Burned again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
“Ain’t you heard? Smoke gets in your eyes.”

Miss Mia Sopaipilla thinks it’s a good day to leave the bike parked and hang around indoors, where there are suddenly fewer people to distract The Help from its primary mission, which is the care, feeding, and amusement of (wait for it) Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

The sisters-in-law have departed, and an air-quality alert has arrived.

I thought I smelled smoke last evening, and sure enough, fire managers from the Santa Fe National Forest apparently have begun prescribed burns.

Not a word about it from The New Mexican or the Albuquerque Journal, of course. I had to find out by checking the New Mexico Fire Information website, which I assume is available to our local newspuppies as well.

Even the TV nitwits managed to figure it out, probably after a few of their talking heads bitched during makeup about how their eyes were all itchy and red. Is it the eyeliner? Nope.

At least the Rio hasn’t risen up on its hind legs and started chasing us around, the way the ocean has on the right side of the country.

I knew I didn’t want to live anywhere in hurricane country after seeing “Key Largo.” If the ocean isn’t trying to kill you, Edward G. Robinson is. Here’s hoping our readers in that neck of the mangrove swamps are sitting high and dry.

Change of pace

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
One of the rare flat spots on Tuesday’s ride through the Manzanitas.

A friend and neighbor who’s lived here longer than me and grown bored with The Duck! City menu of cycling possibilities proposed we try something a wee bit off the beaten path this week.

And so we motored up NM-337 a ways, parked at the Otero Canyon Trailhead, hopped aboard our trusty cyclocross bikes, and took a 21-mile tour of the rolling back alleys to the east and south, beginning with Juan Tomas Road and ending with Oak Flat Road.

One of the smoother descents.

Phil had warned me that we were headed for some steep, gnarly bits that could only be described as “roads” because they were passable by horse or halftrack. But they weren’t any worse than some of the knee- and tire-popping Paris-Roubaix-style bighorn-sheep circuits I used to wrangle in CusterTucky County, so I got along just fine on the old Steelman Eurocross with its new 34x32T low end and 33mm Donnelly MXPs.

To be sure, long stretches were steep as medical bills, with ruts that may recently have channeled hot lava, enough bad lines for a Sylvester Stallone film festival emceed by Carrot Top, and more baby-heads than the basement of the John Wayne Gacy Memorial Montessori School in Hell, if your idea of a baby is a 45-year-old Scandinavian blacksmith who dabbles in professional wrestling, rugby, and steroids.

But we saw plenty of wildflowers, and the motorists were mostly parked, hunting piñon.

Oak Flat dumped us back onto NM-337, just below the Morning Star Grocery, and we had a fine, high-speed plummet to our parking spot. As roller-coaster rides go it was worth the price of admission and then some.

Fall

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Oh, the days dwindle down, to a precious few. …

There hasn’t been much time for bloggery lately, with Herself’s sisters in town for an extended visit.

Having four females in the house, a fella hardly gets a minute to catch his breath, much less his thoughts.

To be fair, Miss Mia Sopaipilla likewise found her routine disrupted. The three sisters held their morning war councils at the kitchen table, which is the second step of Miss Mia’s ascension to the countertop, the first step being a stool. So instead of being all cute on the countertop she’d find some acoustically appropriate corner of El Rancho Pendejo to announce her annoyance.

Man, does her voice ever carry. Miss Mia may be a senior citizen, but she can still hit the high notes.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for the lack of “content” around here lately. (The fine weather for cycling may have played some small role.) We’re down one sister as of this morning — Heather flew back to Tennessee — but Beth will be with us for a couple more days, so I anticipate a continuing hitch in my digital gitalong.

The good news is, you can fill the lonely hours with the latest from Hal Walter, who is collaborating with son Harrison on a project that is something of a work in progress. “The Blur Goes to College: Full Tilt Boogie Too” is intended to be a book, eventually; in the meantime, they’re rolling it out on Substack, in serial form. Writes Hal:

It’s part comedy and part tragedy, part train wreck, part triumph. Moreover, this is a story of empathy and compassion, and exploring the rights of people with so-called “intellectual disabilities.” We wanted to get the story out as soon as possible. We hope you enjoy this serialized rollout on Substack as we finish the book and eventually get it into print.

If you enjoy what you see, you can subscribe to have chapters delivered by email. If you’d like to support the project, donations are gratefully accepted via Venmo @Hal-Walter (phone# 8756).

An old story

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
My Nobilette takes five at the Michial Emery trailhead.

It was the Wednesday Geezer Ride and I was running on O’Grady Standard Time as per usual.

I almost always make our meeting spot on time, or within shouting distance of it, anyway. But not this Wednesday.

After a distracting morning spent accommodating Herself and a visiting sister I was horsing the Nobilette northward along Tramway, a few minutes off my usual delayed kickoff and feeling a little light in the jersey pockets for some reason.

So I gave myself a quick pat-down.

“Shit, forgot my tools. Aw, probably won’t need them.” Onward.

Then the Watch cheeped.

“Forget your water bottle?” asked Herself.

“Shit again. That I will definitely need.”

So I texted the Ride Leader to let him know I’d join up somewhere along the route, then pulled a U and big-ringed it back toward El Rancho Pendejo, which this morning seemed aptly named.

While headed south I saw our Ride Leader headed north. We both looked at each other like, “WTF?” He should’ve been at the meetup while I should’ve been a couple minutes behind him and closing in.

“Back in a minute!” I yelled and punched it.

At the casa I grabbed bottle and tools and headed north once more, advising the Ride Leader via text that I’d try to catch up around Simms at Eagle Ridge, or at the Elena Gallegos Open Space.

But when I got to Eagle Ridge, no Geezers.

So I backtracked the route a bit. Nope. Rode up to Elena Gallegos. Nix. Did a couple laps of that loop to pass the time. Nuttin’.

Shit.

So I rip a quick shortcut to the next checkpoint, in High Desert. Nada.

¡Basta ya! I text again.

“Where you gents at?”

“At top of Elena’s,” replies the Ride Leader.

Sheeeeeeyit.

Anyway, to shorten an already-overlong story, one Geezer had a crook gut and bailed pre-ride, another flatted (the Ride Leader stopped to offer aid, which explains why he was running behind), and there were a couple other no-shows. A late start thus became even later. Our carefully designed velo-structure simply fell apart like a toilet-paper tent in a heavy rain.

At least our communications devices didn’t explode in our pockets or hands. First World Problems only, please.

In any event, so we’re a little slow off the start line. So what? Rivendell’s Grant Petersen likes “pleasurable, unhurried riding,” and so do I. When I can manage it, anyway.

• Hat tip to Alex Strickland, the former boss-fella at Adventure Cyclist, for passing along the Rivendell story.

Your Daily Don: Follow the leader

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
“Paul Krugman? How many divisions has he got?” (h/t Winston Churchill, “The Gathering Storm.”)

Almost all economists agree that taxes on imports are, in fact, passed on to consumers. Why? Because that’s what the evidence says, and it’s very hard to come up with an alternative story.

On the other hand, Trump loyalists — which these days means almost the entire Republican Party — insist as a group that foreigners, not American consumers, pay taxes on imports. Why? Because Donald Trump says so. — Paul Krugman, “Trumpism, Stalinism and the Tariff Debate.”