I suppose we could look on the bright side here. Had our early adopter not gotten popped for allegedly e-scooting under the influence — the cops say she got all beered up at Marble Brewery and had planned to hit at least one more grog shop downtown — she probably would’ve clambered into her land yacht and driven home to Belen, an hour or so to the south, depending on how many ditches and medians one inspects en route.
Or tried to, anyway. ¿Quien sabes? Having had some small experience in these matters I expect it’s a lot easier to hide one’s impairment from the John Laws behind the tinted windows of a four-wheeled Ford than on one of their two-wheeled throwaways.
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.
… because pictures of cute kitty-cats are proven to take the sting out of bad news. I read it on the Internet.
Headlines like these are among the reasons why I’m glad I don’t work in tourism or law enforcement. It must be a bitch, coaxing the rubes here for a visit only to mop them up later somewhere along the Mother Road.
It’s gonna be tough for the Duke City to become a “world-class community,” whatever the hell that is, if the locals keep croaking the visitors and everybody can read all about it in the daily blat.
Maybe the city can contract with Sandia National Labs to develop some sort of nuclear street sweeper, a disintegration beam to erase the corpus delicti before the scribes can tally a body count.
“Bob who?” replies the desk sergeant with a quizzical expression. “Nope, nobody by that name in the blotter. We haven’t had a homicide reported all year. Maybe he moseyed on through and up to Bibleburg. They’re killing ’em like crazy up there.”
A snapshot from the cul-de-sac last evening, at the conclusion of The Boo’s walk.
Albuquerque has its problems, to be sure. Joblessness, crime, drivers who should not be permitted to operate grocery-store scooters … but it flat brings the sunset.
* The headline is from Ed Abbey’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” which featured another elderly, bearded weirdo from Albuquerque.
God damn. Another long shift in the barrel, including three-plus hours of Live Update Guy, one “Shop Talk” cartoon, and one “Mad Dog Unleashed” column.
Still, some people had worse days.
• The House GOP managed to fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking its thumb.
• Der Trumpenführer invaded Washington and it went over about as well as the Russian thing did for that other guy.
• Roger Ailes seems badly in need of a lock on his zipper (the filthy old shitbag may find that it’s better to keep rubbing his little weenie all over the news business than trying to stick it into actual, you know, like, women, an’ stuff).
• Albuquerque seems to be a giant open-air, free-range prison populated entirely by killers, thieves, firebugs, rapists and burglars.
Mad Blog Media 