Holiday travel gets Bug-gered

May 23, 2020May 23, 2020 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

The Bug® has put AAA’s Memorial Day travel forecast up on blocks.

It’s the first time in two decades that AAA hasn’t had a stab at guessing how many Americans might be traveling over the holiday weekend, according to PR manager Jim Stratton.

No worries, Jimbo. I haven’t been big on holiday travel since, well, forever.

If Tony Stark had been a cat, Iron Man might look something like this.

When I was still a newspaperman it was possible (and pleasurable) for a single fella to piss off for points unknown while the breeders were juggling work, school, and the juvenile justice system.

My shift was generally something like 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., with oddball days off like Tuesday and Wednesday, and I got spoiled by not having to deal with crowds whenever I wasn’t on the clock and wished to make a nuisance of myself without billing someone for it.

After mutating into a cycling scribe I often frequented Durango on Memorial Day weekend, getting my ass handed to me en route to Silverton, in the crit at Fort Lewis College, or on whichever stretch of hilly, rocky dirt Ed Zink was using for a mountain-bike course that year.

But holy hell, a long haul to an ass-whuppin’ loses its appeal faster than a kissing booth at the state fair in a plague year. So I decided that if I ever craved a beating I could sass the wife, save myself all that driving time and gas money.

We’ve had the ingredients for this bench lying around the rancheroo for the better part of quite some time.

This time around, as it happens, it is a plague year. So we kicked off the long weekend with a short road ride and some light landscaping.

Parts of the back yard were looking like that part of your neck you always miss with the razor because at age 66 you’ve taken to shaving in the dark to avoid panic attacks, myocardial infarctions, and suicidal impulses, and the whole concept of shaving at all has become meaningless since nobody gives a shit about that part of your neck because mostly they are not looking at it or any other part of you, unless they think you may have wandered away from a nursing home or insane asylum and are wondering whether there might be a cash reward for your return, dead or alive.

But I digress.

So we pulled weeds and dug up junk elms, laid down weed block and river rock, and bagged up unsightly piles of this, that, and the other. There will be more of this sort of thing as the holiday weekend progresses. Or so I am told, anyway.

If Herself posts any FaceButt pix of a new “flower bed” that’s 6 by 6 by 3, you’ll know I’ve given up shaving and yard work for good.

Charge!

May 22, 2020 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

This teensy little sumbitch got me back on four wheels after a few hours plugged into a wall socket (the four-wheeler, not me).

Almost forgot: Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster is back on the road after a few hours hooked to the Schumacher SC1301 Fully Automatic Battery Charger.

So, yay, etc.

I must’ve triggered one of the 2,485,397 interior convenience lights somehow. When you only fire up the four-wheeler every couple of weeks this can pose a problem re: infernal combustion and the application thereof.

Happily, the SC1301 was on sale at O’Reilly, so with all the moneys I saved I added some jumper cables to the order.

Even so, I think I may start using bicycles and the Vespa for errands more often, because (a) I really don’t enjoy driving in Albuquerque all that much, and (2) I rarely venture far from home in this, the Year of the Plague. So why not make my outings more funner?

Seeking higher ground

May 21, 2020 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

I headed for the hills yesterday.

Unlike our brethren and sisthren in Michigan I was not dodging floodwaters (our man Herb reports that he is high and dry). I just wanted to get out of the house and sit in the shade awhile, chatting amiably with the voices in my head.

La Cueva Picnic Site is a good spot for this sort of thing. It’s close to El Rancho Pendejo, and easily reached by bike, if you don’t mind that final mile. It rises about 367 vertical feet on beat-to-hell chipseal, so it’s not as challenging as the private road leading to our old place outside Weirdcliffe, which was a hair longer, a bit steeper (430-odd vertical feet), and unpaved.

One of the CCC-built stone structures at La Cueva.

But a fella wants a nice low gear if he’s to enjoy the grind, so I was aboard the canti’-equipped Soma Saga, stripped of racks and fenders. When it’s just a bicycle instead of an RV it slims down nicely, all the way to 27.8 pounds. And with a low end of 20.5 gear inches even a stove-up auld fella can do the deed.

Once you’re up there you have a fine view of the Greater Duke City Metropolitan Area. And when you get tired of that you can inspect some Civilian Conservation Corps projects from the Thirties.

Remember those fabulous Thirties? They’re making something of a comeback, only without the public works/resource protection bits.

Maybe it was that the gov’ has relaxed restrictions somewhat, or that the Memorial Day weekend was approaching, but there was almost nobody up there, which I consider ideal. There’s nothing wrong with other people that a certain degree of distance can’t resolve.

That leetle green stripe down there is the Rio.

Assault by battery

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

Today was grocery day. I was armed with a rather extensive shopping list, my last trip having been a short one to the Wholeazon Amafoods to collect a few delicacies for our 30th anniversary dinner.

That list got edited more than somewhat when I slid behind the wheel of the Fearsome Furster, turned the key, and … bupkis.

Not a slow crank. Nary a whir, click, or grind. Fuck-all, is what. Dead silence.

The trusty Wald basket shifts easily from bike to scooter. I use toe straps to cinch it down.

Like the rest of us, ol’ Sue Baroo has been enjoying some extended downtime in the Year of the Plague. She gets out about every two weeks for a grocery run.

But our last voyage was just a week ago, so I can only assume I managed to trigger some pain-in-the-ass interior light that failed to catch my eye. The battery is fairly new. Newer than the car, anyway.

But plenty of things are. This beast dates back to the last dipshit fool we had in the White House.

“Well, hell,” sez I. “What else we got in this garage here?”

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s Bike Month. I should’ve manned up and turned one of the touring bikes into a grocery cart. It’s not as though we lack for racks and sacks around here.

But I took the easy way out. Pulled the Wald basket off the Soma Double Cross, strapped it to the rear rack on the Vespa, and putt-putted over to the Sprouts with a messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

The lack of cargo capacity means no buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. But we all have our crosses to bear, amirite?

Socially and vertically distancing

May 17, 2020 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

Herself burning up the road to the Sandia Peak Tramway
on her trusty Soma Double Cross.

Here we see Herself motoring up Tramway Road as some stove-up auld fella pauses to take a snap with his obsolete iPhone SE.

The auld fella, who was aboard a Soma Saga, may have been feeling the effects of a couple days’ worth of yardwork. But he’ll probably blame the ankle. Or Obama. Or the fake news.