Category: Bibleburg
An evening on the deck
It’s 11 p.m. and I’m relaxing with a glass of rosé after two days of medium-heavy cookery and other minor labors in honor of a couple of friends and neighbors who are shuffling off to another area code.
I started yesterday, roasting some Whole Foods poblanos and Anaheims on the gas grill, then whipped up a basic posole (a recipe so old I can’t remember where I found it) alongside a pot of pintos with chipotle (from The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook). Herself, meanwhile, got busy on a killer lemon-vanilla pudding, saving the final touches for just before mealtime.
Today I hosed down the back deck and zip-tied down the fabric pergola cover — a good thing, too, as Bibleburg tied a record high of 91 degrees — and broke out the patio table’s umbrella for backup. Then I made a little pico de gallo salsa, roasted potatoes with Chimayo red chile, and a green chile sauce (all three from the Santa Fe folks). Poached a pound of chicken, shredded it, made enchiladas with blue corn tortillas, some Monterey Jack and that pot of green chile, and hey presto! Dinnertime.
There was wine, of course, and also beer. The 2010 Thierry Delaunay Touraine from the Loire Valley seemed a bit thin, so I switched to a 2010 Le Cengle Côtes de Provence, which has a beautiful copper color and a tart flavor that, oddly, reminds me of Jolly Rancher watermelon candies, an item I was addicted to as a much younger dog.
The beers were two seasonal items from Deschutes Brewery — Red Chair NWPA, which is hard to find right now, and Twilight Summer Ale, which should be around until September. I should have Vespa’d on down to Bristol Brewing for a jug of their Red Rocket Pale Ale, but tomorrow is another day, eh? As it is I barely had time to grab a shower before the guests of honor arrived.
We ate and drank and shot the shit until long after sundown, and now I and my wine are surfing Al Gore’s Innertubes in search of evil tidings, which are regrettably easy to find, and enjoying a cooling breeze from somewhere.
Or we were. A small yet authoritative voice in another room has chimed the hour in a style that Big Ben would envy. See you tomorrow.
Voting with my feet
Every now and then I get tired of being a vehicle and become a pedestrian instead. Today was one of those days, so I spent 90 minutes hiking various trails in Palmer Park.
I ride the park at least once a week, usually on one cyclo-cross bike or another, which limits my choices from the trails menu. There may very well be people who can ride the entire Templeton Trail on a ’cross bike, for example, but I am not one of them. So today I stomped around on a mess of trails my wheeled self generally gives a wide berth — the Templeton, the Kinnickinnick, the Cheyenne and the Edna Mae Bennet.
It was a nice change of pace, and also a reminder of the price Bibleburg is paying for the honor of serving as a pilot project for Grover Norquist’s wet dream of drowning a shrunken government in a libertarian bathtub. The park crappers are locked and the water faucets shut off, and I get the impression that a lot of the recent trail maintenance was the work not of parks staff but of volunteers, specifically the Guardians of Palmer Park.
Just outside the park sit empty bus benches bearing signs saying the bus doesn’t stop there anymore, and downtown an even hundred of the century-old trees that make the Old North End so homey are coming down because they are either dead or dying thanks to an extended drought and reduced watering by the city. Plenty of our once-green parks are in a similar woeful state.
Elections have consequences, as folks here and elsewhere are learning the hard way. At least I hope they are.
• Late update: Meanwhile, we’re pouring another $21,500 down the five-ringed loo at the U.S. Olympic Committee — which already cost us $42.3 million in taxpayer dollars — for a temporary mural featuring a local gold medalist in an ludicrous attempt to make ourselves look pretty. Once again, satire runs a very poor second to reality.
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
We’ve been enjoying the kind of weather former Bibleburger Robert A. Heinlein described in “Glory Road” as “the sort that Florida and California claim (and neither has).” If it weren’t for wind bringing us secondhand smoke from the jillion or so massive fires to the south and west of us, I wouldn’t have anything to bitch about.
But I can always find something. I’m funny that way. Maybe not.
Today I rode the Voodoo Nakisi south and west, climbing along the trails of Bear Creek Regional Park to Gold Camp Road, where shortly I was passed by a trio of roadies who spoke not a word as they rolled by on their plastic fantastics just past the Section 16 trailhead. They must have been fresh from the 26th Street/Gold Camp ascent, a popular and unofficial time trial in these parts, and I with my dusty steel MonsterCrosser®, burly tires and hairy legs no doubt offended their delicate sensibilities somehow. Maybe it was the VeloNews bibs. Who could know?
What I do know is that they weren’t nearly as nifty as they thought they were, because I was able to hold their wheels on the swift descent along 26th Street to Highway 24, and anyone who knows me will confirm that I do not exactly descend like Lucifer, “hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky.” This assholy trinity may be better than me on the uphills, but then that’s not a very high bar to hop, either.
I didn’t recognize any of them, but then I don’t ride the road much, because it is mostly curb to curb with dickheads, some on four wheels, and others on two. On the trails folks say “Howdy!” to each other.
Welcome to the West, buckaroos.
Prologue of the gods? Not hardly
The folks behind the USA Pro Cycling Challenge formally unveiled their routes for the Aug. 22-28 stage race today, and the prologue — slated for right here in scenic metropolitan Bibleburg — should please the Chamber of Commerce, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and any other buck-hunters hoping the area’s scenic beauty outsells its reputation for screaming loonies.
Unfortunately, it’s not much of a race course.
The 5.18-mile route is mostly downhill or flat, barring a short climb from the gun in the Garden of the Gods and another over the railyard approaching the finish at U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in downtown Bibleburg.
The biggest obstacle will be a hard left turn at the bottom of Ridge Road onto Pikes Peak Avenue. Ridge is a steep little mother, ordinarily ridden in the other direction by cyclists seeking healthful exercise, and anybody who fucks it up will slide right through West Colorado Avenue and Highway 24 into the Red Rock Canyon Open Space, there to be eaten by bears.
From that point on it’s mostly bullshit — one quick right-left at North 29th Street takes the riders onto West Colorado Avenue and then it’s a long road that has no turning through Old Colorado City to the finish. In short, bor-ing.
I’m thinking the place to be is at that left-hander at the base of Ridge Road, with a big sack for carrying off the salvageable high-zoot components of the fallen. It’s an easy half-hour ride from Chez Dog, and I have plenty of messenger bags.
Meanwhile, here’s a short video clip of the interesting bits of the Garden of the Gods section from an unauthorized ride I took on the course this morning. Sorry about the jerky video, especially on the descent, but I had the Flip Ultra HD clamped to the stem instead of my helmet to cut the dork factor. I have to buy my own toys for this kind of playtime, don’t you know, and this thing was already in the quiver.
And slainte to Elvis Costello for letting me liberate one of his tunes for the shoot. He doesn’t exactly know or anything, but we share a name (Declan) so I expect he wouldn’t mind. Much.
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