Boy, the folks at Visit Albuquerque must hate seeing Simon Romero’s byline in The New York Times.
Unless they all got shanked by the Psycho on the Bike-o.
Just another weekend on the mean streets of The Duck! City.
Right-wing antivaxxer Canadian trucker nutjobs? Nope. Just another road that goes nowhere by design.
This one butts up against Sandia Pueblo land, between Balloon Fiesta Parkway and Roy Avenue, which becomes Tramway Road NE just past Interstate 25.
It would be convenient to be able to press on to Roy via San Mateo. But you know how the white man is. Give him a bike path and the next thing you know he’s grabbed the whole damn’ country.
So I roll up to the Pan American Freeway and hang an illegal left turn, riding about a quarter-mile to Roy/Tramway on the west shoulder, against traffic.
Frankly, I don’t relish doing this. It gives ammo to the haters (“Look at that douche on the bicycle riding against traffic!”). And it gives me a small jolt of The Fear, because Pan American just south of Roy/Tramway is half frontage road, half interstate on-ramp, and I don’t care to become a hood ornament on an accelerating F-350 whose driver can barely see over the hood when he’s sober.
But there’s a nice wide shoulder — full of debris from previous mishaps, natch — and anyway, it’s the cost of doing velo-business in that neighborhood. So there you have it.
The payoff is the gradual, mostly uninterrupted, half-hour climb up Tramway to the stop sign at The County Line Grill & Smokehouse. There’s just one stoplight, at the casino just east of I-25, so you can just pick a gear and roll it.
Wave at the buffalo herd as you pass. Just don’t try to roller-skate through it. Because you can’t.
I think we’ve found the right person to handle document retrieval for the pestilential library of King Donald the Short-fingered.
Inflation rises, earnings fall.
Happily, literature has the answer.
There’s “On the Road,” by Jack Kerouac:
“You know what President Truman said,” Remi [Boncœur] would say. “We must cut down on the cost of living.”
And also, “Tortilla Flat,” by John Steinbeck:
Beans are a roof over your stomach. Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.
Thus, yesterday I labored mightily and brought forth the plato combinado. Green chile chicken enchiladas, frijoles, and rice. Not pictured: The appetizer created by Herself; sliced avocado with halved cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt, and pepper. We will be gnawing on this carcass for days.
The mantra around here when money gets tight is “Beans and rice, rice and beans, beans and rice.” So there you have it. Go forth and do likewise.
• Editor’s note: I first saw this Peloton story at NPR, and then went straight to AP to see if the original was this fucked up (it was). Buried the lede. (Who gives a shit about a hapless CEO lateraled over to a cushy gig elsewhere?) Confused “there” for “their” and “its” for “it’s.” It took two people to write this dreck and at least two more to put it online. When the nuts and bolts are this bad, one fears for the solidity of the “content.”
I should pitch a movie, “The Last Copy Editor,” about a tireless comma-chaser, usage Nazi, and AP-style maven who fights tooth and nail against the corporate vultures turning journalism into bung fodder.
I see either Jason Statham or Bruce Willis playing me in the title role, maybe John Goodman as the evil hatchet man from Corporate.
Issa Rae as the sharp young reporter who joins me in my quest for editorial excellence. Bill Burr as the comically inept city editor always hitting on her. Edward James Olmos as the burned-out slot man whose copy of “The Elements of Style” is actually an ingeniously contrived flask of bottom-shelf vodka.
Bill Hader as the online editor, a jagoff whose first language is jargon. Stephen Root as the clueless hack who frequently misspells his own byline and always waits until 30 seconds before deadline to file. Natasha Lyonne as the wisecracking dyslexic photographer who says writing captions is not part of her job description.
And as always, Jerry Mathers as “The Beaver.”
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