Song, fire, and ice

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Sign of the times.

Tezcatlipoca, God of the Night Wind, was in something of a mood as we hit the sack last eventide.

The sonofabitch spent the night roaring and rumbling, tipping things over, and generally acting the fool. The power blipped on and off a half-dozen times before I finally toppled into a restless sleep marred by inexplicable dreams.

In one I was outside somewhere with the rest of the bums as Tom Waits sat at a nearby café, trying to compose an opera based on his song “Misery is the River of the World.”

When I moseyed on over to his table and suggested that “Ruby’s Arms” might make a better foundation, Waits snickered and replied to the effect that I must’ve fallen in love with the first girl to kiss me somewhere other than the cheek.

When I wandered back to the bums one of them was gnawing on a sandwich I had scrounged. Let your attention drift for a second and someone will be eating your lunch, swear to God.

Elsewhere other deities were on the job. Coyote took a snowy shit on Colorado, because he thought it would be funny to lay 10 inches of snow on the place right after a 90-degree day. And Xiuhtecuhtli is still torching everything flammable in New Mexico because … well, it’s anybody’s guess. Perhaps he’s croaking the tourist season to punish the pochteca merchant class for sniveling about a dearth of eager employees while refusing to pay a living wage.

Outside+ looking in

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Ask not for whom the bike bell tolls.

Ring-a-ding-ding, bitches.

It was never a question of if, but of when. The Greater Outside+ Globe-Spanning Vertically Integrated Silo O’ Sports & Fitness, LLC, has begun excreting magazines and scribes, because that’s what vulture capitalists do: Gobble and shit, gobble and shit.

I knew my time was up last year when I saw the thousand-pound sack of boilerplate contract Outside’s drones expected me to sign if I cared to keep drawing funnies for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

After a quick semantic analysis boiled their bullshit down to its smoky essence — “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” — I trimmed it to a few salient grafs that cut straight to the chase, sent them off, and never heard another peep.

Not long afterward, I retired.

Now, the folks who stuck around and did the work are getting the old heave and also the ho. Talented types like Ben Delaney and Nicole Formosa, to name just two. It’s basically v2.0 of Competitor Group Inc., which gave Charles Pelkey and John Wilcockson the bum’s rush Back in the Day®. Same old guillotine, just different heads and an Outside Gear Box instead of the usual basket.

I can’t speak to the quality of the publications that lost staffers or are going dark entirely. I don’t read them. My subscription dollars are spent elsewhere.

But if these pubs aren’t profitable, I’m guessing it’s probably not Ben’s fault, or Nicole’s. Might have something to do with an overabundance of supernumeraries who don’t write, edit, shoot, sketch, or sell.

If I were showing people the door in an effort to save money I might start with anyone who uses the bloodless words “product” and “content” to describe “stories” and “photographs.” There’s always work for people who think everything is a commodity, including their souls.

Tonight on ‘The Voice’ . …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Y’think?

Well, how’s this for the fiery frosting on the smoldering cake that is May in New Mexico?

I wish that whoever is making these prank calls on the Lord’s behalf would find some other pasatiempo. Some of us are gullible and will act on spiritual advice like “Kill all those people” or “Set the bosque on fire.”

When I hear a Voice saying shit like that, I consult a couple of the other Voices in residence between my ear-holes.

“Aw, that’s Nyarlathotep. He’s just fuckin’ witcha. Don’t pay him no nevermind unless you like rubber rooms and tuxedos with wraparound arms.”

It’s liable to get real interesting real fast around here. The forests are “closed,” but a quick assay of The Duck! City’s foothills trails finds them very much open.

If these trails are forced to absorb all the recreational traffic that ordinarily would be spread throughout the Cibola, they’re gonna clog up faster than The Big I at drunk-thirty on Friday.

I eyeballed a half-dozen trailhead parking lots on my ride this morning and not a one of them was empty, though Elena Gallegos seemed to be less busy than usual.

But it was Thursday. Let’s see what the weekend brings. I hope it’s not more red-flag warnings.

Smoked out

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Done and dusted until further notice.

If you think that little slice of New Mexico looks dry, even parched, maybe, well … that’s because it is.

And so, the word has come down that a forest closure order has been issued effective Thursday for the Mount Taylor, Mountainaire, and Sandia ranger districts of the Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands. The entire Carson and Santa Fe national forests will follow suit.

Says the U.S. Forest Service:

“Fire danger remains extreme with record conditions only expected to worsen over the foreseeable future. The closure will be rescinded after significant moisture has been received and overall conditions improve.”

It’s a bummer, for sure. But so is getting burned the hell up.

I was just out toodling around in the Elena Gallegos Open Space, with an extra-credit lap around the Menaul trailhead area, and the Steelman Eurocross was cheeping like a nest of baby birds by the time I got home.

That ain’t dirt, it’s dust. And nobody wants a forest they can fit into an ashtray. Or so some of us would like to think, anyway. The quantity of cigarette butts I see along the roads and at trailheads suggests that this is not a unanimous opinion.

Fire works

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Pine shadows.

It was already 70° when I got up at 6 and the sky looked wrong.

The wind spent the night blowing things open, over, around, and down. It wasn’t the usual thundering roar, reminiscent of life in a 9-by-40 singlewide next to the railroad tracks; more like a conversation at the next table that you’re trying not to hear.

“No, no, no. First, you cut off the head. Then the arms and legs. Bag ’em up separate. Easier to carry.”

Last night’s eclipse, which we could not see, was accompanied by a “Health Alert Due to Blowing Dust,” which we could.

We had forgotten to turn on the bedroom humidifier before retiring, and when I arose my snout was having flashbacks to the glorious days when my friends and I supercharged our Saturday nights (and occasionally Sunday mornings) with a blend of Russian vodka and Peruvian marching powder.

The Duck! City hasn’t updated its air-quality widget since Friday, so I lack the deets. But I’m certainly getting the general drift of things. It’s not a great day to be a woodland firefighter, for instance. That big mother up by Las Vegas is only getting bigger, and it’s got a few smaller ones to keep it company.

Here’s NMFireInfo:

Dry thunderstorms in the afternoon will likely cause very active fire behavior and increase potential for fire spread. The fire is expected to remain active, with critically dry fuels and near-record temperatures.

Oh, good. I can’t wait for Memorial Day weekend. Where the fireworks stands at? FreeDumb®, etc.