Ditch that rut

June 26, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Ruts. I’ve been stuck in a couple lately.

Take the 20-mile ride around the foothills. Please. Sure, you do enough of them, they add up to a nice pile of miles at week’s end. But still, damn.

Also, the not running. I never have been and never will be a “runner.” But as Richard Pryor has taught us, running is a useful skill to have at one’s disposal in case of emergency.

But you got to stay in shape and shit, ’cause you never can tell when in real life you will have to … run! That’s right, run. Goddamnit, run. Why get killed when you can … run! That’s right, a lot of people get a ass-whipping, and you could run. You’ll be in the hospital, your ego will heal a lot faster than a broken jaw. ’Cause you’ll still be in the hospital talking about “Shit, I should have run.” Run! That’s right! If somebody pull a knife on you, and you can’t pull out nothing but a hand with some skin on it, your intelligence ought to tell you to … run!

So I’m slowly easing back into running — nothing outlandish, just a 5K, one per week — just in case anybody gets the idea that I’d be a whole lot quieter in a hospital with my piehole wired shut.

And I’m trying to break my oh-so-convenient 20-miles-in-the-foothills habit. Today I logged a 33-miler, descending to the bosque for a looksee — some dipshit(s) have been setting fires down there — and then climbing back to El Rancho Pendejo.

This three-hour ride weaves together several of the local off-street bike paths, which is a pleasant change of pace from, say, Tramway, which always makes me feel like a cottontail on a rifle range. That itch between the shoulder blades, etc.

And at the bosque I was rewarded with my first coyote sighting of 2025. Right troublesome little bastards they can be, but I still like seeing them. I’ll take an honest coyote over the devious dawgs of DeeCee any old day.

Right in the eggs

January 25, 2025January 25, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Whew. Looks like I picked a good week to go on a news fast. These pendejos are pitching fastballs. At this pace there won’t be a wall without shit running down it before Valentine’s Day. A lot of it won’t stick, but it’s gonna pile up. The forecast calls for deep doo.

My news fast coincided with a cold snap that kept me off the bike. I don’t object to cycling in the 30s if the sun’s out, but when Tōnatiuh abdicates in favor of Ehecatl, it’s time to go for a run.

Thing is, I’m not a runner. Not really. A runner certainly wouldn’t call me one. Especially if s/he’d caught me at it.

I can pretend for 45 minutes but that’s about it. And that doesn’t burn a lot of daylight for a fella trying to avoid the doomscrolling.

Still, I managed. For about four days. Who can avert his or her eyes while passing a domestic disturbance in daylight or an unshaded window at night? This is like driving past a five-car crash without checking the gutters for rolling heads.

So I eased back in, slowly. A little Kevin Drum. Then a bit of Charlie Pierce. This is akin to reading the police report, if Joseph Wambaugh wrote it. The Atlantic, for a soupçon of button-down viewing with alarm.

Finally, I hit the hard stuff. The New York Times. Holy shit, etc.

I hope the rubes who elected this bozo are enjoying the shitshow. Looks like it’ll be a good long while before he gets those egg prices down.

Valley of the Signs

September 17, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Herself and I were enjoying the usual weekly quail-spotting ride through High Desert and Sandia Heights yesterday when another cyclist caught up to us and we began chatting, as cyclists do.

It being The Duck! City, we found ourselves collecting one of those odd tales that seem to be included in every random encounter with a stranger.

After discussing the beautiful almost-fall weather, other places we had lived, and the critters we had seen, our new riding buddy told us about a neighbor who objected strenuously to hikers tramping along the arroyo that snakes along behind their houses.

So much so, he said, that one day she hid in the scrub with a Louisville Slugger and took a little vigorous batting practice on one of them.

Now, I’ve ridden this arroyo a time or two, or one very much like it in the general vicinity, and I’ve never seen any signs, placards, fencing, or other indication that it was private property. Which I don’t believe it is.

Nonetheless, I told him I’d keep my eyes peeled henceforth.

“Watch out for an old bat with a bat,” he advised.

Summer on simmer

September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

The Chinese pistache would like some rain, please. And thank you.

More clouds. Fewer birds. Lower temperatures. In the morning, anyway.

And come to think of it, in the evening, too. I’m not needing a wee rinse before bedtime to resolve the late-in-the-day stickiness that goes along with life in the desert and a firm hand on the thermostat.

Damp it is not. The drought not only persists, it thrives. The Rio Grande is on the edge of running dry in The Duck! City for a second consecutive year. When I stripped the bed of its sheets in the dark this morning I got a free static-electricity light show for my troubles.

But at least my rides and runs have not been the usual rolling boil for the past week. Maybe I can resume my habit of slipping out nine-ish instead of kitting up in the dark, when I need a headlight to see, not just to be seen.

It’s not summer’s end; not yet. But it’s around the bend, just flyin’.

There’s a smaller crowd queueing up at our bird feeders, and they’re getting a later start, too.

On yesterday’s looping ride through Sandia Heights I didn’t spot a single solitary quail, not a one. Didn’t even hear any. Just last Sunday Herself and I saw them by the dozens as we spun leisurely through the Heights.

This morning I made our oatmeal on the stove, instead of mixing up a müesli version to “cook” in the fridge the night before. We added diced peaches, chopped pecans, and local honey, and washed it down with a side of hot tea.

At the stove, with the windows open, I caught a whiff of bacon frying nearby. The pig is Herself’s spirit animal and she won’t tolerate it on a plate, but apparently marrying one is OK, as long as it makes a pork-free breakfast.

Then, suddenly, at 9 on the dot with the breakfast dishes washed, the birds turn up. The hummers re-enact the Battle of Britain around their feeders, and the finches perch greedily at theirs while the doves stalk the ground hunting misplaced morsels.

Is this the summertime equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow? Do we have six more weeks of summer on tap?

I’d best kit up and get out there. Don’t forget the sunscreen. Might be another scorcher.

The endorphin hit parade

February 4, 2022February 4, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Six degrees at 6 a.m. Is it an omen, d’ye think?

Probably not. Just the pre-caffeination brain spinning its wheels like a 1996 F-150 with a bed full of firewood, half in the ditch on a snowy Colorado afternoon.

And yeah, I’ve been there.

Today’s high may be that in name only, so I’m thinking ixnay on the ike-bay. A short run seems sensible, if you will concede that running — with empty hands, anyway — can ever be sensible.

I don’t mind it, as long as I’m not breaking ankles. But running will never be my first choice if the temperature is 40° or better and there isn’t snow on the deck.

The Mitchell High School swim team in 1970, the year we went 11-0.

Last on my endorphin hit parade is swimming. I spent 10 years on swim teams, ages 8 to 18, and swam laps off and on afterward in Tucson, Pueblo, Denver, and Bibleburg, because I was a member of some gym that had a 25-meter pool and why not?

But I got tired of smelling like chemicals and wearing green eyebrows and feeling my hair freeze between the gym and the car every February. The hair freezing is no longer an issue, but the rest of it still applies. A friend of a similar vintage quips, “We all end up in the pool,” but I notice he ain’t there yet.

Plus there’s a weird sonic vibe in the pool area, like you’re stroking through a Louisiana Best Buy with a leaky roof during a hurricane. And you have to see other old dudes bareass in the shower, which should be part of any “Scared Straight” programs the schools are running these days.

“This is what prison looks like, kids.”

“Jesus Christ! I’ve shoplifted my last pack of smokes, honest!”

That right there is a kid who’ll take up running with empty hands. Unless he steals a bike first.