Call me crazy, but I’m thinking the wildfire risk is a little lower than usual today.
After our little snow event the other day I put fenders on the Soma Double Cross just in case the running got boring, which it did. This meant the 42mm Soma Cazadero tires had to come off, and I spazzed around a bit trying to come up with something in a 38mm.
The DC with fenders makes an excellent snow repellent.
Kenda Kwicker? Nope, 32mm. Michelin Transworld Sprint? 35mm and I never liked ’em anyway.
Finally I grabbed an old set of 37mm WTB All Terrain wire-beads and slapped those on, in the process being reminded why they were in a corner of the garage instead of on rims. Mother dog, were them sumbitches ever a bear to mount.
But it was worth it to get fenders on the DC. Whenever it snows The Duck! City scatters this reddish sand all over every horizontal surface. Could be pulverized granite; could be chile powder. I have no idea. But it gets onto and into everything, and if you get any on your kit, it will be there for the better part of quite some time.
So, yeah, fenders. Worked like a charm. So much so that the forecast for the next week is sunny, with temps in the 40s and 50s.
Probably not. Just the pre-caffeination brain spinning its wheels like a 1996 F-150 with a bed full of firewood, half in the ditch on a snowy Colorado afternoon.
And yeah, I’ve been there.
Today’s high may be that in name only, so I’m thinking ixnay on the ike-bay. A short run seems sensible, if you will concede that running — with empty hands, anyway — can ever be sensible.
I don’t mind it, as long as I’m not breaking ankles. But running will never be my first choice if the temperature is 40° or better and there isn’t snow on the deck.
The Mitchell High School swim team in 1970, the year we went 11-0.
Last on my endorphin hit parade is swimming. I spent 10 years on swim teams, ages 8 to 18, and swam laps off and on afterward in Tucson, Pueblo, Denver, and Bibleburg, because I was a member of some gym that had a 25-meter pool and why not?
But I got tired of smelling like chemicals and wearing green eyebrows and feeling my hair freeze between the gym and the car every February. The hair freezing is no longer an issue, but the rest of it still applies. A friend of a similar vintage quips, “We all end up in the pool,” but I notice he ain’t there yet.
Plus there’s a weird sonic vibe in the pool area, like you’re stroking through a Louisiana Best Buy with a leaky roof during a hurricane. And you have to see other old dudes bareass in the shower, which should be part of any “Scared Straight” programs the schools are running these days.
“This is what prison looks like, kids.”
“Jesus Christ! I’ve shoplifted my last pack of smokes, honest!”
That right there is a kid who’ll take up running with empty hands. Unless he steals a bike first.
I practically had the Elena Gallegos Open Space to myself.
“February is an awful fucking month just about everywhere.” — Kevin Barry, “Extremadura (Until Night Falls)”
Truer words, etc. I have spent many awful fucking Februaries in many awful fucking places, among them my own head.
But Feb. 1 in The Duck! City was not too fucking awful.
I logged 90 minutes of trail time on the Voodoo Nakisi; didn’t fall over or nothin’. Bought some groceries, baked a loaf of bread, picked up a paperback copy of “Station Eleven.” Anybody watched the HBO miniseries? I’m looking forward to seeing whether Emily St. John Mandel’s vision suffered in translation from print to video. She told The New York Times that the show “deepened the story in a lot of really interesting ways.”
But then she’s Canadian, and you know how nice they are.
Meanwhile, the next few days of February here may meet Kevin Barry’s standard, which is frightening, because he haunts the west of Ireland, where they know from awful fucking Februaries. Herself, who has visited County Sligo, where Barry hangs his hat, recalls many a fine soft day so.
Maybe it’ll make a novelist of me. Nah. Canada didn’t get it done, and Albuquerque’s coming off the bench awfully fucking late in the game.
I suffered my first flat of 2022 the other day. My first in nearly a year, actually.
When you rock stout tires and sealant-laced inner tubes the flats are few and far between, even here in The Duck! City, where spiky objects abound. Broken glass, goatheads, and cacti, oh my.
But as in real life, something will get you eventually. In this case, it was a cactus thorn that looked like the business end of a veterinary hypodermic. I picked it up while careening around the Elena Gallegos Open Space on a Steelman Eurocross, and the tire didn’t go completely unrideable until I was an easy jog from the ranger shack, where I swapped tubes from the comfort of a chair on their patio out back.
This is entirely different from flatting in the arse-end of nowhere with the sleet coming in sideways and a couple teeth-chattering companions hopping around, hands stuffed in their armpits, waiting on you. A certain urgency is implied. Speed, not diligence, is at a premium. It’s a variation on the old whorehouse refrain: Get it out, get it in, get it up, and get going.
Since it was just me, I took my time: shifted into big and little; released the straddle cable; pulled the wheel; ran a tire iron around one bead; and pulled out the flat tube. Then I felt carefully along the inside of the tire, looking for the culprit. Ever just stuffed a fresh tube in there, aired it up, and rolled away only to find the tire flat once more about 50 meters down the trail? Yeah, me too. I learned the hard way to round up the usual suspects first.
In this case the thorn had slipped between two centerline chevrons like a shiv between ribs, driving a good quarter inch deep into the tube, whose sealant had lost its grip. I couldn’t get hold of the fat end of the thorn with my fingers, so I used the tire iron to scrape off the pointy end. Insert new tube, pump it up good and fat, and off we go.
What a luxury to be able to perform this simple chore while sitting down, in a chair, instead of flailing away with the minipump in a crouch like a compulsive masturbator. This startles passing motorists, assuming their eyes aren’t glued to their smartphones, which is a bet you don’t want to place in this high-desert casino.
You’re not even safe off road, based on the auto-body fragments Herself and I found littering a neighborhood trail during a run last week. An errant Honda Civic street racer will give you a puncture you can’t fix on the fly.
The Duck! City as seen from just above the Embudo dam.
I’ve been in something of a metaphorical rut lately, bikewise, so today I thought I’d get in an actual rut as a change of pace.
The Voodoo Nakisi and I took the foothills trails south to the Hilldale Loop and back, and real, physical ruts there were aplenty. I hadn’t been down that way since November 2021, and it seems weather and traffic have done some remodeling in my absence.
Is that gravel or dirt? The UCI Gravel Committee is never around when you really need it.
The weather was brisk, and there weren’t a lot of people out and about, which was fine. The trails and I were getting reacquainted, and we’re both old enough to do without chaperones. Nobody needs to see me busting a move, especially if it ends with a busted bone.
My attention has been known to wander, and occasionally I find myself riding the trail in my mind, not the one under my wheels. This caused me to perform a trick dismount once in Bibleburg’s Palmer Park, when the mental and physical trails differed by a couple crucial meters after some unheralded renovations by the trail fairies. The bike went down, but I did not.
Today I kept the pace moderate and the autopilot off, and my miscues left neither paint nor DNA behind. I have an appointment with the dermatologist coming up and I don’t need any quips about leaving skin removal to the professionals.
Speaking of getting skinned, here’s hoping that the Jan. 6 committee gets to hang a big, greasy, orange hide on its wall now that the Supremes have declined to pull The Very Stable Genius’s fat out of the fire he started.
Ordinarily I don’t approve of trophy hunting, but some heads just beg to be mounted. The National Archives taxidermist better have all of his shots and a hazmat suit.
Mad Blog Media 