Herself and I cycled over to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta yesterday to see what it was all about.
Mostly it was all about RVs. Seriously. We didn’t see a single, solitary balloon. But we did see about eleventy-bazillion dollars’ worth of houses on the hoof, taking up all the ordinarily vacant acreage for miles around.
Turns out that we arrived between shows. There’s a whole lot of not much going on between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. I saw more action during the last day of Interbike, f’chrissakes.
Still, it was a nice ride, exactly 23 miles; the bike paths there and back were not bumper to bumper; and our recreational vehicles took up less parking space once we got them home.
Looks like a beautiful day for flying, if only to get above the weed pollen (snurk, gnunk, hoccccccck, ptui).
Elsewhere, the giant orange gasbag that has been hovering above our national politics continues to shower those below with a particularly acidic rain. I don’t think they have a toilet up there. I do think USADA should dope-test this silly tangerine turdblossom. I used to talk a lot of shit at 3 a.m, too, and I know exactly what I was on.
Seriously, I expect Agent Orange to kick off the next debate by telling The Hilldebeast, “Say, you don’t sweat much for a fat chick.”
Meanwhile, cycling defeated technology yesterday. I went for a short, delightful ‘cross-bike ride on the neighborhood trails, and while I wore my Shimano Sport Cam, thinking to amuse all y’all with a short POV video, Herself and I agreed that the result would not be toppling Danny MacAskill as the King of YouTube anytime soon. Just another face on the cutting-room floor.
Clockwise from left: The iPod Nano with its fitness app; the Shimano Sports Cam; my iPhone with the cam app open; Garmin’s VIRB Ultra 30; and the Timex Metopolitan+ watch and fitness tracker.
Things are slowly returning to what passes for normal around El Rancho Pendejo.
Groceries have been bought and the lawn mowed. The Adventure Cyclist boyos and I have discussed editorial strategery for 2017. And last night I prepared an actual dinner instead of slapping together some light smorgasbord of cheese, ham, crackers, fruit and salad.
My initial impression that Interbike had lost a step or two was confirmed yesterday as organizers guesstimated that visitor count fell 10 to 12 percent while exhibition space dropped 8 percent. The outfit hopes for a good turnout at its Fall CycloFest next month in North Carolina, but you know what they say about hoping in one hand and shitting in the other. One hand fills up faster.
Speaking of lost steps, I used an iPod Nano to track my walking during this year’s show, and I was surprised to have logged only about 20 miles. This is an approximation; I forgot to start the tracker for one longish march, from my room at the Luxor to the Boiler Room to meet some colleagues, then to the media preview at Mandalay Bay, then to the BRAIN dinner at Border Grill, and finally back to the room. If you insist on hard numbers, the way Adventure Cyclist does expense receipts, I can only document 17.5 miles.
I probably would have been better served by using the Timex Metropolitan+ I bought on a whim before heading to Vegas. A watch with delusions of grandeur, it sits on your wrist rather than in your pocket, and thus is harder to forget about. But it needed to be synchronized with my iPhone via an app, and the owner’s manual is about the size of my iPod Nano, and the online instructions seemed to have been translated from the original Feeb into Obfuscation, which is not one of my languages.
So, yeah. Didn’t get it figured out until yesterday, and I may not be completely there yet. Sucker has more hands than Avalokiteśvara, and the app is not nearly as intuitive as the Nano’s basic fitness tracker, which even a Trumpetista with a closed head injury could decode.
In point of fact it’s been something of a technology week here at the ol’ rancheroo. With more video on the horizon for Adventure Cyclist, I finally got around to installing the iPhone app to control my Shimano Action Cam (which lacks any sort of LCD monitor) and began monkeying around with Garmin’s new Virb Ultra 30 cam. You’ve seen footage from the former in my little road-trip video; look for video from the Virb in my review of the Trek 520, the next bike in the pipeline.
With all these tools in-house, and Bicycle Retailer slowing to monthly publication for the off-season, I hope to spend a little downtime honing my audiovisual chops. But you know what they say about hope.
Alex gives the debate two thumbs down. Or he would, if he weren’t strapped into his chair.
Somewhere in the afterlife, Steve Jobs is thinking, “Damn, and I thought I had a reality-distortion field.”
Yes, we watched last night’s “debate,” and we won’t be watching any more of them, thanks all the same. Too much TV helped us get into this mess, and more of it will not help us get out.
This morning I took a quick glance around the Innertubes and if last night’s faceoff moved the electoral needle a silly millimeter one way or the other I was unable to find any evidence of it.
I’m starting to think that the only way to pry an acolyte or two away from Agent Orange is to catch him in bed on prime time snorting blow off an 18-year-old undocumented gay hooker on welfare who is both an ISIS mole and a fraudulently registered Democrat. Either that or he starts eating live puppies instead of taco bowls.
And I certainly don’t expect him to have a come-to-Jesus moment anytime soon, not even a pretend one, the way Alex did. One of us will take a long step off a very high place first, and it won’t be him.
ALBUQUERQUE (MDM) — There must be something to all that vortex talk about Sedona. Something was definitely sucking there on Saturday. Mostly the drive in, down Oak Creek Canyon, on what should have been a beautiful fall afternoon.
I suppose if you have to be trapped in a traffic jam there are worse places for it. I had just left one of them, Las Vegas (“Gateway to Bankruptcy and Repossession”), and was glad of it, too.
Still, you expect all manner of inconvenience in Sin City. Sedona bills itself as “The Most Beautiful Place On Earth In So Many Ways,” but this linear parking lot was not one of them.
Right behind me were a couple little yos in a red Kia getting their smoke on, their rap music polluting the air nearly as badly as the conga line of cars. (Pro tip: A red Kia is not “gangsta.”)
Up front, a sign proclaimed “Speed Reduced Ahead.” Not possible, I thought, glancing at my speedometer, which was flirting with zero. This made driving through Taos on Memorial Weekend look like barreling down I-25 between Raton and Wagon Mound at 3 in the morning. At least nobody was hollering or honking.
I hadn’t been to Sedona in years, and I wouldn’t see much of the new-and-improved version this trip. After inching through town to my hotel, I slouched over to the inevitable Whole Paycheck, bought a mess of juice, salami, cheese and crackers, and slouched back. Thusly fortified, I reclined on a chaise lounge at poolside and set about enjoying the comparative peace and quiet of the bubbling hot tub after the clangor and din of the Luxor-Mandalay Bay Dante Alighieri Memorial Circles of Hell (Two Through Four Inclusive).
Rub-a-dub in the hot tub! Or right next to it, anyway (yes, I eventually got in).
Just about then a couple wanders in and of course they are in a mood to chat, having just come from the annual Sedona Winefest. He was a copper miner from Globe-Miami, and she was a phys-ed teacher and coach … who just happened to have cycled with a trailer from Canada to Mexico and was a member of the Adventure Cycling Association.
(“Cue “It’s a Small World After All.” Everybody sing!)
Anyway, they told me that on any given weekend Sedona was pretty much as I had already seen it, and so bright and early the next morning I arose, loaded the Subaru and got the hell out of Dodge. Vortex. Whatever. I took the back door through the hamlet of Oak Creek, which allowed me to use fifth gear and my inside voice.
I made it back to Duke City and El Rancho Pendejo in time for a light dinner and a short walk with Herself and Mister Boo. Turkish and Mia bestirred themselves, albeit briefly. (“Oh, you were gone? We hadn’t noticed.”) We enjoyed a beautiful sunset and an early bedtime.
All this peace and quiet will be shattered by tonight’s debate and the subsequent spinning of same, of course. Some vortexes suck more than others.
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