Boy, the folks at Visit Albuquerque must hate seeing Simon Romero’s byline in The New York Times.
Unless they all got shanked by the Psycho on the Bike-o.
Just another weekend on the mean streets of The Duck! City.
Right-wing antivaxxer Canadian trucker nutjobs? Nope. Just another road that goes nowhere by design.
This one butts up against Sandia Pueblo land, between Balloon Fiesta Parkway and Roy Avenue, which becomes Tramway Road NE just past Interstate 25.
It would be convenient to be able to press on to Roy via San Mateo. But you know how the white man is. Give him a bike path and the next thing you know he’s grabbed the whole damn’ country.
So I roll up to the Pan American Freeway and hang an illegal left turn, riding about a quarter-mile to Roy/Tramway on the west shoulder, against traffic.
Frankly, I don’t relish doing this. It gives ammo to the haters (“Look at that douche on the bicycle riding against traffic!”). And it gives me a small jolt of The Fear, because Pan American just south of Roy/Tramway is half frontage road, half interstate on-ramp, and I don’t care to become a hood ornament on an accelerating F-350 whose driver can barely see over the hood when he’s sober.
But there’s a nice wide shoulder — full of debris from previous mishaps, natch — and anyway, it’s the cost of doing velo-business in that neighborhood. So there you have it.
The payoff is the gradual, mostly uninterrupted, half-hour climb up Tramway to the stop sign at The County Line Grill & Smokehouse. There’s just one stoplight, at the casino just east of I-25, so you can just pick a gear and roll it.
Wave at the buffalo herd as you pass. Just don’t try to roller-skate through it. Because you can’t.
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.
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.
Six degrees at 6 a.m. Is it an omen, d’ye think?
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.
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.
“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.
