It’s Monday. Know how I can tell? There’s a plumber in the driveway and my Visa card just spontaneously combusted.
One of the few downsides to living in an old neighborhood like ours is that the plumbing is even older than the residents. I think Hammurabi laid the original pipe, and the Romans handled most of the maintenance (But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?) until the Vandals came along and ensured that the pumps would no longer work by appropriating the handles.
Anyway, the lone bathtub at The House Back East™ has become something of a wading pond, and a plumber is over there panning for gold as we speak. I expect he’ll find some.
Sunset outside Weirdcliffe. Photo: Hal Walter | Hardscrabble Times
Judas Priest. More fires. Not in the immediate vicinity this time, but we’re sure as shit getting the smoke.
This is worse than anything the Black Forest fire threw at us (well, down here by Chez Dog, anyway). The Gazette says this cloud is either from a fire near Wolf Creek Pass or another going on in Jefferson County. Others are burning in Huerfano County near the Spanish Peaks, Cañon City, up by Rangely … gonna be a long, hot summer, folks.
The prevailing wisdom at the moment is that these are lightning-caused. So I’d like to know whether the NSA has been monitoring God’s communications, and when we can expect an arrest.
It was chores, chores, chores today — a full shift’s worth of my usual stock in trade, which is to say bicycles and bullshit — and I didn’t pay much attention to the Black Forest fire until it was about time for Herself to motor on home from her gig in Denver.
And then, holy shit! The friggin’ thing is spreading like a head cold at Interbike and more evacuations are ordered, this time in Bibleburg proper.
“Traffic nightmare in northern Colorado Springs,” quoth the Gazette.
“I-25 is completely congested. Avoid traveling if not necessary,” added the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.
El clusterfucko, bucko, as we say south of the border (Monument Hill). I’m thinking she’s gonna be idling at Baptist Road for the better part of quite some time. And you know how those Baptists are.
So I propose going long — E-470 to Interstate 70 to Highway 24 and home. Or maybe C-470 to Highway 285, then jink down through Pine and Deckers to Woodland Park and thence back to the ranch.
Nope. She blazes right on down the Big I to home and hearth — and with hardly a bobble, too. Go figure.
Ride the Rockies is not so fortunate. Thanks to the Royal Gorge fire, they’re getting rerouted through our old stomping grounds of Weirdcliffe, which adds some 33 miles to their ride from Salida to Cañon City, many of them uphill.
I know all of them well, having ridden them as a Crusty County resident and as an entrant in several editions of the late, lamented Hardscrabble Century, which tackled Weirdcliffe from the other direction, from Florence through Wetmore and up Hardscrabble Cañon.
The riding is easier the way the Rockies types are doing it, once they’re past Bear Basin Ranch. From there, it’s mostly downhill to Graybar City. Whip a power salute on H. Rap Brown as you roll past Supermax Florence, kiddos.
We used to train up there in the Nineties, when I was still racing, and from the sound of it the fire may have started near Black Forest Regional Park, where Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs At Large Velo promoted a cyclo-cross or two back in the day. Plenty of fuel up there, and with the humidity in single digits and the wind in double digits, you have a recipe for some very bad news indeed.
Herself and I saw a couple of Fort Carson CH-47 Shithooks whock-whock-whocking overhead toward the Forest this afternoon, but we didn’t see any buckets dangling. The Blue Zoomies are pitching in, too.
And this is only one of the fires going on at the moment. Others are at the Royal Gorge, La Veta, Douglas County and Rocky Mountain National Park. The Denver Post is also live-blogging the blazes — using actual live-blogging software, too, unlike our local cage-liner, which seems to be doing it the hard (and cheap) way while expecting the customers to keep refreshing the page. Spend some money, peckerwoods. Phil Anschutz has it to burn, you should pardon the expression.
Anyway, we’re just fine here, but sounds like plenty of folks aren’t. More as we hear it.
The known terrierist “Banzai” Buddy Boo, captured from my iPhone. (Actually, he’s more of a spanielista.)
C’mon — you don’t think they put a camera in that phone of yours so you could take cutesy pix of puppies and kitties for teh Innertubes, didja? Wave hi to your Uncle Sammy.
I guess I’m with Kevin Drum here. I just assumed that once the surveillance genie was out of its bottle, the ratfink stool-pigeon bastard would never get stuffed back in, no matter which crypto-Mooslim Kenyan socialist tyrant happened to be occupying the Black House. And thus whenever I plot the smashing of the State I make certain that I’m out in the open, safe among The People, far away from that snitching corporate stooge, my iPhone.
I do have one question, though. As a nominal journalist and underemployed rumormonger, I consider myself to be in the entertainment business. And everything I do — from writing columns to drawing cartoons to making prank calls to the Queen warning that the Irish Republican Navy plans to dispatch an armada up the Thames — is part of the Work. Shit, I spend more time and effort editing my emails than some people devote to entire magazines. I’m saying I take my comedy seriously, is what.
So my question is this: By data mining my phone is Uncle Sammy violating my copyright, and if so, can I sic’ the FBI on him? Seems to me I can’t watch a goddamn “Game of Thrones” DVD without enduring a multilingual series of dire threats regarding the high crime of piracy from the Feebs, Interpol, the Sûreté, MI6, the Mossad, SHIELD, the Illuminati and Captain Video.
I think the sonofabitch should at least be picking up part of my AT&T tab.
• Late update: More on this revoltin’ development from The Old Gray Lady.
• Ever later update:More here, praising the leaker, from The Atlantic.
Mad Blog Media 