Muchas gracias, El Niño

Hot plate, señor. No, not the one on the table; the one in your head.

Hotter, drier, and windier — that’s the prediction as regards monsoon season from the National Weather Service Forecast Office here in The Duck! City.

A heat advisory is in our immediate future, as in tomorrow, the actual Fourth of July, which this year seemed to start sometime around last Thursday and will end … well, who knows? Not me, Skeezix.

There are a few fires going, prescribed and otherwise, the largest being the Pass Fire in the Gila National Forest. Nothing like what’s been going on in Canada; not yet, anyway.

Yesterday I rolled out for a little 30-miler with 1,200 feet of vertical gain — the lion’s share of it coming in the final grind from I-25 to The County Line barbecue joint — and it got a little toasty there toward the end. The brain was not quite at a rolling boil but even a brisk simmer gets your attention a couple hours into what should be a two-bottle ride.

Today it seemed wise to skip the Monday spin with the ould fellahs and instead go for a half-hour trail jog with Herself. Early. Before Tōnatiuh fired up His comal.

Tonight brings the cul-de-sac’s Fourth fiesta, featuring non-explosive, ground-based “fireworks” of the type that would have caused my younger self to use descriptive language that would get the 69-year-old me canceled in a heartbeat if anyone paid any attention at all to what I thought, said, or wrote. Which mostly they don’t, lucky for me.

Neighbors to the east have two kids, neighbors to the west have three grandkids, and the couple on the northeast corner have a toddler, so there will be sprouts of various sizes gamboling around and about, shrieking at the pips, pops, and poots as the Buck supermoon rises.

If we’re lucky the skeeters will take the night off. It’s too bloody hot to don the Levi’s body armor, and I don’t have a sword small enough to behead the little bastards.

A bang-up job

The morning clouds have been something to celebrate.

The only firecracker I personally set off today was a itty-bitty kiddie snap-pop left over from the previous night’s celebration in the cul-de-sac, a neighbor’s lightly explosive summertime labor of love. I hit it with a tire as I rolled out for an Independence Day bike ride.

Snap!

That felt about right, considering.

Albuquerque seemed unusually quiet for a Fourth of July, and I wondered once again whether The Duck! City is a place that people leave for a holiday, not one they visit.

Or maybe we’re all just wondering whether there’s anything left of America to celebrate.

We had a good group at last night’s fireworks show. Not exactly a representative sample of the U.S. population — hey, this is the ’burbs, and the foothills to boot — but if we were heavy on white-collar types from the university, the lab, and the government, we also had people of color and a sizable crop of kids, the most I’ve ever seen at one of these shindigs.

There were snacks and beverages and folding chairs. Squeals of delight from the young, and oohs and ahhs from the rest of us, with the occasional round of applause for a particularly percussive fountain.

The show didn’t start until 8:30 and so we were up a little later than we like, and I may have been a little grumpier than usual as I toured the foothills this morning on my old road-racing bike. Frowned as some oblivious tool blew right through a stop sign. Got mildly irked at an American flag protruding from a New Mexican zia with a security camera built in. (One nation, under surveillance.) And I actually flipped the bird to a banner reading, “Don’t Blame Us, We Voted for Trump!”

Finally, motorists eastbound on Paseo del Norte still haven’t figured out the new right-turn configuration at Tramway. Jesus wept, etc. You want to watch your ass cycling southbound if you ever want to see another fireworks show.

All this being said, there are bright spots. One of them is out there in the cul-de-sac right now with a leaf blower, clearing away any detritus he might have overlooked last night as the rest of us headed for bed.

He doesn’t have to do it. It’s a free country, amirite? But he’s doing it anyway, and not just for show, either. He does it because it’s a nice thing to do.

Sallying Fourth: It’s a gas

Get thee behind me.

Behold! The Fourth of July Holiday Travel Extravaganza is upon us, and gas prices are … falling?

Hee, and also haw.

You know what this means, right? If the prices had stayed high, why, you’d stay home, roast your weenies in the back yard. But they’ve dipped a few pennies, so fill ’er up, pard’, we’re gonna go visit grandma back at The Old Home Place, burn some of this discount dinosaur wine.

’Course, soon as you get there, boom! Up shoots the price at the pump. And son, you got to pay it to get home. A whole bunch of you.

Notes AAA:

Car travel volume … will break previous records as 42 million opt to drive this Independence Day. Recent issues with air travel and ongoing concerns of cancellations and delays may be driving this increase.

I hope to leave old Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster in the garage through Monday. My idea of a real good time on a holiday weekend is not driving anywhere, even in The Duck! City.

Especially in The Duck! City. Herself recently told me a tale of some poor commuter who had a dope fiend jump on her car and beat in the windshield. Apparently some passing hardhats had to sedate him with a shovel. I’d rather hitch a ride on a flaming garbage truck.

Go Man Van Gogh

Get thee behind me.

The Fourth of July holiday weekend is upon us, we are urged to park our bad selves at home, and here comes The New York Times to torment us with an article headlined “The #Vanlife Business Is Booming.”

Because of course it is. If you have a few hundred thou’ burning a hole in your skinny jeans, that is.

The hoi polloi may find the Mercedes Metris conversion more their style (or the lack thereof, ho ho ho). You can get one of those for under a hundred large.

Or you can just knucklehead it on the cheap. Throw a surplus pup tent, a Coleman bag, and an Igloo full of PBR and weenies into the Wagoneer, break down a gate at some national forest, and shoot the ol’ AK until you can’t hear the voices in your head anymore.

Anyone tells you to knock it off, or asks where your face mask’s at, tell the sumbitch he’s gonna wish he was wearing a catcher’s mask and give ’im the butt in the beezer.

Murka, baybee! USA! USA! USA! Land of the Free*!

* Some restrictions may apply.