Tonight’s forecast: dark

The NWS forecast for the remainder of November
The NWS forecast for the remainder of November (and yes, the headline is a George Carlin/Al Sleet reference).

I don’t like being cold and damp, shoveling snow, or having to wear pants indoors. But neither do I care for the idea of watching the Front Range turn into the Sonoran Desert, only without the great Mexican food.

The local fish-wrapper reported the other day that Bibleburg has enjoyed just a tenth of an inch of moisture this month and for the year to date is eight inches under normal precipitation. This is not a positive development, even for those of us who reach for a cold beer over a glass of water on a summery afternoon. For example, you can’t make beer without water. Unless you’re Coors, which seems to do just fine with Rocky Mountain trout piss.

South of us, in the Land of Enchantment, Elephant Butte Lake is experiencing drought conditions unseen since the year of my birth, which as regular readers know occurred the better part of quite some time ago.

And there’s no relief in sight. Not here, anyway. According to the weather wizards, there isn’t so much as a hint of a whiff of a rumor of a whisper of any precip’ in the Bibleburg forecast over the next 10 days.

What there is, is a parade of 60-and-sunny that will delight me in the short term (I have two bikes to review and more on the way) but gives me The Fear as regards the long term.

This autumn, for the first time since we’ve lived here, a neighbor declined my offer of the usual dozen or so bags of fallen leaves from our silver maple for use in her composting. She has also downsized her once-elaborate front yard to something better suited to a high-desert climate.

“What’s the point in gardening if it’s never going to rain again?” she asked.

RomneyBot’s Mendacity Engine working overtime

There is nothing about which Mitt Romney will not lie. Not even the murder of a U.S. ambassador and the current president’s response to the crime.

Kevin Drum has the nuts and bolts of it (heavy on the nuts). Read it and weep, because this asshole could be the next resident of the Oval Office if we’re not careful.

Consider the firestorm of outrage had it been a Democratic candidate who had the effrontery to cobble together this shameless political attack out of whole cloth after four of our ambassadors were killed while serving the nation abroad. Home Depot would sell out of pitchforks, torches and rope before Denny’s served its first Grand Slam of the morning.

Bats, man

Jesus H. Christ. It’s awfully tough to take a bike race seriously, even The Big One, when nutters in tactical gear are shooting up movie theaters.

Seventy-one shot. At least a dozen dead. And the shooter apparently got it all out of his system — whatever “it” might be — because he just chilled out afterward, waiting to tell the cops about his booby-trapped apartment.

Is it a good thing that this maniac survived to tell his macabre tale? I’m not so sure. We’re all going to hear a lot more about this guy and the spiders in his skull than will be good for us.

Oh, yeah: And it’s long past time for Louie Gohmert to shut the fuck up, and for his constituents to repent for inflicting this festering pustule upon the body politic. Seriously. That nobody has pounded this fuckwit’s teeth right down his yammering gob and out his asshole continues to mystify me. I’d take an honest satanist over his class of blustering “Christian” any day.

Punk-tures deflate stage 14

The RadioShack-Nissan press wizard snapped this shot of one of the tacks pulled from a rider's tire.
The RadioShack-Nissan press wizard snapped this shot of one of the tacks pulled from a rider’s tire.

Just when you thought stage 14 of the 2012 Tour de France couldn’t get any worse, it did.

The Pyrénéan stage, with its two category-one climbs — which no less an authority than John Wilcockson had expected to provide “the best chance yet” for Cadel Evans, Vincenzo Nibali or Jurgen Van den Broucke to yank Bradley Wiggins out of his golden palanquin — turned into a nothing-burger of a training ride, with a break a quarter-hour up the road and the GC guys back in the bunch trading organic chamois-cream recipes. (Handy household hint: If you see Mark Cavendish at the front of the bunch on a climb, nobody is busting his balls. Except maybe Cavendish.)

That was bad enough for those of us trying to keep a live update, well, lively.

But then some fuckwit or fuckwits unknown decided it would be fun to salt the final climb with tacks.

Yes, tacks.

There were some 30 punctures, though whether that refers to tires or riders remains unclear. Evans had three flats of his own — the first left him standing atop the final summit with a teammate who also lacked a functional rear wheel, awaiting neutral service, AAA or the Better World Club, whichever would accept his Credit Lyonnais credit card.

Evans finally got going again, and maillot jaune Bradley Wiggins asked the bunch to ride piano until the defending champ got back on, though Europcar’s Pierre Rolland, Lotto-Belisol and Liquigas-Cannondale apparently missed the memo. Those rascals soon got sorted out, however, and that was that, although Rolland should consider himself out of the Miss Congeniality competition this year.

Robert Kiserlovski got the worst of it — Jani Brajkovic flatted after that last climb, Kiserlovski apparently swerved over to give him a wheel, Levi Leipheimer T-boned him, and Kiserlovski left the Tour with a busted collarbone.

Oh, yeah — there was some actual racing going on. Luis Leon Sanchez popped out of that break while green jersey Peter Sagan was having a nosh and rode solo to the stage win. Sagan had looked like the man of the hour until Sanchez caught him with his mouth full.

“Yes, I should have kept a better eye on him,” Sagan told Cyclingnews.” In the last few kilometers I needed to eat. I wasn’t expecting him to attack me at that point. He is experienced and I am not bitter about it. Even if I’d managed to stay with him I might not have won.”

This blows

We’ve had a break in the heat but little respite from the winds, and the Waldo Canyon firefighters would really appreciate a bit of the latter.

Said incident commander Rich Harvey: “I’d like to start by saying, I hate wind. I wish it would go away.”

Also, rain, please, and plenty of it. Thanks in advance.

Meanwhile, no fear here at Chez Dog. Today Herself volunteered for an extra shift at the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region, which is boarding critters in the crisis. And I banged out a little word count on some area bicycle folks who’ve lost individual pursuits to the blaze. The worst of it around our little pied-à-terrier is smoke and ash.

A couple friends have lost their houses, and others are couch-surfing while they await word. One local official taken on a tour of the area hit hardest said entire blocks are gone.

So, yeah, what’s a little smoke and ash? I’ve seen worse at Interbike.

More as it happens.