When I haven’t been watching crazed seditionists screeching about immigrants living high on the dog or feeding less startling dishes of my own to visiting in-laws there’s been plenty of time for the ol’ bikey ridey around The Duck! City this past week.
The turnaround point.
On Wednesday my geezer brethren and I pedaled south and east through Tijeras and up to the Morning Star Grocery, just past Oak Flat on NM 337.
This annual outing is one of those “your mileage may vary” deals. A couple of us start from home; for me, the ride from El Rancho Pendejo and back is 42 miles with about 2,300 feet of vertical gain. Others drive to the meetup spot, a corporate grocery at Tramway and Central.
Our youngest (59) and oldest (82) riders were a little concerned about completing the entire ride this year. The first was undertrained due to travel and other distractions, while the second confided he felt a little less snappy on the hills lately.
But both soldiered on and finished with honor. Huzzah to one and all.
Miss Mia does her Bill the Cat impression.
With the Morning Star ride and a few lesser outings in the rear view I’ll top 150 miles for this week, which is a lot for me. Also, a good excuse to eat everything in the house. Veggie quesadillas, bolognese over egg noodles, pizza, you name it.
Not the cat, though. Not even with homemade pico de gallo.
“They’re eating what?” exclaims Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.
You know how you can tell this is bullshit? Because if it were actually happening, TFG would have a piece of the action, through a shell company incorporated in Delaware with headquarters in Saudi Arabia and a board of directors drawn from Interpol’s Red Notices.
Remember Trump Steaks? Ran out of the money at Aqueduct and straight into your refrigerator.
How much capital would it take to start snapping up struggling animal shelters and add drive-through windows? Poach the Chihuahua that used to shill for Taco Bell? (That’s a cookin’ joke, son!) Better yet, make J.D. Vance wear a Chihuahua suit, see if the hillbilly sonofabitch can generate a little positive cash flow. The dog’s cuter, but Vance is already on the payroll. Put Stephen Miller on the job; he’d deep-fry his own mother if he had one.
Before you could sing a bar of “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” TFG would have franchises out the wazoo. Most of them along the border, of course. Your customers are your workforce and vice versa. It’s practically a perpetual-motion money machine.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla and I have been enjoying a respite from wall-to-wall politics, with the Donks seemingly in a joyful state of mind along the old campaign trail and the press, or what remains of it, finally noticing in the absence of Joe Biden that it’s the other candidate who is a psycho, serial fabulist, and senile old fool, with one foot in the grave and the other in the nuthouse.
The shit monsoon will resume eventually, of course, once the Cult remembers where it left its copy of the Necronomicon (Classic Comics edition, with a foreword by Lee Atwater):
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Jesus Hitler Mar-a-Lago wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
In the meantime, the cycling has been excellent, albeit a bit toasty with the occasional deluge and explosive decompression to keep us on our toes.
I had a back-tire blowout at speed yesterday — hit a scattering of roadside debris that was deeper and chunkier than it looked, with heavy traffic in the lane and thus no way to dodge it. In an instant I was riding the rim and thought I might take a tumble, but managed to wobble to a stop without bloodshed.
It has been a month of flats, on both Steelman Eurocrosses, the Nobilette, and finally the DBR Prevail TT. That last was the worst, because it rolls on 26mm rubber, which is as fat as the rear triangle can handle. Not much in the way of a rim to ride, is what. I’m lucky it wasn’t the front that went boom or I’d have done likewise immediately afterward.
Could be worse, though. A couple folks got swept down the arroyos during Friday’s flash flood, and one of them didn’t land on his feet.
And now, from our Good News Department: The Ethan Allen dealer at Montgomery and Tramway has been replaced by (wait for it …) a Goodwill store, right behind the Filiberto’s without a sign. Economic development, Duck! City style.
Mister Boo disliked the summer heat and would flatten out on the cool pavers in the kitchen.
Ordinarily I’m not out the door before 8:30 in the morning. Oh, I may be out of bed by 5, or 5:30, but I am far from ready for my closeup.
First, one must shake hands with the governor. Second, attend to Miss Mia Sopaipilla’s litter box. Finally, there shall be strong black coffee, some news, toast with butter and jam, more news, more coffee, some colorful language, a flushing of the headgear via the southern sally port, a light breakfast — oatmeal with fruit and nuts, yogurt with granola, or a fruit smoothie — and p’raps a large mug of strong black tea to wash it all down.
Then, and only then, am I prepared to greet the shit monsoon face to face.
There was a time when I could cut to the chase with drugs and alcohol, but that was many moons ago and 8:30 was out of the question unless I’d stayed up all night, in which case it was more like noon-thirty, and I was only leaving to get more drugs and alcohol.
Or maybe it was 8:30 p.m.
But I digress.
On Tuesday, I was out the door at 7:30 a.m., because it was already warmish and due to become more so. I was kind of tired of cycling — I’d been riding 100-plus miles a week for like five consecutive weeks, which is a lot for me, since I’m not training for anything beyond staying on the sunny side of the sod — so I thought I’d slip out for a quick trail run, maybe lift some weights after.
Turns out 7:30 is the time everyone around here walks the dog.
I’d forgotten about this ritual, since Mister Boo has been absent for six years now and Miss Mia only takes brief, infrequent expeditions into the backyard grass for the folic acid. Dogs gotta walk, winter, spring, summer and fall, and unless you want to fry their furry feet in the dog days of summer, you best get ’em out before the sun comes up and after it goes down.
When you walk a dog you meet other dog walkers. There are no red people or blue people, only dog people. As John Steinbeck observed in “Travels with Charley”:
A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bond between strangers. Many conversations en route began with ‘What degree of a dog is that?’
Thus I met some degree of a retriever, off leash, whose human advised genially, “It’s OK, she doesn’t bite.” I stifled an “That’s OK, I do,” because the pooch was clearly living the doggie dream.
Likewise a grinning purse dog in the company of a young woman.
“That looks like a very happy dog,” I said. “Oh, she is, she is,” replied her companion.
Dogs mostly don’t wear signifying T-shirts or sport bumper stickers, lacking bumpers and political opinions, and if you’re busy scratching furry ears and cooing, “Who’s a good boy?” you’re not thinking much about what kind of flags their people fly, or how, or where they get their “news.”
You’re probably thinking, “What we need is some degree of a dog.”
Just kidding, Mia. Must’ve had a touch of heat stroke.
Mad Blog Media 