Category: autumn

Fall guy(s)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
A late bloomer.

It’s that time of year.

Even before the autumnal equinox arrived the mornings were growing cooler. Just 60° at 9:15 today. I’ve contemplated knickers a couple of times, but haven’t gone there yet. Arm warmers are once again part of the uniform of the day, though.

Since I’m decidedly unhandy when it comes to anything useful that needs doing around here, barring cookery and comedy, with fall all up in our grills we’ve been entertaining a parade of tradesmen plugging various leaks in our fauxdobe rowboat.

The to-do list to date includes: repairs to stucco come unstuck-o; fresh weatherstripping; askew garage door set aright; haircuts for trees and shrubs; flat roof weatherproofed (flat roofs are stupid; in case you were wondering); the remains of the lawn prepped for winter; and finally an irrigation-system blowout.

How I long for a van down by the river. But the house is paid for, and so is the Subaru.

And the river … well, the river needs work too. Mos def a fixer-upper. Hard to find good help for that little project, though.

Boneheads

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Schwinning? Eh, not so much.

It was a light turnout for Halloween at El Rancho Pendejo. We handed out just half of the candy I bought, and not even the two neighbor girls showed up.

Thursday was our first truly chilly fall morning — Herself and I had to break out the pants, long sleeves, gloves, and caps to go running — and I finally caved and switched the HVAC from “cool” to “heat.”

Adios, October; buenos dias, November.

Across town, the Not-So-Great Pumpkin was said to be trick-or-treating a smallish crowd of boneheads in a hangar near the Sunport. Let’s just dial that back to “tricking,” shall we? What treats he has are not for such as we.

In any event, I wouldn’t take a fat envelope of Benjamins from his short, greasy meathooks with a set of fireplace tongs and welder’s gloves. The Secret Service used to take a deep professional interest in counterfeiting, but I expect they’re too busy making sure his fat ass only has the one hole in it to frisk him for funny money.

And like I said, treats? Fuhgedaboudit. We’re waiting to see how many suckers have fallen for his tricks again.

Dress-code violation

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Today’s text comes from the Book of Levi’s.

I broke one of the Commandments today: “Thou shalt not wear pants before Halloween, or the first snow, whichever comes first.”

Just where this Commandment falls on the list I can’t recall. I know it didn’t make the top 10.

Socks are a no-no too, at least indoors. Outdoors it’s: “Thou shalt not show thy gnarly, pale-ass, old-white-guy feet in public unless there is a beach or a pool nearby.”

In my defense, I will say only that this morning’s temperature was just above freezing and it was either pants and socks or fire up the furnace for the first time this fall.

I chose to save the planet. You’re welcome.

Riding the great Divide

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Shades of autumn in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

O, the weather outside is far from frightful. And the fires are mostly prescriptive. And since we’ve no place to go … even so, let’s just hold off on the snow for a while, if you don’t mind.

Fall rides are my favorite rides. While I occasionally miss aspects of Interbike — the paydays, the feasting and roistering on various publishers’ credit cards, the simply Getting Out of Dodge — I do not long to waste another week of prime cycling weather motoring to and from Sin City in a clattering Nipponese four-banger, with long miles of trudging from casino to expo and back again through the low-hanging clouds of Marlboro exhaust and Bud Light sweat.

On Friday I was muscling the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff around the Elena Gallegos Open Space when I came up on a couple mountain bikers standing about where I saw a good-sized rattler in the grass on Tuesday. So I stopped to see what was what.

They’d seen a tarantula hairy-legging it across the trail and stopped for a peek, so I had one too. Didn’t take a pic, because I always feel like some sort of half-assed journalist — or worse, a tourist — when I’m doing that sort of thing where people can catch me at it. But it’s always educational to see one of the critters who actually belong here in the Upper Chihuahuan Desert.

Speaking of things that go bump in the desert, thanks to everyone who lent an ear (sorry, no returns) to the revival of my long-dormant Radio Free Dogpatch podcast. I have no idea what’s next — I mean, shit, do any of us 10 days away from the pestilential erection? — but as soon as I do, you’ll hear all about it. Oyez, oyez, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

Some punkins

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
It wasn’t the last leaf on the tree.

Why, hello there, October. Nice to see you could finally make it.

Yesterday we enjoyed a chilly eastern breeze, which by evening was expected to pack a bit more of a wallop — say, 30-40 mph with gusts to 55, plus rain — and with any luck at all this seasonal weather will strip our pines of their remaining brown needles.

On Thursday I filled three 39-gallon bags with downed needles from the last blustery day after a friend complained that she needed 4WD to scale our driveway with a load of product for Herself’s eBay sideline. The bags filled our trash bin to overflowing with three days before pickup. I had to pull one back out to shoehorn a sack of kitchen garbage redolent of jambalaya fixins into the sonofabitch. The raccoons will rejoice.

Not so the deer, who have eaten all the class foliage in the back yard. They’ll have to settle for silverleaf nightshade going forward or start mowing the lawn.

But yeah, rain. I can’t remember when last it rained. Mid-September, maybe? That’s the most recent mention I can find in the training log. I described it as “a short, sharp downpour” that I just beat home at the end of a 25-mile ride.

This latest blessing from heaven started coming down around bedtime last night and it hasn’t let up yet. We might see a quarter inch before the second cup of joe, which, yay, etc.

I can almost accept that it’s 45° outside, and that the sun doesn’t show its face until breakfast is a fading memory, and that I may be forced to start wearing pants in the morning.

No, not that. Not yet, goddamnit. It’s not even Halloween, f’chrissakes.