BIBLEBURG, Colo. (MDM) — I have a wealth of bad habits, and one of them is taking pix while I drive. It’s probably at least as wrong-headed as texting, but nobody has outlawed it yet (as far as I know), so I keep on doing it out of mileage-induced boredom. And thus we have this small pile from my just-completed 2,138-mile round trip from Bibleburg to Sin City and back via Albuquerque. I redeemed myself somewhat by getting out of the car to snap the shot of the linear park. What the hell, The Boo had to pee.
It was raining on the way out, and how.
Moon over New Mexico.
A “linear park” near Chez Dog South-Duke City, a.k.a. Rancho Pendejo.
A bridge too far? Nope. Not close enough. Miles to go before I slept.
A Subaru Impreza that’s belching cigarette smoke from the driver’s window is hardly a “Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle,” which is marketing bullshit anyway. It’s either a zero-emissions vehicle or it isn’t.
PZEV sounds like the sort of stealth fart we used to call a “one-cheek sneak.” Elevate half the butt slightly above the plastic chair and let fly as the teacher pauses in mid-lecture to take a breath.
Pppppppzeeeeeeeevvvvv.
I found myself stuck behind this PZEV shit (that’s an audio pun, son!) while riding my Vespa over to the scooter shop for its annual maintenance and a minor repair. Interesting how the de rigueur carry for a lit cig’ these days is out the window. As much as the fuckers cost you’d think the addicts would want to keep all those expensive carcinogens inside the car where they can get full value out of each nicotine stick.
But what do I know? I shed that particular vice three decades ago, when a carton of Marlboros cost less than a Subaru.
Still, if ever there was a bad week to quit smoking, this was it. Smack in the shitter goes Iraq, with all the usual suspects slithering out from under their rocks to flicker their forked tongues for fun and profit — including Dickless Cheney and his carpetbagger kid, who’s so overfed and under-taught that she couldn’t even queer a Wyoming election properly. Some 4,500 Americans dead in her daddy’s imperial fantasies and yet the cyborg sonofabitch walks the earth unfettered.
Plus Herself has been road-tripping again, leaving me in charge of quarters. The Augean Stables is what that is. Bowls to fill, litter boxes to empty, Boos to walk twice daily — did you know you have to pick up the dog shit now?
Well, here, anyway. In DC they put it on the Sunday shows and on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal.
A lot more of them, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — up from about 488,000 in 2000 to about 786,000 in 2008-12. And no, they don’t all live in Portlandia.
The bad news, according to The Atlantic? More than eight in 10 of us still drive to work (and mostly alone).
My favorite commuting tale remains the one told by my burro-racing buddy Hal “Mr. Awesome” Walter of Crusty County, Colo., who once skied to work at The Pueblo Chieftain.
“I skied from West Park to the Chieftain, tucking for the glide over the 4th Street Bridge in subzero cold,” Hal recalls via email. “I was pulled over by a policeman and feared I might get a ticket for speeding but found there was actually an ordinance against skiing on the city streets.”
Hal has also run a burro from Wetmore to Pueblo, and without interference from the authorities, as the place was once a stronghold of Donk politics. Plus pretty much everyone in Pueblo likes to see some new ass in town, even the Republicans.
Oh, good. More people playing when they should be driving.
I took my gradually fading cold out for a walk yesterday afternoon, and boy, was it ever a beautiful day. Didn’t need to see that pudgy jogger airing out his man-boobs, but occasionally a fella must take the bitter with the sweet.
We’re looking at another blast of springtime today — 72! — before the rain, snow and wind play a return engagement on Tuesday. So I plan to get out again while the getting out remains good.
Friend of the the DogS(h)ite Weaksides will not be so fortunate, alas. In comments, he advises that he’s enduring in-patient therapy after getting blitzed from behind by a car, and his condition may keep him out of his own damn’ home for a while. So shoot him some good wishes in comments if you have a moment.
Meanwhile, feel free to wax wroth about Apple’s latest brainstorm, CarPlay, a setup intended to make it easier for motorists to jabber on the phone, check their email and not incidentally run us over. Released today as part of iOS 7.1 and soon to be a column coming to a bicycle-industry magazine near you.
The last time one of these things was parked outside my house, I was fixin’ to trade it in on a Toyota.
Some class of awards show was hogging all the bandwidth last night, I understand.
We freelance cycling rumormongers never get to put on the Ritz and walk the red carpet, even those of us who dabble in the cinema. When we open the envelope, our prize for a job well done is a few wrinkly pictures of dead presidents (if we’re lucky).
I was able to skip the big show last night, Herself being on the road for bidness purposes. She had to motor through the mountains to Dysfunction Junction for a library conclave, and it being March in Colorado, rather than rent the usual half-pint fuel-sipper she settled on a big-ass Ford F-150 crew cab with a 26-gallon tank and four-wheel drive.
Holy shit, that thing looked like the USS George Washington, speaking of dead presidents. I asked Herself if she’d need a stepladder to chisel the ice off the windshield and she gave me the rough edge of her tongue, being less than fond of driving in conditions that lead to 104-car pileups.
I wasn’t exactly sanguine about the mission, either. I owned an F-150 once, a bare-bones 1996 4WD model, and it was without a doubt the biggest hunk of junk I’ve ever owned, a real Motor City garbage scow. Everything that could go wrong with it did, and by the time I finally determined to trade the devil-possessed sonofabitch in on a 1998 Toyota Tacoma I was expecting any minute to hear the voice of Terry Jones saying, “And now it’s time for the F-150 in your driveway to explode.”
But she made it to DJ without incident and is bounding merrily about the place with her fellow librarians. Last night they took over a brewery and spent the night putting their hair up in buns, peering over the tops of their glasses and telling everyone, “Shh!”
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