Zapata Espinoza and two colleagues just got the old heave and also the ho from their gigs at Hi-Torque Publications.
According to my man Steve Frothingham at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Hi-Torque plans to croak Road Bike Action and Electric Bike Action. Hence the pink slips for Zap, Tony Donaldson and Alex Boyce.
“(The) head winds proved too mighty” for the titles, Espinoza told BRAIN in an email.
Oof. When even a Mountain Bike Hall of Famer like Zap can get dropped you know them headwinds is fierce. Here’s hoping the lads find new homes soon.
I guess we can leave the skinny skis in the garage.
Well, it must be true, if both The New York Times and The Washington Post simultaneously catch up to the sad story about Rio Verde Foothills, where dreams go to die in the dust.
It’s an old story, with the new wrinkle being Scottsdale finally putting a cork in water sales to Rio Verde, saying it had to consider its own residents first and foremost. From the WaPo:
“The city cannot be responsible for the water needs of a separate community especially given its unlimited and unregulated growth,” the city manager’s office wrote in December.
The stories share a squeaky wheel — Cody Reim, who has a wife and four kids, works for the family’s sheet-metal business, and is looking at a water bill that could surpass the tab for his mortgage, when he’s not chatting up the national press. Again, from the WaPo:
“I thought, this is the United States of America, we do so much in humanitarian aid to other countries that don’t have water, they’re not going to let taxpaying citizens of this county go without water,” he said.
“You don’t think this could happen,” he added. “You have this belief that there’s going to be help.”
I have sympathy for the Reim family. Like them, we chose to live in a sandbox — the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert — and our water gets humped uphill to El Rancho Pendejo via a series of pumping stations. If we paid what this liquid gold is actually worth, or had to fetch it here by bike or burro, you can bet your ass we’d use a lot less of it.
Either that or we’d move to where the water is. Yet here we are.
Deciding to build your base camp in the desert is magical thinking going toe to toe with mathematics. As John Fleck observes in his ongoing Dead Pool Diaries, decent runoff this year will not change the fact that Colorado River water is overallocated and always has been.
“It’s just arithmetic!” he says.
If God wanted us here, He would’ve stored more agua fria under the rocks and cacti. But clearly He wasn’t expecting quite so much company.
“Hey, you come to the desert to get wisdom, 40 days and nights, tops. And then you go back where you came from. You silly sods never went back.”
I seem to remember catching him and Foghat at the City Aud in Bibleburg when I was a Mad Pup, not yet gone full Dog. But I was usually full of those gosh-darned old drugs back then and often saw and heard things that other people swore up and down were not really there.
The Yardbirds were definitely a part of my teenage playlist. And you have to tip your sombrero to a fella who’s down to punch it with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Keith Moon, and Nicky Hopkins (“Beck’s Bolero”) or slow it down with Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg (“Over the Rainbow”).
But that train was comin’. And Jeff had to get on board.
Regulars here know the story. Charles fought breast cancer to a draw, then got back to living his life as a lawyer, legislator, and family man.
But he’s since had a few setbacks, the kind that dollar up on the hoof awful fast, and another friend has set up a GoFundMe site to help Chazbo stay one long step ahead of the bill collectors.
That’s right, folks — it’s Tip Jar time again! Doesn’t matter if it’s dimes or dollars, every little bit helps.
And if you can spread the word on your various social-media accounts, that would be swell, too. Thanks in advance.
Herself the Elder, a.k.a. Mary Gaye (Kerr) Pigeon, went west on Thursday in Albuquerque. She was 89.
Born in 1933 on a farm in East Texas, the youngest of 10 children, Mary raised three girls of her own and spent a quarter-century working for Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Her father, B Kerr, was a sharecropper. Her mother, Mary M. Kerr, was a homemaker.
Mary attended schools in Nacogdoches and Abilene, graduating from Abilene High School in 1951. Afterward she studied at Massey Business College in Nacogdoches.
In 1958 she married Robert Pigeon of Ontonagon, Mich.
Their first child, Beth, was born in 1960 in College Station, Texas. Shannon (Herself) was born a year later in Nacogdoches. And Heather was born in Frederick, Md., in 1962, after the family moved east so Robert could take a position with the Atomic Energy Commission.
With all three children in school, Mary went to work. In Frederick, she took a job with the First Baptist Church. When the family relocated to Oak Ridge in 1980, Mary signed on with the First Presbyterian Church.
Two years later, the couple divorced. Her ex eventually remarried, but Mary never did.
In 1992, Mary began working at ORAU, in a temporary position. It proved anything but. By the time she retired 23 years later — at the age of 82 — she was the executive assistant to a vice president in health communication. Mary loved that job and was proud of her accomplishments at ORAU.
Armed with quick wit and sharp tongue, Mary did not suffer fools gladly. But she had a lighter touch with animals, particularly cats, and supported the Helping Paws Animal Network of Oak Ridge.
She devoured mysteries on her Kindle, especially Susan Wittig Albert stories. Other pastimes included crossword puzzles, dining out, shopping, spending time with family and her wide circle of friends, and binge-watching episodes of “The Big Bang Theory.”
Beth, Mary and Shannon share a giggle in The Duck! City circa July 2021.
In her later years Mary wanted to be closer to her daughters, moving first to an apartment in Palm Bay, Fla., near Beth, and then to assisted living in Albuquerque, near Shannon.
She arrived in The Duck! City just as the novel coronavirus began triggering lockdowns in elder-care facilities, and endured quarantines in tiny rooms, conversations with loved ones through closed windows and/or over the phone, vaccinations, and masking, all piled atop the traditional indignities of advancing old age.
In her final year, with restrictions lifting, Mary was able to rejoin the wider world, enjoying in-person visits with family and friends, getting her hair and nails done, shopping, and going out for meals.
Shortly after her 89th birthday, COVID finally found her. It did not keep her long.
Survivors include Beth and Darren Morgan of Woodsboro, Md.; Shannon and Patrick O’Grady of Albuquerque; and Heather and Bill White of Smyrna, Tenn.; two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews.
No services are planned. Come spring, Mary will return to East Texas, where memory took her in her final days.
