Tonight’s trick-or-treaters will want their heavy cloaks. Even hairy-toed hobbits may opt for mukluks.
“Misty mountains cold” indeed. The Sandias are up there somewhere, I suppose. Whether they host a fire-breathing dragon squatting on dwarvish gold is someone else’s problem. It’s chilly enough down below and there are no Tooks in my bloodline.
Speaking of trials and tribulations, The New York Times says the Southwest is in for it again as a new storm system sets up to hose us down, sloppy seconds from former Hurricane Vance.
“Hurricane Vance?” Seriously? I knew there was something I didn’t like about that guy. Many somethings, actually, and this is just one more.
And now we have another one rolling in, sharing a name with a smirking toady whose beard makes it look as though he’s sporting a second fat ass with three buttholes above his necktie, plus pistol-grip ears.
Well, shit. It is Halloween. Everybody’s gotta be somebody.
We had a storm sweep through last night, bitch-slapping leaves off the backyard maple while spraying a half-inch of water around and about.
No complaints here. San Juan County took a beating, though. People stranded on rooftops were getting choppered to shelters and here I sit in my office, warm, dry and full of breakfast, thinking I should’ve ridden yesterday because today looks like more of a running opportunity.
With another round of thunderstorms, hail, and strong winds in the forecast, riders tackling the Day of the Tread‘s Bosque Boneshaker are liable to be shivering in their skeleton costumes and getting their plastic gravel gobblers all gooey.
Caution: Dog Crossing. Cyclocross in Fort Fun, sometime in the Nineties.
There was a time when I relished that sort of outing in October, driving hundreds of miles and paying dozens of dollars to get my muddy arse handed to me, tidying up afterward pumping quarters into a car wash.
But that was when I was a man, instead of whatever it is that I am now. If I get caught out in this sort of weather I will deal with it, but I’m less inclined to seek it out just ’cause.
Instead I may trot another class of bog altogether. The revelations about PHP, A.I. skulduggery, and what some coneheads are dubbing Black October have me thinking I should relocate my old blog’s archives from their bus-station locker in the Twilight Zone to WordPress, which is — or at least should be — better equipped than Your Humble Narrator to deal with the fallout.
We’re not talking the Book of Kells, the Magna Carta, or the Code of Hammurabi here. But some of this prehistoric blather still packs a few yuks, if only for me, and I’d hate to see it sucked through the Black Mirror into the Phantom Zone because I built it using stone knives and bear skins.
And if it all goes kablooey anyway, taking my digital dogma with it? Well, shit happens, as Hammurabi has taught us. There’s always Old Reliable, the 4×8-inch Ampad Reporter’s Notebook. Scribble a “post” in ballpoint, tear out the page, and staple it to a power pole somewhere in the ’hood.
Just call me the Analog Dog: “Our Motto: ’Zine, not Herd.”
Schmitt couldn’t even pull off a “Gotcha!” against Jack Smith without stepping in it up to his flag pin.
But Coach may edge him by a nose — a big red one that honks when you squeeze it — with his charge that the friendly skies are full of furries.
Talk about game. It’s one helluva race when it looks like Ted “I’m Not Just Stupid, I’m Evil Too” Cruz might not even make the podium. It’d have Holmes reaching for the old iron butterfly and his 7-percent solution, craving mental exaltation.
The monsoon was late to the party, but man, is it ever dancing up a storm now.
“Check this strange beverage that falls out from the sky.” — Tom Waits, “Til the Money Runs Out.”
Fenders and a rain jacket will not do the trick today. Maybe a wetsuit and flippers.
As of 6 a.m. Duck! City time our weather widget had recorded 0.43 inch of rain since midnight, 0.66 inch in the past 48 hours, and an astounding 3.78 inches for the month.
And it ain’t over yet. We have a flood watch that extends through late tonight for all of northern and central New Mexico.
Fine sleeping weather. I’d hop right back in the sack if I didn’t have two cups of strong black coffee in me. I’d just lie there with my eyes out on stalks, buzzing like an electric blanket with a short in it. Better maybe to chase the java with a steaming bowl of oatmeal and a tall mug of Irish tea with honey.
Herself has fishtailed off to work and I hope she hasn’t had to use her Honda’s air bags as flotation devices. I did insist that she take a second pair of shoes in case she had to hopscotch through a few puddles on her way into the Sanctum Sanctorum.
If I can squeeze in a short run in my mud shoes I’ll do it. But at the moment the only Miles I’m logging is of the Davis variety. As in “Kind of Blue.”
Does a moral handicap count when it comes to reserved parking? Asking for a friend.
I had time to sneak in a quick ride around the Elena Gallegos Open Space on Friday before motoring off to the Sunport to collect Herself, who was inbound from Tennessee after spending a week helping her sisters give bro-in-law Bill “Wild Man” White a proper sendoff to The Source.
And now things are more or less back to what passes for normal in these parts, if you overlook the rain. “Normal” precip’ for September is 1:15 inch; we’ve already gotten 3.12 inches and the month ain’t even over yet.
Mind you, I’m not complaining; just observing.
Anyway, the deluge made a pedestrian of me for three days last week and two this week. I got carried away and put fenders on the Soma Double Cross, which was both unnecessary (I had three fendered bikes already) and unsmart (the short wheelbase means some serious and unwelcome toe-fender overlap).
So that poor decision will get reversed directly and the DC will once again sport some bare-ass 42mm Soma Cazadero knobbies, which are better suited to riding trails, especially now that they’ve been guttered all to shitaree.
There’s more time for this sort of aimless wankery in the mornings these days because the sun doesn’t show its face above the Sandias until around 8:30 and it won’t be much longer before I greet it wearing pants instead of shorts.
No pic-a-nic baskets here, Yogi.
The sliding glass doors remain closed until sunrise because our friendly neighborhood bear is back. We finally caught him on our trail cam at 3:08 a.m. on the 22nd, dropping a deuce by the butterfly bush.
This may be retribution for my bringing the bird feeders in at night and storing garbage in the garage until pickup day. If we won’t be his restaurant we will be his restroom.
The skunk is likewise back, rooting around in the yard for tasty morsels. So is the Cooper’s hawk. As for the hummingbirds, they’ve never left. It still looks like the Battle of Britain out there every time we refresh their feeders.
Miss Mia finds The Pile purr-fection itself.
And Miss Mia Sopaipilla has found herself a new sweet spot for naptime — a scattering of fluffy bits and bedding that we’re calling The Pile. Just the place to sleep off a medium-heavy breakfast, treats, and thyroid medicine.
Sure beats watching His Excremency King Piggy the Sticky-fingered waddling along the red carpet alongside the Red Menace, who looked as thrilled to be there as an OYO Rooms C-suiter tallying pecker tracks on the hot sheets at a Motel 6 in Chlamydia, Nevada.
“No, I don’t care to see your ‘ballroom.’ I can smell them from here.”
