Sun of a bitch

October 14, 2023October 14, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

El Rancho Pendejo in The Duck! City was the perfect spot to catch the 2023 annular solar eclipse.

Herself scored some paper safety goggles and we inspected the celestial event at our leisure, from the back patio.

Things grew dark and chilly, the birds went all radio silence, and the sun looked like a big Power button just waiting for Someone to click it off. Happily, no one did.

And you bet your ass I howled at the sucker like a werewolf. Got to keep the neighbors on their toes.

The light throughout was truly weird, with acid-flashback shadows on the brick pavers and concrete walkway. Put me in mind of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” it did.

You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn’t be any plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties.

But unlike Hank Morgan, I couldn’t derive any profit from the eclipse; our modern lords and ladies mostly keep their heads where the sun don’t ever shine, preferring to work their mischiefs in the dark. So I just enjoyed it.

All along the walkway, princes kept the view.

Walking on the moon

July 15, 2023July 15, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Never fear. We’re still earthworms. It’s just that The Duck! City landscape looks a bit lunar in spots, especially at the eastern end of Comanche Road NE, which tilts up and turns to dirt just short of Foothills Trail 365.

During our nine years here a few eastbound motorists have failed to notice that Comanche just sort of, oh, I don’t know, ends at its intersection with Camino de la Sierra NE. Their vehicles take flight, briefly, then return to earth, their only laurels being the remains of the wire fence marking the end of Comanche and the beginning of the Sandia Mountains. Resale value and driving privileges suffer. Lunacy of a different sort entirely.

Anyway, it’s not hot enough around here to be the moon, which enjoys highs of 260° Fahrenheit in full sunlight. It just feels that way lately.

Herself and I got a late start on our weekly bike ride this morning, and it was getting right toasty as we climbed Big Horn Ridge Drive toward a couple of whoop-de-doos that are more fun when done from the other direction.

Bunnies we had seen, but no quail, and I was thinking we were going to get skunked (har de har har) until a lone adult quail ran across the road just ahead of us, saw us, and pulled a U, scurrying back down into the gully.

We stopped to have a peek over the side, and wowser, there were at least three pairs of adults and a whole mob of juveniles puttering around down there, wishing we would quit gawking and be on our way, like the two e-bikers who zip-zapped past without a word.

It pays to keep your eyes peeled around here. You never know what you might see, even if it’s only a windshield full of wire and the Sandias coming up fast.

Cleared to land

June 23, 2023June 23, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The thing I hate most about driving to the airport at dark-thirty, surrounded by one-eyed, high-beam tailgaters, lift-kitters’ lugnuts, and Fruehauf mudflaps, is that I am never the person actually flying anywhere.

Other than to the airport, that is.

I have not flown through the air with the greatest of unease since March 2014, if memory serves. Unless you count my unscheduled short-range trips on the local trails, which cause only physical trauma.

Could I even remember how to navigate the unfriendly skies after nearly a decade on the deck? Unlikely. Also unnecessary. If the trip is under 2,000 miles and involves no bridgeless water crossings I will travel via Air Subaru, where the pilot is unreliable but a close personal friend, we go and stop at my convenience, and all the mechanicals take place at ground level.

But Herself, who is made of sterner stuff, blazes a trail straight through the customer-disservice wilderness without batting an eye.

She did it again this morning, far too early, in order to visit a friend in Minnesota. I was the first stage of her launch vehicle and burned up during re-entry, which necessitated a short nap.

But now Herself is safely in orbit around Minneapolis and I’m back at my desk in Mission Control, where the temps are inching toward triple digits with winds of 25 mph and up.

Say, did someone ship me to Mars while I was napping? Anyone seen Elon lately? You can’t take your eyes off that bozo for a nanosecond. That’s his mission, anyway. I find myself rooting for simultaneous knockouts.

Good times, bad times

May 13, 2023May 13, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The wind woke me at midnight, a reminder that despite the warnings from the National Weather Service I had neglected to take down the wind chimes and hummingbird feeders and store the patio furniture’s cushions in their plastic footlocker.

But I’m a light sleeper, and thought drowsily, “Oh, well. How bad could it be?” And rolled over and went back to sleep.

Pretty bad, as it turns out.

About three hours later it sounded like God thought He was John Bonham and our house was His drum kit and it was time to perform “Moby Dick.” The long version.

Well. When God wants to rock out, you gotta get up and dance.

We figured that if the thundering blew us out of a sound sleep, it was probably scaring the bejaysis out of Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who overnights in the half-bath, where a goodly wind can set the fan vent a-flapping like a hi-hat cymbal.

Naturally, she couldn’t have cared less. Nothing scares Miss Mia. But she was delighted to find out that we had suddenly become lovers of the wee small hours like her and immediately set about performing her morning rituals, albeit a few hours early.

Outside, the cushions were up against a wall — we got lucky, the worst of the wind was coming from the south, or else they’d have been spotted flying in formation over the San Luis Valley — but the backyard trees lost a few limbs and our young pistache was bobbing and weaving like a stoner in the front row at Madison Square Garden in 1973.

So I stabilized it with a couple rubber bungee straps, stuffed the cushions in their footlocker, and collected the hummingbird feeders. Then Herself and I stumbled back to bed.

Well, that pissed off Miss Mia, who hates a party-pooper the way Clarence Thomas hates feeling a little light in the wallet pocket. And for the next couple of hours she shared her feelings with us at some volume, sounding like Robert Plant wearing pants three sizes too small, until we finally said to hell with it and got up for good.

It was then that I noticed the wind had peeled the outer layer off our “Save the Elena Gallegos” yard sign to reveal a campaign pitch for Khalid Emshadi, a Republican candidate for the state House of Representatives, who got blown away last year by incumbent Democrat Elizabeth Thomson.

No such thing as an ill wind, I guess.

Spring training

May 8, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

It was a good week on the bike.

Actually, make that “bikes.”

The red Steelman Eurocross, Jones, and Sam Hillborne all enjoyed some quality springtime during the week, and the New Albion Privateer got the nod on Sunday.

Nothing outlandish, mind you. I’m not training for anything; just trying to avoid collapsing into a smelly heap of bone splinters and bad ideas. We’re talking 90 minutes per outing, or thereabouts, with a thousand or so feet of vertical gain, and an average speed that wouldn’t impress anyone, especially me.

I’ve never been what you would call fast, but I’ve been faster.

“Listen up, you kids, don’t make me stop this tree and come back there.”

Still, who cares? The idea is to be above ground and moving around, amirite? You know what my dad was doing when he was my age? Nothing! Because he had been dead for seven years.

So when Herself and I rolled out for our Sunday ride we were focused not on heart rate, average speed, or mileage, but on how many Gambel’s quail we might see (that would be a half-dozen, plus a couple deer).

Back at the ranch we have hummingbirds re-enacting the Battle of Midway around our three feeders, finches of various types bellied up to two tubes of birdseed while the doves prowl the ground for dropped morsels, and a northern flicker feeding babies bunkered up in a dead limb on our backyard maple.

And our young Chinese pistache tree is coming along, too.

It’s starting to get warm, so I expect we’ll start seeing buzzworms soon. But it’s OK. Every garden has its snake. Just steer clear of the fruit stand.