Java jive

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
This morning, round two, way too early.

No matter how hot it gets — and it’s getting plenty hot! — I refuse to surrender my two cups of steaming black coffee in the morning.

Remember the old Folger’s jingle? “The best part of wakin’ up,” and so on? Well, the best part of waking up is not “Folger’s in your cup” — it’s waking up, because this means you didn’t snuff it during the night, which in turn means you can now get out of bed and make yourself a proper cup of actual coffee.

I’m not a coffee Nazi, but at home — and whenever possible on the road — I have my rituals.

I start with Santa Fe’s Aroma Coffee, roughly a 60-40 mix of their Blacklightning and French Roast beans, hand-ground either that morning or the night before. I used to rely upon an ancient Braun espresso maker that I’ve dragged all over Creation, but finally decided that an AeroPress and an OXO electric pour-over kettle were a whole lot less likely to explode on me before achieving coffee. I’m not afraid to die unless it happens before coffee.

If I’m car camping, I grind my beans before leaving El Rancho Pendejo and use an elderly Coleman two-burner and a battered blue-enamel coffee pot to boil water for the AeroPress.

Camping camping? Downsize the cooking gear to a Soto OD-1R stove, a Snow Peak titanium pot, and an AeroPress Go.

And if I’m lording it in some motel … goddamn it, I hate to admit this, but if there’s a Starbuck’s within walking distance I’m likely to just stagger over there and slam a couple Americanos. If I moteled it more often I’d acquire some small electric kettle and do it up right.

Because the second-best part of waking up is that first cup of coffee.

Walking on the moon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
The Comanche Launch Facility.

Never fear. We’re still earthworms. It’s just that The Duck! City landscape looks a bit lunar in spots, especially at the eastern end of Comanche Road NE, which tilts up and turns to dirt just short of Foothills Trail 365.

During our nine years here a few eastbound motorists have failed to notice that Comanche just sort of, oh, I don’t know, ends at its intersection with Camino de la Sierra NE. Their vehicles take flight, briefly, then return to earth, their only laurels being the remains of the wire fence marking the end of Comanche and the beginning of the Sandia Mountains. Resale value and driving privileges suffer. Lunacy of a different sort entirely.

Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.

Anyway, it’s not hot enough around here to be the moon, which enjoys highs of 260° Fahrenheit in full sunlight. It just feels that way lately.

Herself and I got a late start on our weekly bike ride this morning, and it was getting right toasty as we climbed Big Horn Ridge Drive toward a couple of whoop-de-doos that are more fun when done from the other direction.

Bunnies we had seen, but no quail, and I was thinking we were going to get skunked (har de har har) until a lone adult quail ran across the road just ahead of us, saw us, and pulled a U, scurrying back down into the gully.

We stopped to have a peek over the side, and wowser, there were at least three pairs of adults and a whole mob of juveniles puttering around down there, wishing we would quit gawking and be on our way, like the two e-bikers who zip-zapped past without a word.

It pays to keep your eyes peeled around here. You never know what you might see, even if it’s only a windshield full of wire and the Sandias coming up fast.

No joke, sport

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
We did, too. Before they could fire us.

Whew. Rough week in my old bidness.

The New York Times croaked its sports department, and McClatchy sacked three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists — Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer.

Having worked in one sports department and drawn more than a few editorial cartoons, I naturally view with alarm. Wit is without value but witlessness is rewarded?

When The Washington Post asked for comment on McClatchy’s abrupt erasure of three Pulitzer winners, the company — owned by Chatham Asset Management — supplied this gem from opinion editor Peter St. Onge:

“We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the statement said.

Ho, ho. That’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s definitely on today’s leaderboard.

What local news and information that can’t be gotten elsewhere might McClatchy be relentlessly focused on providing in Sacramento at 3:10 p.m. Thursday Duck! City time?

And who says there’s no such thing as good news!

“The stories you’re seeing on the homepage are chosen by our local editors with help from an AI algorithm. The display includes the day’s important stories and recommendations for readers like you.”

Anyway, here’s a random selection from AI’s random selections courtesy of your friendly neighborhood carbon-based life form:

• “Cirque du Soleil returns to Sacramento this summer: Here’s where, when and how to get tickets.” Sounds like a free ad to me, but maybe the AI got comped tickets.

• “More than 40% of Californians say they were affected by recent extreme weather, poll finds.” Do tell. I imagine the other 60 percent stayed home or attended an air-conditioned showing of Cirque du Soleil.

• “Prime Day is over, but there are still deals galore.” Any cut-rate Cirque du Soleil tickets?

Well, thank Boss Tweed there ain’t none a them damned pictures taking up space on the Bee homepage. There’s not much to read, either. But then the only reading that interests hedge funders and asset managers is of the bottom line, and McClatchy certainly seems to have gotten to the bottom of something here.

• Addendum: Speaking of bottoms, pour one out for Anchor Brewing, which is going down after 127 years, the final few under a disastrous foreign ownership. Anchor Steam may have been the first proper beer I ever drank, and the porter was superb.

Burning daylight

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
We’re just waiting on the priests to rip out a few hearts here.

Well, somebody’s getting away from it all, and they’re taking it with them as they go.

I don’t get around much anymore, so I had never seen this before until just recently: A Mercedes Sprinter RV … with a rooftop tent. Another Sprinter … towing one of those Igloo-looking trailers, a Scamp or Casita.

Sheeyit. And here I’d been thinking $250 a night was a little spendy for a motel room someplace that isn’t enjoying triple-digit temperatures or an End of Days deluge.

Instead of loading up the old Highway Hilton I don’t have for an extended voyage I’m not taking, I’ve been getting my exercise a little earlier in the morning, before Tōnatiuh starts taking orders for gabacho asada.

Yesterday it was a leisurely couple of hours on the bike with some like-minded gents of a certain age and two 21-ounce bottles in my cages. Today it was a 6-mile solo hike on the rolling foothills trails, with a 2-liter bladder in the backpack and a stout staff for disputations with serpents (none rose to the challenges of my staff or the thermometer).

The idea is to get back under cover before the heat advisory kicks in noonish. Which I did. Even so, a bit of grub, some cold water, a warm shower, and a short nap by the fan all seemed like excellent ideas, better even than a large RV towing a smaller one.

But then what? There’s the whole rest of the day to deal with. However does one fill the hours?

Well, we can always follow the misadventures of that guy, whose shysters are arguing that it’s cruel and unusual to bring his fat ass to trial while he campaigns to reclaim his old job, after which he can drop all the charges against himself.

Or we could root for an MMA cage match, a weenie-measuring contest, or perhaps death rays at 10 paces between Zuck and Schmuck, who are quarreling over which of them is the One True King of the social-media hellscape.

Can’t one of them just pull a phone from a stone and settle it that way? My calls to Merlin keep going to voicemail.

For what it’s worth

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Looks like the tree’s bringing the heat.

Some like it hot, they say.

Not me, Bubba.

There are moments when the summertime heat feels almost bearable. Say, when there are no pressing matters and a pool sits nearby. There is an iced beverage sweating in a tall glass and a broad umbrella throwing a soupçon of shade. Someone else is picking up the tabs.

But even then. …

When I was a kid on Randolph AFB the San Antonio summers were murderous. Crouch under the Fedders window unit and play board games or haunt the officers’ club pool like a toasty ghost.

Tucson? Don’t get me started. I drove a 1974 Datsun pickup with no air conditioning, and my guest-house rental (also sans a/c) was a long, slow-rolling, late-afternoon drive from The Arizona Daily Star, where I labored in dubious battle with Young Republicans and old fascists.

Mostly I passed my days at the pool there, too. Not at the Star; at the University of Arizona, where the coeds weren’t yelling at me all the time unless they caught me drooling.

Now here I am in The Duck! City, where everything I do makes life hotter and the windows of opportunity are quickly closed and curtained against the sun.

Cycling. Running. Cooking. Especially cooking. Sometimes I feel as though it’s me browning in the skillet.

Not an early riser by nature, I find myself compelled to rush through the morning’s rituals so I can get out and back in while Tōnatiuh is still warming up in the bullpen.

Coffee. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Albuquerque Journal. More coffee, with toast this time. The litter box. Not for me, for Miss Mia, who has already been in there a time or two while I was ethering my sputtering carburetor. Then the baño for me.

A bite of breakfast — yogurt with granola, oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit, a mandarine, or some combination of these. No tea, it’s already too hot, and we don’t want to overclock the old CPU. Dole out some water to the parched foliage.

And then — hey, what’s that sound, everybody look, what’s going down? — it’s raining. Not for long, not in any quantity (0.01 inch), and it evaporates from the chip-seal in the cul-de-sac before the echo of the raindrops fades.

But still. Music to the ears. Maybe I’ll have that cup of tea after all.

Hey, cool.