Hal Walter and Spike in 2000, after winning what I believe was their second world pack-burro championship in Fairplay, Colo.
It’s International Donkey Day. Or so says Hal Walter, who should know.
That may explain this bit of jackassery. It’s time to impeach everyone. Maybe we can get a bulk rate. While we’re at it, let’s have the stonewalling shitheads cuffed and frog-marched down to the various congressional committees that would like a word with them.
In other news, Hal and I may be doing a bit of podcastery here directly. Got any questions you’d like answered?* Leave ’em in comments.
* And no, we’re not tackling the old George Carlin favorite, “If God is all-powerful can He make a stone so big that He himself can’t lift it?”
I’ve lived in all three of these cities. I didn’t ride much in Tucson, because I lived way out north on Orange Grove Road, and it was hotter than hell. Swimming was my primary activity down there. Well, to be strictly accurate, swimming was tertiary, behind drinking beer and eating Mexican food.
My old hometown of Bibleburg managed 12th, while the Duke City rolled in with the laughing group at … 240th?
I’m not a data nerd, but speaking as someone who has logged a few thousand miles per annum in both Bibleburg and ’Burque, I can’t say that I see such a vast cycling-quality chasm between the two. Your mileage may vary, of course.
The kicker may be that these city ratings reward “rapid progress.” Sayeth the People for Bikes: “We recognize hardworking cities that are implementing quick-building techniques to improve biking in their city.”
I haven’t hit the streets in Bibleburg lately to gauge their progress toward velo-nirvana, and maybe ’Burque is stuck on New Mexico Standard Time. We’ve been kind of busy being unemployed and killing each other lately.
But my admittedly casual observation is that we have about four times as many bike paths and trails, a metric shit-ton of cyclists of all types, more bike shops than you can shake a pedal wrench at, plus a considerably larger number of people commuting by bicycle and better weather to do it in.
And the annual BikeABQ bike swap crushes it. Two of Herself’s friends bought bikes there over the weekend, we sold one, and former BRAIN tech editor and first-time seller Matt Wiebe said the swap was bigger than he had expected.
Where does your hometown land on the list, and how does its ranking fit with your own observations? Sound off in comments.
What can society do with some well-heeled, ne’er-do-well swell like Mark Zuckerberg, who persists in skullduggery, but unlike your corner dime-store hood has a fine-proof wallet and thinks a cell is something the rubes use to check Facebook?
How about a stint in the stocks? If we can’t shame him, or slammer him, let’s slime him. Food for thought, que no?
Yes, yes, yes, it’s another exciting episode of Radio Free Dogpatch. Grab a basket of rotten eggs, warm up your pitching arm, and take your place in line.
Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry, step right this way! It’s showtime!
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited using Apple’s GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The music is some medieval Viking ditty from Kyster at Freesound.org. It may have been performed by these dudes here. Other sounds liberated from Apple’s iMovie library. Tim Cook will probably have me put in the stocks for that, if Pøbel doesn’t beat him to it, but they’ll have to catch me first.
Mad Blog Media 