Definitely on a down cycle as regards the bicycle. Running is the thing lately.
It’s so bloody simple: Pull on some shorts and a raggedy T, add shoes, and leave. Return when suitably sweaty and enfeebled. What’s not to like? Besides the pain and suffering, that is.
I did break out the old Voodoo Nakisi the other day for a short jaunt along Trail 365 and its various offshoots. I got a long-distance look at the haze from the Washington-state fires. It wasn’t my first — during my trip back to the Duke City from Bibleburg I couldn’t even see the damn’ mountains.
I’ll probably go for another short ride today, because not even I am dim enough to run two days in a row unless something really big and ornery is chasing me. Like, say, Peter Sagan, who got knocked off his bike by a race vehicle today and decided to punch a couple of them. Hulk smash!
What this sucker needs is a sprinkler system that comes on when you cycle through.
It’s the longest day of the year, and is it ever a scorcher. Ninety-nine in the Duke City at the moment. A tip of the sweatband to Willis Haviland Carrier, who gave us air conditioning.
Got a couple nice rides in recently as part of a concentrated effort to (a) not read every word written online about the Charleston massacre, and (2) not apply for emigration to Mars.
On Friday, Adventure Cyclist contributor Merrill Callaway and I rode down to Two Wheel Drive on Central to chat a while with owner Charlie Ervin. If you’re ever in Albuquerque make sure you pop into Charlie’s shop. Lovely people, a friendly dog, and bike stuff, too. If TWD had a taqueria, bar and swimming pool the place would be perfect. But then pretty much anyplace would be, que no?
On Saturday Herself and I rode out to Tijeras and back. She claimed afterward that she would have ridden faster without me. I proposed that she get in line with all the other people who are faster than me. That would be quite the paceline.
The underpass above is about the only shade between here and there and back again, so it seems that I must become an early riser if I’m to be cycling up to Madrid, Santa Fe and points north in this brand-new summer.
But I’d have to get up very early in the morning to even come close to thinking about maybe, possibly, approaching the marker that our most recent guest at Chez Dog has laid down.
First, he cycled from Las Vegas to Bibleburg for a nephew’s wedding. Then he rode up Pikes Peak.
Remember the large friendly letters inscribed on the cover of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”
DON’T PANIC.
The Old Guy jersey wheels, they turn.
Voler and I are setting up a Produce On Demand partnership deal in which they will do all the work, you will get all the jerseys, and I — I will get a couple pennies for my trouble, which should be hardly any trouble at all, which is just the way I like it.
At the moment it looks as though we will revive Old Guys Jersey v2.0 first, and then add Original Old Guys to the catalog shortly thereafter. Fabric will be AMP; the cut, club; the zipper, full hidden; and the price, around $77, which includes shipping direct to you (untouched by the baby-soft hands of shovel-leaning Irish-American artistes).
Once everything is ready to rock you’ll see a link to my Voler.com partner page up there at right, under the jersey pix. Click that bad boy, give the nice peoples your credit-card number and delivery information, and you should have fresh kit in your hot little hands about seven working days later.
While all these multicolored Lycra balls were floating merrily in the air I took a short ride down memory lane, better known as Old Route 66 (NM 333), to Tijeras and back. I hadn’t gotten my kicks out that way since I last raced the Watermelon Mountain Classic, maybe 1990 or thereabouts, and a very nice ride it is, too, especially if you’re not headed in the other direction, chasing fast dudes to Duke City after climbing seven switchbacked miles of unimproved dirt Forest Service road between Bernalillo and the Sandia Ski Area.
I thought about continuing past Tijeras through Cedar Crest to the Triangle at Sandia Park, but Mister Boo has been experiencing a bout of intestinal distress, and I wasn’t eager to come home to a house that smelled worse than me. And there was all this damn’ jersey stuff needed doing, too.
So, yeah, my suffering knows no bounds, etc., et al., and so on and so forth. First thing I’m gonna do with the proceeds is get a new shovel to lean on between poop-scoopings.
Every now and then, when I get a check in the mail, as I did yesterday, I wonder what I did to earn it. This thing of mine is not exactly ditch-digging, after all. Mostly it seems quite a bit like play.
But I kept track of yesterday’s chores, for some reason, and so here’s a look at a day in the life of a freelance cycling rumormonger.
• Wrote an 850-word column for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, on the joys of being a one-car, 16-bicycle family.
• Drew and colored a cartoon about motors in the peloton, also for BRAIN.
• Did an hour or so of hills on the Elephant NFE, stopping periodically to shoot some GoPro footage for its video review, which will accompany its Adventure Cyclist print review, which is fighting for space in my skull with ongoing impressions of a Felt V100 and Opus Legato 1.0.
• Pulled the footage off the GoPro, dropped it into iMovie, and did a bit of planning/editing.
• Declined a couple days’ worth of copyediting, my least favorite chore.
• Reinstalled the porteur and low-rider racks on the Elephant, being extra careful to not clamp anything down on any cable housing anywhere.
• Did a little casual research on the Swift Industries and Revelate bags.
Like I said, not exactly ditch-digging. Still, I’ll take the money. And thanks.
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