It’s easy to forget how many people ride bikes in this town until we get a sunny, 60-something day in January.

I slipped out for a 90-minute ride at midday and Holy Mary, Mother of God, you’d have thought we’d hit Peak Oil and left it bleeding out at roadside. Everybody and his grandma, from itty-bitty kids to grizzled graybeards, was gaily flogging a two-wheeler from Hither to Yon, no doubt hoping to burn a few calories before ingesting many, many more during the Broncos-Patriots feetsball game.

Despite a short stint as an assistant sports editor at The New Mexican in Santa Fe, I am not a fan of the feetsball, which is the polite way of saying that I don’t give two runny shits about a multibillion-dollar industry that temporarily shifts Americans’ homicidal instincts away from actual warfare and toward commerce by encouraging young gladiators to mutate their bodies with drugs and scramble their brains with high-speed collisions.

Cycling has its own issues in that regard, of course. But not the way I do it.

And at least you can watch televised pro cycling for more than 15 commercial-free seconds at a stretch (on a pirated Belgian feed, anyway). That’s how I spent my morning before throwing a leg over the Bootleg Hobo’s top tube. Plus you can be pretty certain the Organization is selling (and the spectators drinking) a higher-quality beer.