Category: Albuquerque

It never rains, but it pours

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The Templeton Gap Trail has a fine new concrete surface east of Goose Gossage Park.
The Templeton Gap Trail has a fine new concrete surface east of Goose Gossage Park.

One of the downsides of bidding adieu to scenic theocratic Bibleburg is that I won’t be able to enjoy the new bits of bikey infrastructure the city has been laying down.

I managed to slip out for a short ride today and found that the stretch of Templeton Gap Trail that takes cyclists from the Pikes Peak Greenway to Palmer Park has a new layer of concrete (it used to be beat-to-shit asphalt and dirt).

Shiny new blacktop adorns Templeton Gap Road.
Shiny new blacktop adorns Templeton Gap Road.

Also, Templeton Gap Road has a fresh coating of shiny blacktop and a nifty new bike lane. It has yet to be stenciled as such, but hey, it’s a holiday weekend, right?

Well, for some people, anyway. What with the Vuelta a España and live blogging thereof, the pending move to Duke City, guests in and out of The House Back East™, visiting newsie pals, goggle-eyed dogs requiring doctoring, chats with roofers, landscapers, gutter guys, real-estate types, bankers and mortgage-loan officers, Herself in the first month of a new job six hours to the south, and rain rain rain every god damn day, downtime has been a rare bird around these parts, buckaroo.

That said, I have not been shot dead by the laws and left to lie in the street for hours. Nor am I beheaded by ISIS, invaded by Russians, or infected with the Ebola virus.

I do have to go to Interbike, though. I’m not certain which horseman of the apocalypse that is.

Going round and round

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
The boyos round the corner leading to the final kilometer.
The boyos round the corner leading to the final kilometer.

The Race of Many Silly Names (Not the Tour of Colorado) came to Bibleburg yesterday, and though I thought it was by far the best course of the three we’ve had, the spectator turnout was about what one might expect for a one-car funeral, a Hillary Clinton pole dance, or a goat fuck on the lawn at Focus on the Family.

I rode the townie down to Colorado College for a bit of casual observation with friends and neighbors and the “crowd” was mostly not. Checking out the final lap online via Tour Tracker it seemed that most of what few spectators there were had decided to congregate in Bibleburg’s fabled Drinkin’ & Fightin’ District, a three-block stretch of South Tejon that includes a string of grog shops, alehouses and taverns, one U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters, and a bunch of small shops selling shit nobody needs*, including the “local” newspaper, The Anschutz Gazette.

Ah, well. School is already back in session, it was a workday, and the homeless, while numerous, just aren’t that interested in cycling as entertainment; to them, it’s transportation.

And anyway, I had a good time watching the circus come to town, especially because I wasn’t one of the poor saps who had to clean up after the elephants. It made for a nice break from negotiating with lenders, renters, Realtors®, roofers, landscapers and inspectors.

* The exceptions being Savory Spice Shop, Bingo Burger and Sparrow Hawk Gourmet Cookware.

Reunion

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
The Boo and Herself
Mister Boo and Herself enjoy a tender moment.

Oh, happy day. Mister Boo loves himself an auto trip, and if it takes him anywhere near Herself, well, so much the better.

The vet has given the Boo the all clear, though the one-eyed little stinkbug still has some meds to finish up. I passed the doctoring off to Herself and got back to paying work between forays into the Realty Jungle.

It helps to remember to fetch a mouse and SD-card reader along on these little junkets, which of course I did not, and if I have to keep working a trackpad and uploading photos via telepathy for much longer I will require a trip to the vet myself.

The good news — well, besides the Boo’s eye injury being healed and his reunion with Herself — is that we have finally made an offer on a place after examining eleventy-seven of the sonsabitches and are awaiting further reports from the front. More as we learn it.

 

Duke City blues

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

Looks like Justin St. Germain’s NYT essay has found an audience back in Albuquerque, where the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce opines that violence is bad for the bottom line.

The perception that the local coppers are trigger-happy goons has punched a few holes in business development, chamber boss Terri Cole told The Albuquerque Journal.

“People who wanted to visit Albuquerque or start a business here didn’t do either,” she said. “Clearly that creates challenges for making Albuquerque the type of place where people want to start a business or raise a family.”

Indeed. You may recall that Hemingway wrote of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” rather than “A Bullet-Riddled Shithole.”

The FBI crime stats make for an interesting read, too.

• Late update: In related news, Herself is off on another house-hunting expedition, this time after pulling a full shift at the new job. She’s starting to remind me of Ruby “The Ant” Archuleta from John Nichols’ “The Milagro Beanfield War.” I might have to come up with a new sobriquet for the little woman. The Herminator?

 

Unreal estate

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 37 Comments
Apologies to Chuck Jones. No bull.
Apologies to Chuck Jones. No bull.

Oh, the Universe is a funny old place.

Once upon a time I hardly thought of Albuquerque at all, other than as a place to drive through en route to somewhere else. Then, sometime in the past few years, Duke City became an occasional cycling getaway; closer than Fountain Hills, cheaper than Santa Fe.

And now the sonofabitch is in my thoughts more or less constantly, like one of those work-related cocktail parties your spouse drags you to without having the common human decency to slip you a mickey first.

“You’ll have a wonderful time.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because you’re going and you might as well try to enjoy yourself.”

Herself has been in residence in Albuquerque since Friday, the thin edge of our family wedge, house-hunting with a vengeance and filing detailed, illustrated reports with Your Humble Narrator. As a consequence I have peeked in more strangers’ windows this weekend than a CIA drone, but the only thing I’ve learned is that some people should not be allowed in a Lowe’s with an idea and a credit card.

No, that’s not true. I also know that the rozzes are apparently shooting everyone except the bratchnies tolchocking homeless vecks to death, and that if it keeps raining Albuquerque is in line to be home port for the New Mexican Navy (no jokes about adobe submarines, por favor).

So I’ve instructed Herself to focus on properties above the high water line, and I’m shopping for razor wire, machine guns and a Nadsat-English phrasebook.