Leaf me be

November 17, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Autumn remains delightful, if you avert your eyes from the nation’s capital.

I’ve been mixing things up a bit. For openers: riding my way through The Fleet. Six different bikes in a week, including the Rivendell Sam Hillborne, pictured Saturday on the Paseo de las Montañas Trail.

I’m also riding different routes, or old ones backasswards. More dirt, with the mango Steelman Eurocross yesterday and the red one today. Yeah, I know, embarrassment of riches and all that.

Off the bike, I’ve been revisiting neglected recipes, like pasta al cavolfiore from the “Moosewood Cookbook.” You want to add maybe a half teaspoon of a good ground red chile to the tomato puree for that one.

Another old fave — a conventional eggs-and-taters breakfast, generally reserved for Sunday — makes a nice change from the boring old oatmeal or yogurt. For Monday’s lunch, I’ll scramble a couple more eggs and dump them, any leftover spuds, a small handful of arugula, a scattering of diced tomato, and a sprinkle of sharpish cheddar, atop warm flour tortillas. Fold and eat.

If the spuds didn’t survive Sunday maybe I’ll whip up the makings for a classic tuna salad sammich a la Craig Claiborne. I leave out the red onions because Herself hates uncooked onions, and the capers because I hate capers. Instead I add some chopped bread-and-butter pickle chips, because we can both agree on those. Haven’t added any minced jalapeño yet, but I can see it happening. Possibly tomorrow. You can’t stop me!

Rooting through my recipe binder the other day I stumbled across one I’d gone to the trouble of printing, but couldn’t recall ever actually cooking. It’s a Greek stew, from Sarah DiGregorio, and once I started putting it together it came back to me. Why did I only cook it the one time? Very easy, very good, even better the next day, and nicely suited to the cooler weather.

But then, the basic posole I’m making as we speak is even easier, and like Sarah’s stew, improves with age. It takes about five minutes of prep and two hours of simmering. Even the Irish can manage it.

Meanwhile, I’m leaving our Halloween lights up for Thanksgiving. Take that, turkeys!

To the BikeCave!

November 6, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

The BikeSignal appears in the foothills of the Gotham Mountains.

Always the Joker, hey?

Well, it can’t be politics 24/7 around here, even after a rare November blizzard of good news that nevertheless was not quite good enough to exorcise Beelzebozo from the body politic.

Denied the explosive hemorrhagic stroke of our dreams — well, mine, anyway, especially if it takes place on live TV — the Republic remains possessed. I’m surprised he’s not trying to grab the Beaver Moon with his stubby little fingers. We’re gonna need a bigger priest.

Happily, the weather has been spectacular for the distracting bikey ridey, with highs in the 70s and hardly any wind, which is unheard of in New Mexico. Shucks, it’s already just two degrees short of 60 at 9 in the a.m.

While we wait for winter to set in, if it ever does, I’ve been dialing back the weekly mileage and airing out some dusty machinery. Getting the callup in the past couple weeks: Rivendell’s Sam Hillborne, both Steelman Eurocrosses (it is cyclocross season), the Jones, DBR Axis TT, and New Albion Privateer.

Today may see the Voodoo Wazoo getting a little dirt on its knobs. Or p’raps the Bianchi Zurigo Disc, which as the only alloy-framed, carbon-forked, SRAM-controlled steed in the shed is definitely the odd man out, especially when it’s sporting 32mm Conti slicks, as it is at the moment.

Whenever I wander off into these seasonal inspection tours, in the back of my mind I’m thinking idly about thinning the velo-herd. But I notice that despite my best intentions there remains nary a hook unburdened in the garage with a few more two-wheelers parked on the deck.

N+1, baby; n+1.

Sun, screened

October 23, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Hold the SPF 50 and gimme a slicker, please.

A spot of seasonal weather has rumbled into town, and thus the cycling is contraindicated for the moment. The gods are bowling up there and though I have three bikes with fenders, I’m not exactly eager to deploy them.

My last few outings have been on the coolish side, but dry. Arm and knee warmers have become part of the uniform of the day. Haven’t gone to tights, tuque, and full-finger gloves yet, but I can see that gloomy country from here.

It’s fair, as Thomas McGuane has taught us. (He has a new book out, in case you’re interested.) The fall to date has been spectacular, and as we know, anybody who chooses to live in a desert shouldn’t bitch about getting free water from the sky.

Unless you’re homeless and using an arroyo to hide your proud-ofs from the Chamber of Commerce street-sweepers. That’s a free ticket for a fast trip to the Rio, and it’s hard to hang ten on a shopping cart. Not exactly a day at the beach, as the fella says.

Speaking of street people, letting that orange mold run wild in the East Wing of the White House is like hiring a Central Avenue hooker to give a makeover tutorial to your teenage daughter. Or maybe it’s more like letting a roach design its own motel.

This we have money for. Head Start and food assistance, not so much. Any of you kids out there who want a bite to eat and someone to watch over you should probably sign on with the War Department, start sinking boats in a bigger bathtub.

Jesus H. Christ. Did the Heritage Foundation rewrite all the civics books when I wasn’t paying attention? Have the three branches of government become the Surprise Party Department, the Practical Joke Department, and the Fairy Godmother Department?*

If so, I wish the last would put down her knitting and do something nice for a change.

* A tip of the old war bonnet goes out to Major John Hay Beith, a.k.a. Ian Hay, via Robert A. Heinlein’s “Glory Road.”

Yippie!

October 1, 2025October 1, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Remember the Yippies? Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al.?

The wildmen who lit up the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago may have a descendant in the City of the Big Shoulders — a cyclist who gave the old razzle-dazzle to La Migra and seems to have gotten away scot free. (A tip of the Mad Dog Red Zinger cap goes out to Digby and Tom Sullivan.)

I emailed Grant Peterson about getting him a sponsorship through Rivendell Bicycle Works — a Charlie Gallop would be just the thing for Charlie Hustle there — but no deal so far.

Now if we can just get this dude to run a pig for president. No, not that pig. Some honorable swine, like Pigasus the Immortal.

Leaf me alone

September 27, 2025September 27, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Following the news was starting to feel like losing a shit-eating contest, so I stepped away from the Mac and treated myself to a little expedition down to the bosque.

It was something of a whim, actually. I just grabbed the Soma Pescadero and without a plan in place took the Paseo de las Montañas trail down to I-40, rolled up and over the bike-ped bridge, and then risked life and limb riding Indian School and Washington to the brief I-40 Trail at Carlisle, which leads to the North Diversion Channel Trail.

But instead of turning northward as per usual, to head back to the Mac via Osuna-Bear Canyon, I swung south. What the hell? I thought. Why not? Let someone else gnaw on that shit sandwich for a few hours.

Ridden south the NDCT has an exit onto Indian School, which becomes Odelia as it traverses I-25. It’s the sort of auto-friendly shooting gallery that bicycle advocates call a “stroad,” with a bike lane, and drops past Albuquerque High School (pay no attention to the graveyard on your right). To avoid the equally dicey Broadway at the bottom I hung a left off Odelia onto Edith, then a right onto Mountain.

This is the same route I ride to collect the Forester whenever it needs a little love from the Subaru wizards at Reincarnation. But Mountain also winds through Old Town to the Paseo del Bosque trail.

Mountain can be a little sketchy, being a narrow two-lane shared with street people and gas-guzzlers. A seemingly endless construction project that I first dodged in June added a small degree of difficulty, taking me off the street and onto a series of sidewalks from Tiguex Park to the Albuquerque Museum. After dodging a dog-walker, dropping off the sidewalk onto Mountain, and crossing to the opposite sidewalk to punch the bike-ped button at Mountain and Rio Grande, it was smooth sailing to the bosque trail, which I joined just south of I-40.

Then another whim: Check the state of the Rio Not-So-Grande. Up the Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge I rode. Yikes, etc. Back to the bosque trail.

The cottonwoods weren’t showing a lot of fall color so early in the season. Just a hint of yellow here and there. No matter; just happy to be here. I brought arm warmers but never needed them as I cruised along at a pleasant skull-flushing pace.

I shared the trail with kindred souls. E-bikes, recumbents, mountain bikes, gravel bikes, even road bikes (how quaint). One long lean type on a flared-bar, fat-tired gravel bike ahead of me was riding no hands, swaying gently to some music in his mind.

They call me the breeze / I keep blowing down the road

Was he was thinking about ways to drag hapless strangers into unmarked vans and out of the country, or into court to fight some half-baked rap, strip them of their jobs, health care, and reputations, sic’ the thugs in his cult on them, or simply shoulder his way in front of a cluster of cameras so the rest of us have to look at him and listen to his bullshit? If so, I wasn’t seeing it. Just another dude on his two-wheeler, enjoying some fresh air between shifts in the barrel.

As I turned north off the bosque onto the Paseo del Norte Trail and headed for home I thought about how the barrel is with us always. We need a broader view than the one we get through the bunghole.