Category: climate change

Time and temperature

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Streetlight and moonlight in daylight.

Didn’t we just have a full moon? Is God overstocked with these things and blowing them out? Or has He finally run out of patience and put His foot to the floorboard on the road to the End of Days?

This latest celestial spotlight is the Snow Moon, which, ha ha, etc. Yesterday’s high was 61, 10 (!) degrees above normal. Today’s may be warmer still. What little remains from last week’s snow lurks in dark corners, like ICEholes waiting for women and children to push around.

But we were talking about time, not temperature, yes?

Lately it seems that the instant I’ve finished washing the breakfast dishes it’s time to make lunch. Then, with luck, a bit of exercise, and boom! Dinner and bedtime.

Not a lot of unclaimed space therein to, as Whitman put it, “loafe and invite my soul.” My soul won’t even take my calls. Straight to voicemail they go.

Now, some may say that I burn an awful lot of dawn’s early light slobbering around the Internet like an ADHD kid working out on a Tootsie Pop — the National Weather Service, The Paris Review, various and sundry purveyors of products that I don’t need and can’t afford — before finally biting into its center, the homepage of The New York Times, which almost always shares a deep brown hue with, but is very much not, chocolate.

That this drives me to lunch is only because (a) I no longer drink, and (2) I desperately need something to take the taste of the NYT homepage out of my mouth.

Having eaten my way through the fridge and pantry, I feel a pressing need for either sleep or exercise. And exercise it is, because Miss Mia Sopaipilla is in the bed, and if I try to share a corner of that king-size bed with that 8-pound cat she will get right out of it and stalk around the house, meowing at the top of her lungs. She’s deaf as a post and her voice carries.

So out the door I go. And sure, if it’s 55 or 60 out there I’m liable to stay out a while, because see “the homepage of The New York Times” and “meowing at the top of her lungs” above. Last week I got 100 miles in, plus one trail run.

When I get home I’m hungry again for some reason as Herself inspects a gas range atop which dinner is very much not cooking itself with that look on her face that says, “Some people have to go to work in the morning.” I strive mightily to swallow a cheery, “Not me!” And get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans.

And soon dinner is served, as is something less toothsome on TV, and since some people have to go to work in the morning (not me) everyone is in bed by 8 and asleep shortly thereafter.

Tomorrow, as the fella says, is another day. That Tootsie Pop ain’t gonna lick itself.

Adios, January

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
The Colorado River Basin states aren’t having much luck squeezing water from the rocks. Or each other.

January has finally wobbled off into the desert, sunburnt and mumbling to itself.

“55 degrees? Seriously?”

When last seen January was clad in short sleeves and knickers, with one half-full bidon, which will not be enough as the Colorado River Basin states squabble over how to divvy up the water that isn’t there.

I mean, shit, it’s already 46° here in Duck!Burg as February starts applying the SPF 70 and it’s all of 10:15 a.m. The Year of Our Lard 2026 looks like a long, dry ride for some of us. Maybe all of us.

In the Carolinas, meanwhile, my man Clyde DePoynter reports snow and wind and a lack of natural gas that has him feeding the wood stove like Casey Jones’ fireman shoveling coal, trying to get the mail to Mississippi. He was keeping toasty by watching the UCI cyclocross world championships in the Netherlands via VPN.

No spoilers here — but if you missed the live action and would like some recorded highlights, well, FloBikes and YouTube have ’em.

It’s (not) in the bag

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Don’t bring it home?

So, we’re not supposed to buy anything today?

That doesn’t sound like much of a rumble on the Richter scale of resistance to me. “Dang The Man?” Seriously?

A lot of us have already been sold a sizable bill of goods. And as we should’ve known, it’s not the initial cost, it’s the upkeep.

This “grass roots” call for an “economic blackout” feels like a reverse Dubya (“Don’t go shopping.”). It also reminds me of a line from Marc Maron’s 2020 Netflix special, “End Times Fun,” in which he neatly skewers us for smugly slipping our shopping fingers into the crumbling dike of environmental catastrophe:

“All of us in our hearts really know that we did everything we could. Think about it: We brought our own bags to the supermarket. Yeah, that’s about it.”

Elon Musk doesn’t care if you don’t buy a Tesla today. He’s too busy downsizing Social Security into a median and a cardboard placard on a rainy day.

And Jeff Bezos couldn’t give a shit if you skip your Friday visit to the Foods Hole. He’s launching his plastic fuck-puppet into orbit with a couple other “female celebrities.” It’s gonna be like “Sex in the City,” only in space, and with Mister Big down here on earth giving The Washington Post some pillow therapy in its bed at the nursing home.

“The Right Stuff” this isn’t. In fact, it sounds like something the Democratic National Committee would do, if it did anything, which mostly it doesn’t.

Anybody seen the DNC lately? Maybe they’re out shopping for a clue.

Snowbored

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Poor skiing conditions in the backyard.

We got another wee dusting of the white stuff on Wednesday. It seems 0.02 inch is how Heaven doles it out to us these days. A bit stingy, que no?

Funny how a big dumper is more fun to deal with than one of these piddling dribbles, which barely shift the needle on the Drought-O-Meter®. It’s the little things that suck. Or blow, as the case may be, since these non-events usually come with a side of gale-force wind.

My go-to running garb for this noise includes Merrell Moab Flight trail-running shoes; Darn Tough wool socks; thermal Hind tights over some truly ancient Hind shorts; a long-sleeved Patagonia base layer that’s so old it was made in the USA; a pilled-all-to-hell zip-up North Face vest to keep the pipes from freezing (and transport the iPhone in a side pocket); a long-sleeved, high-collared, quarter-zip polyester VeloNews shell by Columbia; a Sugoi tuque; Smartwool gloves; and Rudy Project shades to keep the windblown sand out of my baby blues.

I shouldn’t need most of this kit today, since it should be warm enough — a high of 52°, with “light and variable” winds? — to ride the ol’ bikey-bikey. But I’m keeping that Paddygucci base layer on standby.