“On your left! On your LEFT! ON YOUR LEFT, GODDAMNIT! AIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!”
2018 file photo by Chuck Jagermeister
Turns out it was a glider pilot who augured in yesterday near the Menaul trailhead, a spiky area from which Herself and I have collected ouchy souvenirs of various ground-level mishaps.
“Get the tweezers, Bactine, and whiskey, hon’, we got a long day ahead of us.”
You’d think these dudes had engines, the way they stay aloft forever. But they’re just riding the thermals like big ol’ hawks.
Well, there was me. These daredevils may have been tooling around above the Sandias like Icarus and Daedalus, but yours truly kept his landing gear on the deck. I saw my shadow, too, and you know what that means. Bundle up.
But for today, temps hit the mid-50s, and basically anyone who wasn’t chained to a concrete bunk in the Graybar Hotel was out and about, doing something.
“I’m trying to get my bike legs on!” wailed one rider as I yielded a narrow section of trail.
“I feel your pain,” I replied. I’ve been running the trails, but riding the road; this was my first trail ride of 2019.
Ordinarily I shun the trails on sunny weekends, reasoning that I get to play pretty much whenever I please while the cube farmers have a limited window of opportunity. But it’s been a long week and I felt I needed a change of pace.
Speaking of which, there will be no Radio Free Dogpatch this week, for a number of perfectly defensible reasons. I had a notion, but it ran off with one of the voices in my head. I hope they didn’t get married. We don’t need any children from that quarter.
It was a warmish, slightly humid day, which must be fine for flying.
I was running through here earlier in the day and never thought to look up. Mostly I look down, for tarantulas, buzzworms and drunken Republicans.
This afternoon I cranked up the Vespa for a short runaround, just to keep the battery topped off, and as I putt-putted toward the Menaul trailhead I noticed orange windsocks fluttering in the parking lot.
Looking up, I saw a hang glider cutting didoes over the foothills, so I pulled over and snapped a couple pix with the old Canon S110.
Looks like fun, doesn’t it? But so does riding a cyclocross bike on Sandia singletrack, until you have that unexpected get-off.
There are lots of pointy bits down here on Planet Albuquerque, and as luck would have it I found one while running through this very area this morning.
A terrorist shrub stabbed me in the left shoulder blade with a broken limb as I lumbered through a rocky patch on Trail 365, my gaze focused on the water-scoured trail, which is studded with toe-grabbers, ankle-twisters and face-planters.
Maybe I would have been safer aloft. We’ll never know. I don’t even get big air on the bike.
Up in the air, Junior Birdman.
When it’s 66 degrees in February — 66! — you get the hell out of the house, chores be damned.
There was all manner of human-power transportation going on out there this afternoon. People cycling. People running. People walking. People walking dogs. Big people carrying little people.
You are cleared for landing on runway … well, actually, it’s a trail, but go ahead, put ‘er down.
And people flying. Not in airplanes, or like Superman, but still.
I noticed the hang gliders drifting around the Sandia foothills as I rolled away from El Rancho Pendejo, but soon got engrossed in my own little outing and forgot all about them until I was cresting a hill on the way home.
Zoom, there one was, right overhead, and if I’d had an actual camera with me instead of a phone, why, you’d be looking at a closeup of him right now.
Instead, you have to settle for this miserable phone shot of him preparing to land while his buddy continued to bank lazily overhead. I will never be smart.
But you knew that.
Patrick O'Grady sells words and pictures to Adventure Cyclist, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and pretty much anyone else who can spell his name correctly next to the phrase which sounds so musical to his aged ears: "Pay to the order of. ..." For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink. He got worse
with a keyboard.
Now he has a microphone.
God help us all.
If you need a tub of margarine, a spatula, and the dubious assistance of a giggling friend to squeeze into your old team jersey, it's time to step up to some kit that fits. Click the pic to join the Old Guys Who Get Fat in Winter Racing Team!
Know your rights, and defend them.
Fight hate.
Defending press freedom since 1970
Colorado Central columnist Hal Walter cranks out a book now and then, and they'd look swell in your library (they also read nicely, too). Click the image to order yours.
Drink the Kool-Aid
Words and pictures on the DogPage © 2020 by Patrick O’Grady/Mad Dog Media. All rights and most lefts reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, redistributed, laser-printed, photocopied, crocheted into a sampler, knitted into sweater, tattooed on a floozy, spray-painted on an overpass, tapped out in Morse code, sublimated onto a jersey, shared in whispers in the back row of an adult theater, shouted from the rooftops, scored for tuba and banjo, translated into Squinch, or communicated via telepathy without the permission of and hefty payment to a heavily armed, chemically preserved cyclo-cross addict who knows your IP address. Bonehead shysters and the simpletons who employ them, take note: The opinions expressed on the DogPage contain toxic quantities of hyperbole, satire, parody and humor. Pah-ro-dee. Hyyuuu-mor. Acquire a sense of same or read at your own risk.
