This is what the iPhone said yesterday’s sunrise looked like.
I’m not sure it was quite that garish, but it was an eye-popper, for sure.
High clouds and a hint of drizzle.
Today showed a tad more restraint. There’s a hint of sprinkles in the weekend forecast, and I felt a brief preview this morning while snapping the pic.
A couple of my riding buddies are leaving for Tucson today to tackle El Tour on Saturday. I was invited to tag along but in my accelerating decrepitude I’m less excited than I once was about rolling around with a few thousand strangers on an unfamiliar course.
Back in the Day® I was a fiend for centuries, especially if it involved climbing. My favorite was the hilly Hardscrabble Century out of Florence, which climbed past Wetmore and McKenzie Junction to Weirdcliffe, swung over to Texas Creek, then segued into a fast roll along Highway 50 to Canon City before taking a back road into the finish at Florence.
The Santa Fe Century was another good one. South into the Ortiz Mountains and up Heartbreak Hill before jinking over to Highways 41 and 285 before the finale along Old Las Vegas Highway.
When I was a man instead of whatever it is I am now I could do both of ’em in under five hours. I might be able to drive them that fast now, if the old Subie kept it together and we didn’t count pee stops.
Speaking of time, it seems that the utterly shameless George Santos may have finally run out of same. The question now is whether the gutless House will boot him before he leaves under his own power.
Here it is November, from the Old Norse for “I’m freezing my nuts off, pass the akvavit.”
Sacred to Capilene, god of baselayers, November is the month in which one expends more time and energy unearthing long-buried sport-specific garments than actually engaging in the sport to which they are specific.
It’s a triathlon of sorts, and sportswear is not required for the first leg: finding the toilet in the dark.
“Whoops, nope, that’s not it. …”
Next leg: Not scaring the cat. This means putting on some clothes before heading to the kitchen to make coffee, because nobody, not even a cat, wants to see some wrinkly sack of snot, spasms, and bad ideas hobbling around in the dark with his leaky bidness hanging out, especially if he just peed in the bathroom trash can.
“Hm. Wool socks don’t slide smoove like butta through the old polyester jogging pants, do they? More like trying to shove overcooked spaghetti through shifter-cable housing. Shit, forgot underwear. (Do the Dance of the Sugar Plum Geezers, trying to pull the pants off over the wool socks, after which it’s time to pee again, this time in the toilet.) Goddamnit, did the little woman eBay all my long-sleeved pullovers? Nope, here they are, underneath the cat.”
And finally, after coffee, toast, and oatmeal: “The hell are my leg warmers? It’s too cold for knee warmers, but not cold enough for tights, and I can’t find those either. The wool socks stay on, if only because once I’m kitted up with winter bibs, leg warmers, and three long-sleeved jerseys I can’t bend over.”
This, of course, is when the toilet sings its siren song once again, with a tad more urgency. Flailing transpires. Superman never got out of a Clark Kent suit so fast. If this were an Olympic event I’d be on a Wheaties box for sure.
Oh, well. “Drit skjer (Shit happens)”, as the Vikings say. Pass the akvavit.
“Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.”
— P.J. O’Rourke, “Parliament of Whores”
It’s true; the catastrophe remains. The bright side — yesterday, anyway — could be found along NM 337 south of Tijeras.
My fellow velo-geezers and I decided to skip our usual Wednesday spin through the Sandia Foothills in favor of an extended climb to the southeast, from the corner of Homeless and Hungry at the eastern edge of The Duck! City to the Morning Star Grocery, just past the Carolino Canyon Open Space.
From El Rancho Pendejo we’re talking 42 miles round-trip with about 2,400 feet of vertical gain. I rode down to meet my compañeros at H&H, which Google Maps calls “Tramway and Central.” From there, it’s nothing but rolling hills, wide shoulders, and a single stoplight where Old Route 66 meets NM 337.
This is a two-bottle ride in cool weather, which it was; I started out wearing arm and knee warmers. In summer you can resupply as necessary at Los Vecinos Community Center or the Sandia District ranger station; toilets are available at both spots, too. For anyone feeling the urge at the turnaround there’s a porta-john outside the Morning Star.
The ascent from the stoplight to the grocery, nine miles or thereabouts, reminds me of the climb from Manitou Springs to Cascade, which the Mad Dogs did now and then in the Before-Time, when we still had the mighty legs of mastiffs instead of the quivering pins of Chihuahuas.
But while U.S. 24 has the shoulders of a young Calista Flockhart, NM 337’s shoulders are padded and smooth as a zoot suit, especially since both shoulders and highway recently got a fresh coat of asphalt. We got this intel preride from one of our number who reconned the route last Sunday, solo. Most manly.
One of these days I have to stop and snap some pix of this ride. But in a group I tend to get caught up in aimless chitchat interrupted by minor acts of aggression because hey, we may be old but we’re still cyclists. There will be attacks and counters.
Meanwhile, anyone out there feeling the ravages of time and contemplating an e-bike should know that our senior road warrior, who is 82, covered the whole route without electrical assistance and took his pulls in the paceline on the way back, too.
Herself and I were enjoying the usual weekly quail-spotting ride through High Desert and Sandia Heights yesterday when another cyclist caught up to us and we began chatting, as cyclists do.
It being The Duck! City, we found ourselves collecting one of those odd tales that seem to be included in every random encounter with a stranger.
After discussing the beautiful almost-fall weather, other places we had lived, and the critters we had seen, our new riding buddy told us about a neighbor who objected strenuously to hikers tramping along the arroyo that snakes along behind their houses.
So much so, he said, that one day she hid in the scrub with a Louisville Slugger and took a little vigorous batting practice on one of them.
Now, I’ve ridden this arroyo a time or two, or one very much like it in the general vicinity, and I’ve never seen any signs, placards, fencing, or other indication that it was private property. Which I don’t believe it is.
Nonetheless, I told him I’d keep my eyes peeled henceforth.
“Watch out for an old bat with a bat,” he advised.
It’a rough ride for a Hal Walter bike. | Photo: Hal Walter
• Editor’s note: My old pal Hal Walter hasn’t been writing much lately. He’s a busy fellow, with a jackass ranch in Crusty County, a coaching gig in Weirdcliffe, and a kid at college in Shredville. But he dashed off this paean to the humble beater bike the other day and slipped it under my door.
By Hal Walter
Let me just start by saying that writing is just like riding a bike. If you haven’t done it in a while then you might as well embrace the squeaks, rust and scratched paint. Similarly, since I won’t likely be entering the Stone King Rally or even the Leadville Race Series MTB in my final 14 years of average life expectancy, I ride beater bikes.
Or not. My road bike, a 32-year-old Trek 1200, has been hanging in the garage for about 31 years. Because: I live four rugged miles from pavement and Colorado drivers are cray. Aside from the rotted rubber, it’s in mint condition.
My other bikes are off-road contraptions, what I call SUBs (Sport Utility Bikes). They are mostly bikes people have given to me over the years. A vintage Specialized Rockhopper was “gifted,” which certainly is not a verb, by friends when their guide service went belly-up. Also, I have an antique Trek Liquid 30 cross-country deathtrap with deadly brake-lever shifters. The third is a Trek Farley fat bike I actually bought as a demo for $500 — a massive sum for equipment that gets treated like a rock hammer on a college geology field trip.
My bikes ride tailgates on dusty roads (at least on the newer truck, which actually has one) or get tossed into the bed of the beater truck. They get left out in the rain and snow and cosmic rays. When they squeak I hose them down with WD-40. Well, sometimes, anyway. Usually they quit squeaking if you just keep on riding them.
Why do I even have bikes? I use them quite regularly — probably more than most cyclists — for cross-training and recovery exercise. I often ride a bike while coaching high-school cross country athletes or my son who runs college cross and track.
I also use them as transportation in my side hobby of training wild burros for pack-burro racing. I can trailer a burro away from the ranch, run it home. Then I hop on the bike, ride back to my rig, throw it in the bed and drive home. I don’t care how this looks and I often don’t wear a helmet.
A couple weeks ago the fat bike flew out of the bed of the gateless truck on a stretch of washboard. It glanced off the stock trailer I was towing, then cartwheeled into the borrow ditch. I saw this in the rearview mirror and stopped to find that, other than a scuffed handlebar grip, it seemed fine. I rode it at cross-country practice that evening.
I had planned to send that bike to college with my son, so I ended up taking it to a shop to have the frame assessed and for a tune-up: $106 total. Now the thing is like new and standing unlocked in a rack in front of the dorm. Basic transportation for a college kid. I understand they have security cameras in place, and it is at least under a roof.
During my recent travels I stopped at a high-end bike shop to see the wares. I was astounded that these things now cost thousands of dollars. I mean like $4,000 to $10,000. I got the hell out of there at high speed.
I could never own such a bike and it’s not only because I can’t afford the payments. I don’t even want one. Then I would have to take care of it, keep it indoors, worry about people stealing it, etc. This is one borrow ditch I’m steering clear of.
Besides, sooner or later someone will give me a new beater. Somebody has to ride these things.
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