I’ve always heard that the traffic in Atlanta made Chris Christie’s arteries look like the wide-open spaces, but still, damn.
I was mystified, shortly after my family was transferred from Ottawa, Canada, to Randolph AFB, Texas, to see school and pretty much everything else canceled the two times in five years that it snowed (about a gram’s worth each time).
But I didn’t have a driver’s license, or any urgent tasks to perform, so I suppose my ignorance was excusable. Plus a guy could pretty much walk or ride a bike everywhere on base, so the potential for fatal collision and/or extended naps in Dad’s Cad’ was greatly reduced.
Gee. Y’think suburban sprawl ain’t all it’s been cracked up to be?
Cheech and Chong* must be laughing their asses off.
“By a 3-to-1 margin, journalists inside 3D Cannabis outnumbered customers waiting outside before the shop opened,” reports The Denver Post in its coverage of today’s first sales of legal recreational marijuana in Colorado.
“This is history I just made,” crows a Georgia gent who slept in his car, with his dog, in order to spend $180 on 6 grams of smokable herb and some munchies.
Well, Stoney, let’s get real here. Buying a legal bag of shit is not quite up there with integrating a redneck lunch counter, landing on the moon or inventing the Internet. But we take your point. Folks in Colorado — certain parts of it, anyway — can now purchase the fabled Whacky Tobacky over a counter instead of under the radar, and from someone who doesn’t look the way I did when I was selling $12 lids in Alamosa, too.
Bibleburg, naturally, decided not to participate in this making of the history. Retail sales of firearms, tattoos, payday loans, superstition, fuck books, tonsil polish in a thousand-and-one flavors, and all manner of other smokable products? Fine, fine, go about your business.
But the recreational mary-joo-wanna? Nossir. Might set the younguns to rubbing theyselfs in public, cause the Army to make bongs of its M203s, maybe even lead to dancing on Sunday.
So Manitou Springs, Pueblo and Denver will get the mota-related jobs and taxes, and Bibleburg will get the mumbling stoners. Assuming said stoners have recourse to money and reliable transportation, anyway. So we got that going for us.
Pretty silly, hey? But not as silly as the 62-year-old masters racer who just drew himself a two-year ban for using amphetamines, testosterone and EPO. Talk about hitting the trifecta. It’s a wonder the cup didn’t dissolve when he pissed in it. Doping to win masters races is like standing tiptoe on a stack of prescription pads to make yourself the biggest midget in the room.
Once again we have guests in the House Back East®, this time for a lengthy stay, and tonight they inquired how to operate the gas oven.
Imagine my embarrassment. I had no bloody idea.
I don’t remember the last time I cooked with gas, unless you count the grill, which I don’t. Santa Fe? Denver? Pueblo? And the HBE® has a rather elderly appliance. For all I knew, it might have required matches, incantations, the rubbing together of sticks.
Nope. Found the owner’s manual. Push in the temperature knob, assign a temperature, turn the other knob to “Bake.”
Riding the Rock Island Trail east, I found this sign, and the temptation proved overwhelming.
New bicycles are like strange dogs. Most are friendly, but occasionally you meet one that wants to bite you in the ass. Or worse.
While planning a minor expedition to inspect the flood-damaged southern end of the Pikes Peak Greenway, as a prelude to logging what the Adventure Cycling Association folks call a “bike overnight” before the snow flies, I put the Bootleg Hobo into the workstand for a quick chain-lube yesterday morning.
Imagine my surprise when I found a link ready to pop. I could’ve broken the chain right there in the stand using the ol’ opposable thumbs and a finger or two, no chain tool required.
I thought I’d heard an occasional clicking sound while riding the Hobo the day before, when I snapped this photo. But the thing was a demo bike that arrived with shifting issues, and I’d been dicking around with the barrel adjuster in hopes of shutting it the fuck up, so I figured it was probably a tight link somewhere. Thus the workstand, and the chain lube.
One of the washouts left over from the summer’s flooding.
So, yeah, duh. Good thing I didn’t pop that bad boy while standing to climb a hill, as I had been doing. I rarely carry a chain tool on rides, and almost never pack an extra set of testicles.
Long story short, back in the garage went the Hobo and out came the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, which doesn’t have a chain to break. And the ride was swell, though the trail was in pretty poor repair in spots, as you can see in the other photo.
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