Cold-blooded

October 23, 2016October 23, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

I think this is a Sonoran gopher snake, but s/he was fixin' to be an ex-snake if someone didn't get him off the road. — I think this is a Sonoran gopher snake, but s/he was fixin’ to be an ex-snake if someone didn’t get him off the road.

Yesterday was “Reptile Rescue Day” here at Animal Planet.

First, I was riding through the Range Rover Preserve at Fauxdobe Village (High Desert) when I saw a couple vehicles stopped cop-style at the centerline, the drivers engaged in conversation about something.

Well, they’re taking up most of the right-of-way in both directions and they’re hardly even close to each other (the one on my side of the road is blocking the bike lane), so I move to the center and slow down, figuring to ring my little bell to get their attention and then shoot the gap.

"Oh, shit, it's the REMF who thinks he's in charge around here again. ..." — “Oh, shit, it’s the REMF who thinks he’s in charge around here again. …”

Until I see the snake.

S/he was a beauty, at least three feet long, and smack in the middle of what must have been some pleasantly warm asphalt on a fall morning. So we all took a moment to admire him, or her, snapped some pix, and after the motorists moved on I encouraged the snake to find a safer spot for sunning.

After I got home I invited the cats outdoors for a bit of fresh air and during his inspection of the perimeter Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) took a lizard prisoner.

His interrogation of the POW struck me as a little too vigorous, bordering on a breach of the Geneva Conventions, and following some heated debate, as the supreme civilian authority I ordered the lizard released.

In unrelated news, Herself is running The Other Half this morning in Moab. I texted to ask if she had her war face on but haven’t heard back yet. If she doesn’t scare me I’ll have her work on it.

The high-priced spreads

October 16, 2016October 16, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

Going down. Down, down, down, down, down.

More cycling, still more!

Yesterday I was riding the Nobilette through the steeps of Richie Rich country in northeastern Albuquerque. The idea is to cleanse the palate, flushing my system of everyone else’s bikes before I do a cannonball back into the deep end of the review pool beginning Monday.

No pix of the houses. Just their trees. I mean, you've seen one 12,000-square-foot house, you've seen 'em all. — No pix of the houses. Just their trees. I mean, you’ve seen one 12,000-square-foot house, you’ve seen ’em all.

The Nobilette has a Sugino triple (46/34/24), an Ultegra rear derailleur, and a nine-speed, 11-28 cassette, so spinning up the hills is a breeze, especially if that breeze is a tailwind. Plus it weighs 23 pounds, at least five pounds less than the typical review model.

I favor my Richie Rich route because it has almost zero traffic and plenty of climbing. Plus you get to see how the other half lives (large). One casita for sale along the way is listed for a million-five. Booyah.

While we’re discussing the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Insane Clown Pussy is still screeching about how the election he hasn’t even lost yet is “rigged.” Check those Florsheim prints on your little weenie, dude. I bet you find an exact match in one of your closets.

My (Euro)cross to bear

October 15, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

More cycling yesterday. I think I’ve finally broken my annual post-Interbike slump.

For some reason, probably that we’re suddenly in the middle of October, I decided to pull my favorite Steelman Eurocross off its hook, give it a bit of a wash and brush-up (plus two new Michelin Jets), and go chase myself around the Elena Gallegos Open Space for an hour or so.

I like to enjoy this sort of foolishness on a weekday, during business hours, the trails come weekends being thick with body-armored double-boingers, texting dog-walkers, the iPlod People and other impediments to forward motion. No need to have an audience while one struggles up a rocky pitch in the 36×26, with 700×30 tires.

One of these days I need to give the old beast more than some fresh rubber. Nine-speed Ultegra, maybe? That eight-speed STI is the velo-equivalent of stone knives and bearskins these days, though it seemed just the ticket back when I still had a song on my lips and a spring in my steps.

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

October 13, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun, it’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run.

I probably should have been conspiring with my fellow journalists about how best to speed the ongoing decline and fall of Ronald McDonald McTrump, but I felt like riding a bike, so I did that instead.

Anyway, it doesn’t look to me as though this virulent orange ball of flatulence needs my help to sink slowly in the west, into a sewage lagoon of its own making.

When I got back home I cranked up iTunes and worked my way through my admittedly limited Bob Dylan collection (“Blonde On Blonde,” “Blood On the Tracks,” “Bringing It All Back Home,” and “Highway 61 Revisited”).

I’m not sure ol’ Bob merits the Nobel Prize for Literature, but right offhand I can’t think of anyone else who has it coming, either. I know that I like him, and so I’m happy for him, and shall defer in matters literary to Thomas McGuane, whose opinion on Dylan (from “Nothing But Blue Skies”) I have poached before:

No one compares with this guy, thought Frank. I feel sorry for the young people of today with their stupid fucking tuneless horseshit; that may be a generational judgment but I seriously doubt it.

Well, bust my balloons

October 2, 2016October 2, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

"Where the hell are all the balloons?" — “Where the hell are all the balloons?”

Herself and I cycled over to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta yesterday to see what it was all about.

Mostly it was all about RVs. Seriously. We didn’t see a single, solitary balloon. But we did see about eleventy-bazillion dollars’ worth of houses on the hoof, taking up all the ordinarily vacant acreage for miles around.

Turns out that we arrived between shows. There’s a whole lot of not much going on between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. I saw more action during the last day of Interbike, f’chrissakes.

Still, it was a nice ride, exactly 23 miles; the bike paths there and back were not bumper to bumper; and our recreational vehicles took up less parking space once we got them home.

Later we learned via The New York Times that the increasingly deranged Agent Orange apparently pays less income tax than a freelance scribbler. So, of course, do GE, Boeing, Verizon, Bank of America, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

Lady Liberty must be feeling a bit like Lili Von Schtupp, with all these cowboys giving her the business. So … tired.