True, it’s only a dusting, but still, it’s a hint of bigger things to come.
There was a thin coat of snow on the Tomb of Chairman Meow when I arose this morning. I blame Obama.
It’s a bit early for this sort of thing, frankly. For starters, the leaves are still on the trees. And a casual check of the Innertoobz indicates that the first snow in these parts generally holds off until a week before Halloween.
Naturally, Herself is out of town on business, so I had to make my own coffee, police up the litter box, and dab the dew from Mister Boo’s delicate little feetsies after his morning constitutional. Oh, the humanity.
The weatherperson says we’re supposed to be back up into the 50s and 60s over the next few days. But what has s/he done for me lately?
The colors are changing, fast and furious, as fall descends on Bibleburg.
Cyclo-cross weather here in Bibleburg today. And yesterday, too; it was the first day I wished I’d fetched arm and knee warmers along on what proved to be an abbreviated ride.
It rained a little — naturally, since Herself had just bathed and groomed Mister Boo — and this morning with temps in the 40s the uniform of the day is pants, socks and a long-sleeved Ten Thousand Waves T-shirt. I wish I were wearing it there.
The ’cross this weekend is up north, in the People’s Republic. I will not be in attendance, alas, but one of my bikes should be there, under the narrow booty of Dr. Schenkenstein, who has been taking the thing for an extended test ride and promises to buy it from me sometime.
Another purchase stolen out from under the noses of the local bicycle shops, which are less accommodating as regards pre-sale product evaluation. But then their stock is a little fresher than mine and probably moves a little faster, even in this economy.
Whether it might move faster under Dr. Schenkenstein will remain a mystery, as the man does dearly love a bargain on a used bike. If he eventually writes a check for this one, he will have three of my castoffs in his garage.
And I will have an unoccupied hook in mine. Oboy, oboy, oboy. …
I had a little fun shooting the video of the Jones bike. There’s plenty of room for gadgetry on that 66cm H-bar; I was going to add a flower vase, but ran out of hose clamps.
I haven’t been on a bike of any type for a week — a terrorist wasp nailed me in my left ankle during a hike last Wednesday, the sonofabitch swelled up to the size and shade of a ruby-red Texas grapefruit (the ankle, not the terrorist wasp), and I have whiled away the hours since full of Benadryl and bad ideas, trying to get a metric shit-ton of work done with my shoeless left leg propped up on a box.
And the weather has been picture-postcard, Chamber of Commerce, fall-in-Colorado perfect, too.
Gah.
The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff got its closeup today.
I did get out for a short while today. The ankle looks more or less like an ankle again, rather than a botulistic bratwurst, and I needed to shoot a bit of HD video for an online review of the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, having just wrapped production on a Jones video. So I spazzed around in Palmer Park for an hour, playing Quentin Ferrentino with a couple of dusty old Hero 3 Black Editions.
The Adventure Cyclist gang and I met with the GoPro people at Interbike, but only editor Mike Deme walked away with one of the new Hero 3+ dinguses, though I thought I batted my eyelashes most fetchingly at the product guy. Bitch.
So I had to make do with obsolete technology in my latest projects, and as usual it is the little people — you, the viewing public — who must suffer.
Still, that makes two videos in two days. Stick that in your hobbit-pipe and smoke it, Peter Jackson.
This being Zappadan, you are strongly advised to watch out where the huskies go.
Imagine my astonishment when I arose this morning to find a December morning that looked like … well, like a December morning.
The temperature has yet to reach the forecast high of 20 degrees, and there is an evil wind out of the north, which took all the joy right out of snow dispersal. As usual, no shoveling was required; a broom was equal to the task. Or would have been, had the underlying layer of snow not been frozen tight to the sidewalk.
All in all, a fine day for remaining inside, where the whiskey is.
The NWS forecast for the remainder of November (and yes, the headline is a George Carlin/Al Sleet reference).
I don’t like being cold and damp, shoveling snow, or having to wear pants indoors. But neither do I care for the idea of watching the Front Range turn into the Sonoran Desert, only without the great Mexican food.
The local fish-wrapper reported the other day that Bibleburg has enjoyed just a tenth of an inch of moisture this month and for the year to date is eight inches under normal precipitation. This is not a positive development, even for those of us who reach for a cold beer over a glass of water on a summery afternoon. For example, you can’t make beer without water. Unless you’re Coors, which seems to do just fine with Rocky Mountain trout piss.
South of us, in the Land of Enchantment, Elephant Butte Lake is experiencing drought conditions unseen since the year of my birth, which as regular readers know occurred the better part of quite some time ago.
And there’s no relief in sight. Not here, anyway. According to the weather wizards, there isn’t so much as a hint of a whiff of a rumor of a whisper of any precip’ in the Bibleburg forecast over the next 10 days.
What there is, is a parade of 60-and-sunny that will delight me in the short term (I have two bikes to review and more on the way) but gives me The Fear as regards the long term.
This autumn, for the first time since we’ve lived here, a neighbor declined my offer of the usual dozen or so bags of fallen leaves from our silver maple for use in her composting. She has also downsized her once-elaborate front yard to something better suited to a high-desert climate.
“What’s the point in gardening if it’s never going to rain again?” she asked.
