Category: Guns

Milestones

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 38 Comments
Your Humble Narrator logging some trail miles during 2019.

I awarded myself a day off yesterday, which is no way to jump-start a new year.

Did Albuquerque’s evildoers take some well-deserved downtime after a blue-ribbon year that saw them crush the old record for homicide by 10 stiffs (72 in 2017)? They did not. They got right back after it in the wee hours of New Year’s Day, dropping a body on the northwest side, after a New Year’s Eve in which APD took 146 “shots fired” calls.

Me, I didn’t even clear leather. I puttered around the shack, wandered over to the grocery to acquire a bit of this, that, and the other, whipped up a largish pot of simple posole, and updated a few stats in the old training log from 2019.

It seems I covered 3,704.6 miles last year aboard various bikes, continuing a steady upward progression from 2016, when I managed just 2,354.1 miles.

This is far from impressive. Back in 1989, when I was a man, instead of whatever it is that I am now, I rode 6,725 miles. Booyah! Big number, yeah?

No. Not really. Not when you consider that Gary Fisher tallied 6,500 miles in 2019. And he’s 69.

So I’d better get back after it. But not today. Today looks like light snow, with a high in the 30s and a brisk northwest wind.

Maybe a short trail run? I wonder how many miles The Fish’ ran in 2019. …

Lunacy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
If you must do something outrageous around the full moon, try howling at the sonofabitch. Always works for me.

I’d love to be able to blame the full moon for this, or maybe Friday the 13th, but it happened on Thursday night.

The scariest part may be that this apparently was not a single incident, but rather three separate shootings.

What. The. Fuck.

And lo siento mucho, but candlelight vigils with Modelo backs are not the answer, any more than thoughts and prayers.

Put down the fucking guns, please. And thank you.

The sky is crying

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 33 Comments
Look what snuck over the Sandias when
the weatherperson wasn’t paying attention.

The weatherman must have missed a memo while compiling today’s forecast.

That “20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after noon” turned out to be 100 percent, and by 7 a.m., too.

It reminded me of the Yiddish proverb, “Man plans, God laughs.”

Last week I logged nearly 150 miles on the bike, and come Sunday evening the legs were lobbying for a bit of R&R. So although Monday was a beautiful day for the old bikey ridey, I checked the forecast for the rest of the week and said, “OK, I’ll take today off. Haul the glass to the recycler, put a new chain and cassette on the Voodoo Nakisi, whip up a bowl of hummus. And tomorrow I’ll do a nice, long ride.”

Get bulletproof backpacks on the cats? Dream on. I can’t even get them to stop napping in front of a window. Worse than sitting with your back to a door.

Ho, ho, etc.

Tuesday dawned warmish, bleak and breezy, and soon I had to close all the doors and windows I had just opened because the vertical blinds were clattering like skeletons dancing the Charleston.

It was the flip side of Sunday, when, after Saturday’s deluge, I added fenders to Herself’s bike and a rack trunk full of rain gear to my own.

Naturally, the only water we saw on our ride was confined neatly to roadside puddles and ditches.

Man plans, etc.

Dark mornings breed dark thoughts, especially for a lifelong news addict. For example, did you know that the hot back-to-school item is a bulletproof backpack?

Look for them at big-box retailers everywhere. I recommend shopping online until you get one, and maybe even afterward. See if you can find a new congressperson while you’re at it, one of those action figures, not the kind that just sits there between massacres, cashing checks while the NRA pulls its string.

“Thoughts and prayers … thoughts and prayers. …”

Speaking of which, I could use a few of those myself. The sun has finally made an appearance, and even though I don’t have my bulletproof backpack yet, I’m going out for a ride.

Rumble thy bellyful

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
King Lear would be freestyling on this afternoon’s rain, yo.

There’s a whole bunch of the boom-boom-boom going on around here today.

But lucky for us, it’s only thunder. And the only thing raining on us is, well, rain.

Who was first to the “thoughts and prayers?” I had Ted Cruz in the office pool.