“Hot enough for ya? Har har har! Hey, that’s a joke, son. What are ya, some sort of pussy? Ho ho ho!”
We’re still waiting on that “early” monsoon season here in the Duke City.
While we wait, pretty much all the forests have been closed for fear of fire, and thus the streets are full of mannerless douchebag fatheads who miss shoulder-checking elderly hikers into the trailside cholla whilst shredding the gnar-gnar.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service advises that today’s temperatures, expected to range from 98 to 105 degrees depending upon where one parks one’s van, “pose an elevated health risk to sensitive people,” of which I am one, as any regular reader of this blog will testify.
No wonder Dougie Lamborn cruised to victory in the GOP primary yesterday. It’s abundantly clear that Hell hasn’t frozen over. It’s just relocated to the Southwest.
Speaking on behalf of all my fellow creeps, this one goes out to Col. Sarah Hucklebuck Sanders and the rest of the Special Snowflake Division at the GOP. Get it to go, bitches.
His Excellency, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), wants to know what’s all this fuss about putting children in cages.
“Just scratch their ears now and then, keep the food bowl full, and clean that litter box twice a day,” he purrs. “I’ve been a prisoner of love all my life. But then again, I’m a white guy, so your mileage may vary.”
… and the living ain’t easy. Not if you’re riding a bike into a stiff breeze, anyway.
Get your kicks, etc.
Bored with my usual routes, I decided to cycle to Tijeras this morning. Old Route 66 is a pleasant, rolling road with good shoulders and moderate traffic, and the ride is not particularly challenging, unless you happen to be gnawing on a stout headwind that the weather wizards didn’t bother mentioning before you left home.
The good news is that it turned into a glorious tailwind for the return leg. At one point I was coasting at 35 mph. Beat the mortal nuts off grinding along at single digits in the 24×18.
Back at the ranch, I noted that our “leaders” were still trying to transform the nation into a poor reality-TV reboot of a Marx Brothers movie:
• Migrants on military bases? I asked the Air Force a while back if I could visit Randolph AFB, where I spent five years as a mad puppy, and they said nix. And mind you, they wouldn’t even have to separate me from my parents, because they’re both dead.
• Fancy Pants Pruitt. Sounds like a character from “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” doesn’t he? Except Jimmy Breslin would never write such a shabby little mook.
• From tactical pants to tactless jackets. Guess what, Melania? We knew it already.
• A snippet of video that serves as “a brisk and complete summary of the great ship of fools that is the United States House of Representatives under the barely noticeable leadership of Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin.”
Looking east toward Albuquerque from the 98th Street end of the I-40 Trail.
Today’s ride sort of got away from me.
That fine country gentleman Sam Hillborne and I rolled north on Tramway nine-ish and it was 1 in the peeyem before we got back. Fifty miles is a long way for one of us.
I was thinking we’d roll down Tramway and under I-25 along Roy to 4th, then noodle over to the Alameda open space and thence onto the Paseo del Bosque. And so we did.
Take it to the bridge! The Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge, that is.
But at I-40 I decided on a whim to hang a right and experience the Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge, named to honor the founder of Bike ABQ and the Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico. Gail, a former Sandia Lab researcher, died of cancer in May 2010, and Friend of the Blog Khalil S. noted her passing here.
For some reason I’d never headed west on the I-40 Trail, which goes all the way to 98th, and today there was pretty much nobody out there but me. I felt like Magellan after crossing the Rio on Gail’s bridge.
There are a couple screwy multilane-thoroughfare crossings — none of your fancy-schmancy bridges there, bucko — and one poorly marked U-turn under Coors at Ouray Road, just past the Walmart. That double-left leads to a narrow stretch of trail by a storage concern that looks like a lovely place for a quiet killing.
But once past that, it’s smooth sailing. In fact, a touring cyclist westbound from, say, El Rancho Pendejo, armed with a working knowledge of the city’s bicycle trails, wouldn’t have to spend more than a dozen minutes riding on actual streets while traversing the Duke City.
Of course, once the bike path runs out by 98th, you’ve got I-40 to deal with. Weed, whites and wine, etc. Just stay willin’ … to be movin’.
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