Category: Summer

Dry rivers and damp bibs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
It’s all shallow end at the Rio still.

Another day, another record.

The Duck! City reached a high of 95° last Friday, and boy, did I feel every degree of it heading back to the rancho from the Rio.

The climbing is no big deal, about a thousand feet of vertical from the Paseo del Bosque’s intersection with Mountain Road NE. But most of it gets served up in the last 12 or so miles, with a side of stop-and-go on the mean streets and the Paseo de las Montañas bike path.

It should go without saying that a fella feels considerably warmer on the uphill leg of this 37-miler, even with steam escaping from the helmet vents.

A spot of damp.

We’ve either been breaking high-temp marks or missing them by a single degree lately. So it has been a delight to suddenly enjoy a little rain, straight out of the blue — 0.28 inch in the past 48 hours, which Noah might snort at but no New Mexican would sneeze at. Not here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where we have been drier than the proverbial popcorn fart.

The Monday-Wednesday Geezer Rides have been on hiatus, so when the rain started pelting down early yesterday morning I thought, “OK, fine, good excuse to go for a run.”

But I wasn’t really feeling it. I’ll be doing plenty of running if we ever get anything like winter around here. So when the rain abruptly shut off, I pulled a fendered bike from its hook in the garage — the rim-brake Soma Saga, which is wearing a rear Tubus rack with a strap suitable for packing a rain jacket — and off we went.

Why a fendered bike, when the rain had stopped? Simple. There may be puddles, and I don’t like collecting that famous damp brown stripe up the backside. It’s undignified for a man of my years and may lead to ill-informed gossip and speculation.

“Ah, look at the poor ould fella, would you now? Your man has gone and shite himself midride. Must be all alone in the world. No one to wipe ’is hole for ’im.”

“That’s a pretty nice bike, though. Someone must love him. Or at least tolerate him, manky arse and all.”

I am blessed in that regard, and also when it comes to bikes sporting fenders. I have three such at the moment and have had them all out in the past week to see if I could tempt the rain gods into having a wee. No joy. Rain before and rain after, but never during.

Maybe fenders don’t work that way. Maybe the rain gods see them and say: “Stand down, lads. We’ll never give the manky arse to that ould gobshite whilst he’s rocking the mudguards. Leave us wait until he takes that custom Nobilette for a long go into the East Mountains.”

The longest day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Tick tock, etc.

Hot town, summer in the city, as the fella says. Welcome to the summer solstice in the Year of Our Lard 2026.

It’s 76° at 15 minutes after the big hour of 9 a.m. here in The Duck! City, with a high of 95° expected — three degrees above normal but well short of the record of 103°, set all the way back in 1981, when “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes topped Billboard’s Hot 100 as Ronald Reagan shredded the social safety net while bulking up the Pentagon.

Well, there you go again. … Good times. Maybe not. Better than now? Your mileage may vary.

Where there’s heat, there’s often fire, and it should go without saying that we have a few: Deer Canyon, south of Mountainair; Osha Canyon, south of Placitas; Rio, at Mesa de la Gallina; and Elk, in the Pecos Wilderness.

Rather than add my little flame to this hot mess I whipped up cool smoothies for breakfast: Mango, strawberries, banana, yogurt, honey, rice milk, and a sprinkle of Vietnamese cinnamon.

Up north my man Hal Walter was putting the finishing touches on his Substack series, “The Blur Goes to College,” which over the past two years chronicled son Harrison’s adventures in higher education. And I do mean “higher” — The Blur attended college at 10,000 feet, in Leadville, after growing up at 8,800 feet outside Weirdcliffe.

Hal’s plan is to transform the Substack chronicle into a physical book, with a cover by noted Leadville artist and old pal Craig Schreiber. Mine is to go for a ride before it gets too bloody hot.

The DBR Prevail TT.

I can’t go all the way back to 1981 for a bike — that year I had just abandoned a Seventies Schwinn when I fled The Arizona Daily Star and Tucson for parts unknown, shortly after my father’s untimely death in Bibleburg.

But I can time-travel back to 1994, when I bought a DBR Prevail TT from John Crandall at Old Town Bike Shop in that very same town.

Do you believe in magic?

Summer simmer

~ 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.

Air conditioning (and one ventilation)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
One of those hazy, lazy days of not-quite summer.

Lots of schmutz in the air today. Our air purifier started sounding like a 747 trying (and failing) to take off from Newark, so I figured Elon was back to blowing up Starships in Texas between Special K binges and using his face as a catcher’s mitt for some pitcher’s high hard one.

But nope. Just windblown wildfire smoke and dust from Mexico, according to the local press. A health alert* has been issued. And warmish, too, so much so with the doors and windows closed that I finally caved and turned on the air conditioning. We must think of Miss Mia Sopaipilla, after all.

* Health alert not provided concerning side effects of the Second Amendment.

The dog days of summer

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Mister Boo disliked the summer heat and would flatten out on the cool pavers in the kitchen.

Ordinarily I’m not out the door before 8:30 in the morning. Oh, I may be out of bed by 5, or 5:30, but I am far from ready for my closeup.

First, one must shake hands with the governor. Second, attend to Miss Mia Sopaipilla’s litter box. Finally, there shall be strong black coffee, some news, toast with butter and jam, more news, more coffee, some colorful language, a flushing of the headgear via the southern sally port, a light breakfast — oatmeal with fruit and nuts, yogurt with granola, or a fruit smoothie — and p’raps a large mug of strong black tea to wash it all down.

Then, and only then, am I prepared to greet the shit monsoon face to face.

There was a time when I could cut to the chase with drugs and alcohol, but that was many moons ago and 8:30 was out of the question unless I’d stayed up all night, in which case it was more like noon-thirty, and I was only leaving to get more drugs and alcohol.

Or maybe it was 8:30 p.m.

But I digress.

On Tuesday, I was out the door at 7:30 a.m., because it was already warmish and due to become more so. I was kind of tired of cycling — I’d been riding 100-plus miles a week for like five consecutive weeks, which is a lot for me, since I’m not training for anything beyond staying on the sunny side of the sod — so I thought I’d slip out for a quick trail run, maybe lift some weights after.

Turns out 7:30 is the time everyone around here walks the dog.

I’d forgotten about this ritual, since Mister Boo has been absent for six years now and Miss Mia only takes brief, infrequent expeditions into the backyard grass for the folic acid. Dogs gotta walk, winter, spring, summer and fall, and unless you want to fry their furry feet in the dog days of summer, you best get ’em out before the sun comes up and after it goes down.

When you walk a dog you meet other dog walkers. There are no red people or blue people, only dog people. As John Steinbeck observed in “Travels with Charley”:

A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bond between strangers. Many conversations en route began with ‘What degree of a dog is that?’

Thus I met some degree of a retriever, off leash, whose human advised genially, “It’s OK, she doesn’t bite.” I stifled an “That’s OK, I do,” because the pooch was clearly living the doggie dream.

Likewise a grinning purse dog in the company of a young woman.

“That looks like a very happy dog,” I said. “Oh, she is, she is,” replied her companion.

Dogs mostly don’t wear signifying T-shirts or sport bumper stickers, lacking bumpers and political opinions, and if you’re busy scratching furry ears and cooing, “Who’s a good boy?” you’re not thinking much about what kind of flags their people fly, or how, or where they get their “news.”

You’re probably thinking, “What we need is some degree of a dog.”

Just kidding, Mia. Must’ve had a touch of heat stroke.