A glider pilot prepares for touchdown near the Menaul trailhead.
I was running trail yesterday, pulling a leisurely U near the Menaul trailhead before heading home, when a shadow fell across my path.
“Holy hell,” I thought. “A buzzard? I’m not dead yet. …”
Then I looked up and saw the glider, tacking this way and that above the spiky foothills, before finally dropping in for a gentle landing.
Good argument for keeping your eyes and ears open, I thought as I snapped a few pix and then got back to my jogging. You never know what you’re going to see up there, or down here.
On Sunday I nearly stepped on my first snake of the new year as I legged it up a sandy arroyo not far from where the glider pilot touched down. He was a little fella and disappeared into the underbrush. The snake, not the glider pilot.
Some folks get their kicks from sticks, if you believe The New York Times. And in this instance I see no reason for doubt. The story wasn’t datelined April 1, and is just ridiculous enough to be true.
“Where the weather at?” I queried myself just before turning around and catching it right in the face.
The wizards have been predicting all manner of vile conditions, from skin-peeling wind to rain, snow, wintry mix, travel “impacts,” plague of toads (i.e., congressional nub-tugging), IBS, incipient fascism, the heartbreak of psoriasis, GOPee pestilential hopefuls getting flogged by “None of the above,” etc.
This uncertainty makes it hard to select the day’s workout, so I usually step outdoors to see if there are any MAGA hats flogging their diesel brooms across the blackening sky before naming my poison. This morning brought only the wintry mix, which I took smack in the gob as I turned around after shooting the pic up top.
Yesterday I ran, which was probably the wrong call. It was decent enough for cycling, but I didn’t feel like submitting to all the rituals — finding clean kit, checking the Fleet for a vessel that didn’t need chain lube, tire-pumping, flat repair, derailleur/brake adjustments, whatevs. Running is quick. Shirt, pants and socks, lace up the shoes, off you go.
Anyway, time was short and there were other items on the to-do list. Grocery shopping, for starters. Some “feets ball” extravaganza is apparently on tap this weekend, and I didn’t want to hit the store late in the week when the slavering mobs will be stripping shelves like hyenas wiping out a Chick-fil-A. An hour and a couple hundred dollars later our larder was stocked for the apocalypse.
Also, an old scribbler pal had tugged on my coat, asking could he borrow a cup of old Fat Guy cartoon to illustrate one of his excellent observations about the hallowed wintertime practice of stockpiling a few extra kilos around the waistline to keep the frostbite off your kidneys and, not incidentally, serve as a distracting amuse-bouche one can slice off with the Leatherman and toss to the wolves if they start circling while one field-repairs a puncture, snapped shifter cable, or broken chain.
If you are not already reading Mike Ferrentino you should be, and right now, too. Don’t make me stop this blog and come back there. Dude has been there and done that and he will go there and do that, too, because he likes it. And he is extremely good at it, which is not a handicap. One of the very few people I will drop everything to read. His joint these days is “Beggars Would Ride” at NSMB.com.
Anyway, for Mike’s ’toon hunt I had to snuffle like a truffle pig through the Archives, which are scattered around and about in various hard drives, mostly inside of or attached to a 1999 G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac that has more white hair in its ears than I do. This motley collection badly needs cataloging by a professional librarian; alas, the only one conversant with my workflow was otherwise occupied, earning our living.
I found a couple possibilities from way Back in the Day®, but the Fat Guy was mostly a roadie and Mike was hoping for something dirty. So finally I surrendered to the inevitable, broke out the utensils, and drew him up a whole new ’toon.
This was not a hassle. It was a blessing, because I hadn’t drawn a line since I parted ways with the Outside Hyperactive Currency Furnace back in January 2022. It may have been my longest hiatus from drawing since I was in diapers, working with my own boogers on the walls of various rental properties in Maryland and Virginia. They’re probably on the National Register of Historic Places now.
In the end, Mike ended up running with one of the old ’toons. Turns out he was under that deadline pressure I used to love so much, and it seems I’m not as quick on the “draw” as I used to be, yuk yuk yuk. I told him he could keep the new one for relighting the funny-pages fire. Thanks to him, you may see the occasional scribble here, too.
The first cartoon I’ve drawn in more than two years. Thanks to Mike Ferrentino for the inspiration.
The windblown rain pelting El Rancho Pendejo woke both of us around 3 a.m., and conditions had improved only marginally several hours later, after a couple cups of mud and a light breakfast.
So I had a little more breakfast, and then a mug of tea. Next I wasted time in various time-tested, time-wasting ways. And finally a bit of blue cut through the gray and boom! Off I went, like a white-whiskered rat out of an aqueduct, for a not-very-quick 5K on the foothills trails.
Though the sun shone the Outside Hyperactive Currency Furnace’s PR people would not have made hay with me. My running garb was trés unhip by Boulder standards, light on iconic brands, the polar opposite of au courant.
There were the well-used Merrell Moab Flight ground-pounders. Ancient, saggy, and pilled Head shorts and tights. An equally elderly Hind base layer. Smartwool liner gloves. The Sugoi tuque. Some Rudy Project shades from three prescriptions ago because I’m too lazy to change lenses to match the lighting conditions.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. Haven’t you?
The marquee bits were a 3-year-old pair of Darn Tough wool socks and a 6-year-old, fire-engine-red, long-sleeved Gore Power Thermo cycling jersey, which is only so-so for cold-weather cycling but does quite nicely as a running top in the 40s and slightly below. Its three pockets are perfect for stashing the iPhone and any bits of kit I might decide to remove or add en route.
That it makes me look like a cyclist who has mislaid his bike is of no consequence. Nobody asked you to look at me, especially Outside, which has a business to run, even if only into the ground. I don’t even look at me. From inside my head I look exactly like a young Davis Phinney, or perhaps Michael Creed. To preserve this fiction I shave in the dark without using a mirror and in public avert my eyes when passing any reflective surface.
I prefer not to be empowered; I am unplugged, possibly unhinged. Anyone building community may leave me outside the wire.
I run because I can. Because I like it. Because shoes are easier to clean than a bike.
The weather was supposed to be taking a turn for the worse after a short stretch of sunny skies, and so I had planned to go for a short trail run this first day of February.
Instead, the sun leapt out from behind the clouds, the temp shot upward into the mid-50’s, and I called an audible: “Ride today, run tomorrow.”
I’ve had the old Steelman Eurocross out twice this week, and it was leaning against the Subaru just waiting to have another go, so I grabbed it and did a quick 90 minutes on the foothills trails, which have finally firmed up a bit since last week’s rain and snow.
It was just the ticket, especially since I was feeling unkindly toward running after reading about the Outside Hyperactive Currency Furnace’s latest scheme — to transform the ridiculously simple act of putting one foot in front of another into a mighty revenue stream through the miracle of MarketSpeak®.
Running is one of the most basic acts imaginable, and humans have been doing it since we first came down from the trees, which is starting to seem like a really bad idea. As soon as we hit the deck we were running toward things we wanted to kill, eat, and/or fuck, and away from things that wanted to do likewise to us.
Like I said, basic.
No longer. According to a press release whose author(s) should have “The Elements of Style” tattooed on their foreheads with a jackhammer, we runners have been blessed with a new “Running Media Platform” intended to meet us on our running journey and elevate, empower, build community, and disrupt through a one-stop shop of iconic brands delivering gender-equitable and inclusive best-in-class, world-class content.
Or something very much like that. I don’t know for sure. I blacked out somewhere in the middle of it and when I came to I was butt-ass nekkid with blue paint on my face and a big knife in one hand, shrieking and dancing around a fire built of old running shoes.
I showed the press release to my buddy Hal Walter, who has been running for something like 45 years, everything from 5Ks to marathons to the World Championship Pack-Burro Race in Fairplay — he guesses maybe some 65,000 miles all told — and he was immediately unimpressed.
The Wolf Moon, peeking through the clouds over the Sandias.
I was a little late to moonrise last night, but managed to catch a glimpse of the Wolf Moon despite the heavy cloud cover.
The Duck! City has been gray and damp the past few days, with 0.13 inch of precip’ in the past 48 hours. On Wednesday I just beat a short downpour home as I wrapped up a run, and yesterday I caught a little sleet in the chops while cycling through the foothills.
Climbing into the Elena Gallegos Open Space I saw a couple of Albuquerque Police Department vehicles in the parking lot. The officers waved at me, and I waved back. If they thought I must have been drunk to be cycling in January — rain jacket, tuque, tights, winter shoes — they didn’t oblige me to perform the Stupid Human Tricks or empty the wallet I wasn’t carrying. (I had a $20 in the Ziploc bag that keeps my phone dry, but shh, that’s top secret.)
Mad Blog Media 
