Tag: First snow

Hello, December. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Not exactly a Jack London hellscape, but still … first snow.

Well, December got right down to business.

So, too, did our Geezer Ride leader, who after checking the weather forecast for today pulled the ripcord on Sunday:

Monday is too wintry for me to ride and Tuesday may not be any better. In fact, we have entered the wintry season, which is too cold to plan bike rides. I don’t plan to send out any more emails until warm weather returns.

So it goes.

Anticipating a rideless Monday I made sure to saddle up yesterday, taking the Soma Double Cross out after lunch for a 90-minute sampler of roads, trails, and sandy washes. Even so, temps in the 40s had me sporting two long-sleeved jerseys, tights over bibs, wool socks, a tuque, and full-fingered gloves.

Only once did I feel slightly overdressed, while gutting it up a long, sandy grade leading to the Indian School trailhead. But then this is why God made zippers.

Right now, at 10 a.m., I’m looking at 36° with a brisk wind out of the northwest. I’ve set out and retrieved our trash and recycling bins, and I think that’s about it for the operation of human-powered wheeled vehicles today.

Shot with a water back

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

Snowpocalypse it is not.

It’s an ill wind, etc.

Yesterday a real window-rattler blew through, stripping all the brown needles from the pines and scattering them along our driveway and into the cul-de-sac. Also, and too, the back yard.

Then overnight, we got a little drizzle, followed by a soupçon of — wait for it — actual snow this morning.

Little accumulation is expected, but our widget said we’d gotten 0.06 inch by 8:15 a.m. (which became 0.22 inch by 4:15 p.m.), so ’ray for us, amirite? Something to blog about other than genocide, sedition, and creeping idiocy, against which a vaccine there is not.

Speaking of which, Herself got the latest Bug shot on Tuesday and it knocked her flat on her teensy little keister. Spent most of Wednesday in the bed and lost all interest in the delicious meals prepared thrice daily by Your Humble Narrator.

Yesterday she began shambling around and about a bit and today she seems much more like Herself (haw), though her appetite remains AWOL; breakfast was coffee and a bite of whole-wheat toast with butter and jam.

I haven’t gotten stuck yet. My last shot was almost exactly a year ago, at one of the local senior centers, and I suppose I should go get myself the latest and greatest, though it apparently targets the variant before the one that is currently dominant.

But goddamnit it, I like my food. And blogging from the bed is unsatisfactory.

On that topic, no word from the Happiness Engineers about the overwrought comments window, which seems to have magically downsized itself overnight to the version I saw over at Better Burque.

I suspect that some of our WordPress issues might be resolved if I were to abandon the Classic Editor for the Block Editor, but I consider this a last resort.

A theme change might help — as I’ve mentioned before, this one, Kubrick, has been “retired.” But I like its simplicity and several test drives have failed to turn up any suitable replacement that doesn’t somehow start inching me into that goldurned, consarned, dadblasted Block Editor, like some old fart tottering into assisted living with Big Nurse on his six.

Not yet, goddamnit. Not yet.

Toasty … for now

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Miss Mia Sopaipilla toasts her tummy on one of our new backyard walls.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla may find her daily backyard promenade going on hiatus for a while.

The weather wizards say a “potent cold front” is hooking up with a “fast-moving storm system” and we may be compelled to endure a short stretch of weather that is something other than 65° and sunny.

O, the agony. Still, if whatever we’re served comes with free water I’m all for it.

Expectations are that this first taste of winter weather will have a short shelf life here. Our readers to the north seem to be in for some heavy shoveling, however. Be judicious; give some thought to the lower back.

Speaking of shoveling, Mike Ha’pence just got tossed onto the growing pile of GOP Pestilential Candidates Who Are Not Orange and Under Indictment. Gosh, Mother, it makes a man’s eyes damp, for sure.

Draught for a drought

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Man, you just can’t beat the clouds in New Mexico, even if they occasionally snow on you.

Seven inches. I measured it, with a steel ruler.

No, not that. The snow. The landscape drank it the way a wino chugs a short dog.

You’d be surprised how quickly an Albuquerque lawn can drink seven inches of snow. Maybe not.

Winter’s drive-by with its record snowfall and low temperature meant I had to crank up the furnace two days earlier than last year. There’s something final about the sound of that Trane XR80 groaning back to hideous life; every time I switch the thermostat from “Cool” to “Heat” I feel as though I’ve just driven a stake through the heart of summer.

The streets cleared quickly — after 133 vehicle crashes and 31 injuries, nobody wanted to be on them, not even the snow.

But if you were afoot and kept your eyes open it wasn’t awful. I went out for a couple hourlong walks and by Friday it was warm enough for a ride, in long sleeves, knickers and tuque.

Anyway, we’ve got a stretch of 60-something and sunny on tap, so it looks like the landscape is back on the wagon after slamming its cold one.

Unhorsed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Don’t get wisterical. It’s just a little snow.

We were on something of a weather carousel here this morning, a slowly revolving lazy Susan serving up blue sky, clouds, rain, sleet, and snow. Don’t like what’s set before you? Patience. Another option will be coming around directly.

Eventually, ol’ Suze coasted to a stop … on snow.

Oh, well. It was bound to happen eventually. It’s October, f’chrissakes. Cyclocross season in an ordinary year, which this is not, with the Giro just wrapped and the Vuelta ongoing.

I got my cyclocross in yesterday before the weather went all to shitaree, rolling south on the foothills trails past Copper and back again.

No running, thanks all the same. Not even a hike-a-bike. The weather was cool, but the ground was dry, alarmingly so, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t ride on my trusty Steelman Eurocross.

Alas, as Thomas McGuane has written, “sometimes a man needs to be afoot to keep from going broke, get down and go to his tasks, instead of posing on the horse. …”

So today, no horsing around. I pulled on some long pants, grabbed the push broom, and herded some snow off my driveway. Yippee-ki-yay, etc.