Dry rivers and damp bibs

September 15, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Another day, another record.

The Duck! City reached a high of 95° last Friday, and boy, did I feel every degree of it heading back to the rancho from the Rio.

The climbing is no big deal, about a thousand feet of vertical from the Paseo del Bosque’s intersection with Mountain Road NE. But most of it gets served up in the last 12 or so miles, with a side of stop-and-go on the mean streets and the Paseo de las Montañas bike path.

It should go without saying that a fella feels considerably warmer on the uphill leg of this 37-miler, even with steam escaping from the helmet vents.

We’ve either been breaking high-temp marks or missing them by a single degree lately. So it has been a delight to suddenly enjoy a little rain, straight out of the blue — 0.28 inch in the past 48 hours, which Noah might snort at but no New Mexican would sneeze at. Not here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where we have been drier than the proverbial popcorn fart.

The Monday-Wednesday Geezer Rides have been on hiatus, so when the rain started pelting down early yesterday morning I thought, “OK, fine, good excuse to go for a run.”

But I wasn’t really feeling it. I’ll be doing plenty of running if we ever get anything like winter around here. So when the rain abruptly shut off, I pulled a fendered bike from its hook in the garage — the rim-brake Soma Saga, which is wearing a rear Tubus rack with a strap suitable for packing a rain jacket — and off we went.

Why a fendered bike, when the rain had stopped? Simple. There may be puddles, and I don’t like collecting that famous damp brown stripe up the backside. It’s undignified for a man of my years and may lead to ill-informed gossip and speculation.

“Ah, look at the poor ould fella, would you now? Your man has gone and shite himself midride. Must be all alone in the world. No one to wipe ’is hole for ’im.”

“That’s a pretty nice bike, though. Someone must love him. Or at least tolerate him, manky arse and all.”

I am blessed in that regard, and also when it comes to bikes sporting fenders. I have three such at the moment and have had them all out in the past week to see if I could tempt the rain gods into having a wee. No joy. Rain before and rain after, but never during.

Maybe fenders don’t work that way. Maybe the rain gods see them and say: “Stand down, lads. We’ll never give the manky arse to that ould gobshite whilst he’s rocking the mudguards. Leave us wait until he takes that custom Nobilette for a long go into the East Mountains.”

‘Yeah, but it’s a dry heat. …’

July 28, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

The Rio Gonzo, as seen last Friday by Your Humble Narrator.

What a difference a day makes. Or even a few short hours.

On Friday I rode down to the bosque because why the hell not? I was sick of all my usual foothills routes and wanted to log some respectable mileage for a change, so off I went.

The New Albion Privateer sails the Paseo del Bosque.

Also sick of its usual route was the Rio Grande, which has buggered off to parts unknown. You can tell because rivers don’t usually sport tire tracks, not even if Jeebus is driving.

I knew the Rio had run dry since I last saw it back in April. But it’s one thing to know and another to see.

Anyway. The dearth of river notwithstanding, it was a lovely day, if warmish — 81° when I got a regrettably late start, 10 degrees hotter when I finished — and then Thor woke from his nap, got his clouds in a row, and began swinging Mjölnir like he meant business. Hammer time!

Boom! Our rain gauge showed 0.90 inch in less time than it takes to type “Our rain gauge showed 0.90 inch.” The National Weather Service told the Urinal that 1.74 inches fell at Indian School and Moon in a half hour, with near-record winds that peaked at 78 mph.

Photo liberated from what remains of the National Weather Service.

I mean, that storm flat parked itself overhead and let go, like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

“Remind me to turn off the sprinkler system,” I said to Herself. And it stayed off. Y’can’t touch this.

• • •

Now, of course, Loki is back on the job. Regular heat advisories from 1 to 8 p.m., high 90s to low triple digits.

No records set, as far as I know, but 9 in the a.m. is starting to feel a little late for the twice-weekly Geezer Rides. A second bottle goes in the seat-tube cage. Attacks are few and far between.

And mowing the lawn post-ride, like I did yesterday? That’s just stupid.

Having a lawn in the desert is stupid in and of itself, but having one and mowing it noonish moves the bar up a few notches.

Still, there’s the lawn, growing, and it won’t mow itself. I’ve been watching. That shit does not happen.

Maybe what I need is a bicycle with rotary blades attached. A velo-mower. And an early start. I could create a whole new thang and a magazine to chronicle its adventurers.

Nah. That’s even dumber than having a lawn in the desert.

• • •

Speaking of greenery stuffed into the ground, it seems that we may finally be getting the fabled fiber optic here in the cul-de-sac.

The Company Formerly Known As CenturyLink, a.k.a. CenturyTel, Qwest, et al., now calling itself Lumen Technologies, has provided our internet service for ages, even before we moved here in 2014. But for some reason Duck! City DSL is twice the price for half the speed we enjoyed in Bibleburg.

Even there, the tales of comically inept customer service were endless. Once we had a modem croak on us and The Company agreed to send us a new one. In that they proved better than their word. They sent us five of them, one after another, like Red Chinese soldiers marching to B-burg from Beijing over the bodies of their comrades.

Miss Mia loved her some Qwest modems on a chilly day in Bibleburg.

I may still have one in an old-tech box around here somewhere. I’m fairly certain I brought one with us when we moved because, hey, you never know, amirite? Miss Mia Sopaipilla loved toasting her po-po on one of those Qwest-branded Motorola jobbers Back in the Day®.

But I digress. We were talking about getting some fiber in our digital diet.

The water-company boyos were out in the cul-de-sac yesterday afternoon, spraying their blue cryptograms and hieroglyphics ever’ whichaway, so I asked one what was up. Thus I learned that the diggers are coming to bring us The Future, which we had in the B-burg a dozen or so years ago before time-traveling back to the stone knives and copper wire of Albuquerque.

“Take photos of your property before they get started,” the water dude advised. And I followed his advice. At least three of the companies charged with bringing fiber optic to Duck!Burg have been slapped with temporary stop-work orders after reports that they made a shambles of various properties.

I won’t lie. It’ll be great to have a faster, cheaper on-ramp to the Infobahn. But be careful what you wish for. The news of the day — a river of sand in Duck!Burg, shit monsoons in DeeCee — is already bad enough at a piddling 13.5 Mbps.

And it comes in a whole lot faster if it’s breaking just beyond the office window, where some rando rocking a backhoe is uprooting your sewer line.

Slinging in the rain

July 23, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

New Mexico has the *best* clouds, swear to Dog.

Looks like I picked the right day to sleep in.

I woke up way too early — 3 a.m. — then rolled over and went back to sleep until 6. Miss Mia was not amused, and said so, loudly, otherwise I might still be asleep even now.

Except Herself would’ve thundered in eventually to kick me up the hole, because she is a working woman and has a full day ahead involving the making of money, the care and feeding of the 401(k), retention of health insurance, and like that there. Some slacker is in charge of breakfast, which clearly was not making itself.

So up, up, I got, and set about my morning chores, which do not dollar up on the hoof nearly as nicely.

As I was emptying the litter box, making coffee, toasting bread, cooking oatmeal, brewing tea, medicating Miss Mia, and so on, I was thinking in terms of where to ride today. Forecast was for a slight chance of rain after noon, so I was considering a medium-long outing to the Morning Star Grocery and back. Haven’t been out there all year.

And then it started raining.

Well. Shit. Lucky me. If I hadn’t slept in, I’d have been out in that rain, dodging swings of Thor’s hammer instead of kicks from Herself’s tiny sandals.

• • •

Speaking of hard rains a-fallin’, I don’t expect there’s much that could go wrong — cough, cough, “Armageddon,” cough, cough — with helping Saudi Arabia plunge its bloody paws into Pandora’s nuclear box.

Writes Charles P. Pierce:

To the outside observer, there’s no reason to trust either end of this deal. The American side is being run by grifters and incompetents. The Saudi side is being run by people who have settled accounts with bone saws and beheadings and who also are sharper about money than the Americans ever will be. The idea that the current Saudi regime will be able to resist the temptations of enriching uranium without using it to build weapons feels laughable. I wouldn’t trust any government on earth that far, let alone an authoritarian theocracy with murder in its heart.

Alas, Babylon, etc. The Gospel according to Frederic Brown would seem germane here, if young Harry Graham were the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and not a bit slow. I take little solace from any headline that includes the null phrase, “Trump says. …”

Another Saga unwritten

July 14, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

My Soma Saga touring bike (rim-brake edition).

Well, the good news is, I won’t need fenders and a rain jacket for the ride downtown to collect my Subie from the shop.

The better news is, it is raining.

Reincarnation (the shop, not my hope for higher rebirth) just texted to say the old bucket of bolts is still deep into its semiannual wellness check and won’t be ready to come home until tomorrow.

It should go without saying that I had just pulled a fendered Soma Saga off its hook, aired up the tires, and lubed the chain.

But no matter. That needed doing anyway. And I got a couple hours of saddle time in this morning when it was still windless, cool, and dry, noodling home from the shop on the fenderless Soma Double Cross.

Besides, I may need the Saga tomorrow. The weather wizards are calling for a 70 percent chance of rain.

FIngers crossed.

After the deluge

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

You probably can’t see the scattering of raindrops on my sunglasses, proof that I chose wisely when I decided to go for a run at 7:30 this morning instead of waiting to see whether the skies cleared.

The forecasts from the National Weather Service and Weather Underground were for … well, frankly, they were for shit. No common ground. One declared that it was already raining (it was not) and might be doing so again later. The other? “A chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after noon.”

Well, there’s always a chance of something happening somewhere. It’s what makes life worth living. There’s a chance that Jeebus might come back, give Orange Julius Caesar a sandal right in the ballroom, and deliver a new gospel over his squealing carcass: “This is not what I had in mind at all, y’all.”

But I’m not betting the rancho on it.

I did catch a few sprinkles on my run, mostly on the return trip. But they added up to bupkis on the rain gauge.

So naturally I’m sitting here wondering whether I should’ve gone for a ride instead.

But, chance being the fickle bitch that she is, Jeebus is probably waiting out there to give me the other sandal in the chamois and proclaim, “Nope, not him either. Sheesh, you people and your false prophets. Do I have to hire a babysitter every time I step out for a couple thousand years?”