No golden escalators here

October 14, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Herself and I slipped out for a short trail run before lunch yesterday, hoping to dodge the predicted rain.

She was taking a break from work, which continues although the feddle-gummint mostly doesn’t. I was taking a break from being indoors, the Monday Geezer Ride having been canceled due to the weather forecast. We are not Portlanders, ready and eager to ride nekkid in fair weather and foul, aiming wisecracks and buttcracks at Beelzebozo’s buttheads.

Our short-run loop is only a couple miles, and mostly flat — just 268 feet of vertical gain, with one lump going out and another coming back — and we were back at the ranch before the clouds opened for business.

And business was booming. Nothing like the Durango area, where Tropical Storm Priscilla really brung it and then some. The official tally here was 0.21 inch. But it felt like a lot compared with the usual nothing at all.

Just ask the lone bedraggled hummingbird who spent about 15 minutes camped at one of our feeders, which hang out of the weather beneath the back patio cover. Every so often s/he would glance skyward as though thinking: “Jaysis! Where is everybody? I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”

Freecipitation

October 11, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

What a gloomy day. The ceiling is all the way down to the deck and the drizzle is intermittent. Reminds me of Oregon, only without all the ICEholes and Natural Gourds wandering around, growing fungus in their footwear and moss on their north sides.

Ordinarily I’d slip out for a jog between sprinkles, but I’ve already logged two 5K runs this week and fear a third would leave me a smelly puddle of tears, shredded connective tissue, and bone splinters.

Still, slouching around indoors muttering over the news ain’t no day at the beach neither.

That Tennessee explosives factory? Holy hell.

Public “servants” trying to suppress free speech? Par for the course. Public excoriation for thee, but not for me. Shove the First Amendment right up their fat asses by attending your local No Kings! rally on Oct. 18.

Government employees being shown the door because … well, because Rumpleshitskin likes it? Remember his two-word catchphrase from the unreality show he keeps reliving over and over and over again in the throes of his growing dementia. He’s a man of few words, because he can only remember a few, and can pronounce even fewer.

And to top it off I’ve got one lonely, disheveled hummingbird parked at the backyard feeder, like the old soak lost in thought who just can’t seem to hear the phrase, “Last call. …”

Ditch that rut

June 26, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Ruts. I’ve been stuck in a couple lately.

Take the 20-mile ride around the foothills. Please. Sure, you do enough of them, they add up to a nice pile of miles at week’s end. But still, damn.

Also, the not running. I never have been and never will be a “runner.” But as Richard Pryor has taught us, running is a useful skill to have at one’s disposal in case of emergency.

But you got to stay in shape and shit, ’cause you never can tell when in real life you will have to … run! That’s right, run. Goddamnit, run. Why get killed when you can … run! That’s right, a lot of people get a ass-whipping, and you could run. You’ll be in the hospital, your ego will heal a lot faster than a broken jaw. ’Cause you’ll still be in the hospital talking about “Shit, I should have run.” Run! That’s right! If somebody pull a knife on you, and you can’t pull out nothing but a hand with some skin on it, your intelligence ought to tell you to … run!

So I’m slowly easing back into running — nothing outlandish, just a 5K, one per week — just in case anybody gets the idea that I’d be a whole lot quieter in a hospital with my piehole wired shut.

And I’m trying to break my oh-so-convenient 20-miles-in-the-foothills habit. Today I logged a 33-miler, descending to the bosque for a looksee — some dipshit(s) have been setting fires down there — and then climbing back to El Rancho Pendejo.

This three-hour ride weaves together several of the local off-street bike paths, which is a pleasant change of pace from, say, Tramway, which always makes me feel like a cottontail on a rifle range. That itch between the shoulder blades, etc.

And at the bosque I was rewarded with my first coyote sighting of 2025. Right troublesome little bastards they can be, but I still like seeing them. I’ll take an honest coyote over the devious dawgs of DeeCee any old day.

Summer simmer

June 20, 2025June 20, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Scattered sprinkles, widespread haze, sunny and hot, sez the forecast for the first day of summer.

It was already 75° when we got up at 5:30 to greet the first day of summer. Helluva note when you open the doors and windows to let the cool morning air stream in and the air conditioning clicks on.

The wind was likewise in business, too, so Herself and I decided to go for a short trail run instead of a ride. We’d spent a couple hours yesterday cycling through the foothills and saw all the quail, from solos to pairs to coveys with adults herding thumb-sized offspring.

Today was my first run in a couple weeks so I wasn’t exactly crushing it. Still, it felt good to be lumbering along without all that specialized kit and machinery. Just shorts, shirt, and shoes. Put one foot in front of the other and try not to fall down.

CenturyLink fell down yesterday. Or Lumen did. AT&T? Whatever the hell that outfit is calling itself these days. You should’ve heard what we and the rest of its customers nationwide were calling it yesterday when it went tits up for the better part of quite some time and even the minimalist corporate website vanished like civil rights in an ICE storm.

We’ve been trained by bitter experience not to bother fencing with CenturyLumen’s chatbots and “live agents.” Instead we used our Verizon iPhones as hotspots and never missed a beat, even streaming a couple episodes from season three of “The Bear” as preparation for season four, which kicks off June 25.

Speaking of cussing, anybody who thinks I swear overmuch in the kitchen should check out “The Bear.” That crowd makes me sound like Nate Bargatze doing crowd work at a Southern Baptist picnic, even when I accidentally oversalt the arugula pesto, like I did last night.

It wasn’t quite like eating seaweed straight from the ocean, but it wasn’t exactly Michelin-star-level dining either, chef.

After the deluge

June 3, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

We got 0.28 inch of rain yesterday in about 28 seconds, so, ’ray for us.

The deluge will not resolve our water issues, though it ended the struggles of at least one poor soul whose last known address was a washout down near Edith and Roy.

We stayed indoors where it couldn’t get us. Well, mostly.

Herself took her chances with an early run. I held out hope for a bike ride, and if I’d moved fast I could’ve had one, too.

But fast is not my speed. So instead of risking a good soaking I dithered, waffled, and procrastinated, and then finally tottered out for a short run and never even got my shoes damp, though at one point I was jogging up a sandy arroyo that feeds into that long flume ride downtown.

Then, later that afternoon, boom, down it came.