those are the rare Duke City mini-cobbles. Some people might call ’em “gravel,” but they’re really cobbles. Itty bitty cobbles. You can trust me. I’m in the media.
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