Schooled

In which local news coverage fails to pass the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

This morning I have read three stories trumpeting $6.9 million in federal aid to help Albuquerque Public Schools acquire 20 electric school buses and related infrastructure — in the Albuquerque Journal, City Desk ABQ, and at KUNM — and not one of them tells me where APS will be getting its e-buses.

One would think that after the Albuquerque Rapid Transit debacle — in which e-buses from BYD began falling apart like big-box bicycles, and the understudy, New Flyer, suddenly faced a fraud complaint over charges that it failed to hold up its end of a wage-and-benefits deal — our local newsdawgs might want to sniff out something other than a PR flack’s farts. Especially since, as far as I know, diesel, hybrids, and compressed natural gas remain the modus operandi for the bulk of the city fleet.

This will apply to the APS fleet, too — once all the e-buses are buzzing along The Duck! City streets, they will represent about 10 percent of rolling stock.

IC you. …

So, after two cups of strong black coffee, two slices of toast, and much bad language Your Humble Narrator surfed hither and thither along the Infobahn before finally zooming in on a bus-dashboard photo in the City Desk ABQ story, where I spotted an IC logo, which, hey presto — belongs to IC Bus, which claims to be “the market leader in school bus manufacturing,” though I’ve never heard of it. But Wikipedia has.

Drilling down through the IC Bus website in the faint hope of finding out where these rigs come from I find the following: “We build them right, right here at home. “IC buses are made in Tulsa, Oklahoma, using quality materials, and are tested to rigorous safety and efficiency standards.”

Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Go Furthur, ladies and gents; go Furthur.

Feed-and-read zone

The fabled Three Pepper Hash, topped with two eggs over easy and a side of Lucky Irish Breakfast tea with lemon and honey.
The fabled Three Pepper Hash, topped with two eggs over easy, an English muffin, and a mug of Lucky Irish Breakfast tea with lemon and honey.

And on the seventh day … well, he didn’t exactly rest.

There was dog-walking, and cooking (my fabled Three Pepper Hash for breakfast). Both lawn and skull received a vigorous clipping. You get the idea.

But there was no cycling today. I could’ve squeezed in a short ride before the weather uglied up, maybe, possibly, but I didn’t feel like it, so there.

If there’s a downside to inactivity, it’s that I have more time for reading. Thus I present:

• “How Can America Recover From Donald Trump?” From the NYT editorial page, where someone is having a good deal of fun writing hand-wringing editorials lately.

• “‘Racialists’ are cheered by Trump’s latest strategy.” Not nearly as fun a read, but hey — we’re talking about the button-down klavern here. I remember when the sonsabitches wore sheets instead of seersucker. From The Washington Post.

• “Does Henry Kissinger Have a Conscience?” From The New Yorker. I expect you already know the answer.

Sixty-two … something

The proof is in the pudding ... or, in this case, on the Cateye.
The proof is in the pudding … or, in this case, on the Cateye.

Well, I didn’t manage 62 miles on my birthday. Nor did I ride 62 kilometers.

How’s 62 minutes sound to you?

Yeah, sounds that way to me, too.

But this morning I managed a run that lasted exactly half that time, and I reckon that’s the equivalent of 62 minutes on the bike. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

It wasn’t an entirely unproductive birthday. My burro-racing pal Hal Walter has expressed interest in doing a podcast, so I broke out all the old hardware and software and gave myself a refresher course in Podcasting 101.

Everything still works — though what Apple has done to GarageBand while I was otherwise occupied is matched only by what they’ve done to iMovie — and we may do a short test run tomorrow, if time, Skype and Call Recorder permit.

If we actually manage to slap something together, I’ll give you the 411 on the sumbitch. Expect it to be heavy on the works of Jim Harrison.