“Huh,” sez I, casting an appraising glance at the clouds glowering down at me from atop the Sandias. “Think I’ll mow the lawn.”
Boom. About 30 seconds after I finished and put the mower back in the garage, Thor gave the neighborhood a solid power-washing.
The deluge only lasted a few minutes, but that shit was coming in sideways. It was surf’s up across the cul-de-sac, and the mom next door probably wished she had an airboat to fetch the kiddos home from wherever because Nissan Altimas don’t float like the original VW bugs.
But hey, nobody bitches about rain in the desert. Unless it catches them from behind with the earbuds in, walking the Chihuahua down an arroyo.
Waiting for rain around here is like waiting for a Republican to grow a pair.
It huffs, and it puffs, aaaaaaaand … that’s about it.
Nevertheless, the clouds have helped keep us delightfully cool. Unlike the Tour de France, which so far seems to be a searing symphony of skidmarks and blood trails, scored for ambulance sirens.
Some pundits have been calling for a return to an “opening prologue” to mellow everyone out in the early going of Le Tour. Which might be smart, if we overlook that “opening” nonsense. A prologue is a preface, an introduction, a preceding event or development.
Have you ever seen a prologue three stages in? You have not.
Anyway, prologues are far from foolproof. Chris Boardman crashed in the 1995 prologue. Stuey O’Grady did likewise in 2007, as did Alejandro Valverde in 2017.
But it’s true that the carnage tends to be retail rather than wholesale in an “opening prologue.” A racer gets taken out by a tight corner, a slick descent, or a roadside eejit, and a writer gets taken out by the copy desk. Le Tour goes on.
The dread Crusty County Snow Spiral of Doom. Photo by Hal Walter
A wind-driven rain blew us right out of bed last night about three hours after lights out.
I say “last night” because it was still dark. But it was just after midnight. And it sounded as though Poseidon was power-washing the house, or maybe shot-peening it, which probably doesn’t do much to harden stucco against the elements.
As I will never be smart, this was about the time it occurred to me that I probably should’ve taken down the various bird feeders hanging around and about El Rancho Pendejo, maybe cinched down the cover over the gas grill, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
But this morning, all the feeders and the grill cover remained in place. The only damage was to the plastic footlocker we use to store the cushions for our patio furniture; that sucker got blown over and one of the gas struts FUBARed.
The cushions, as you might deduce, got wet.
I estimate that we got a foot or two of rain, but since it was coming in sideways at warp 5 it only amounted to a quarter inch or so. We can expect more of the same later today, it seems. And with the weather widget showing 43° at 8:48 in the ayem it’s about as warm as it’s going to get.
About 12,000 Burqueños lost power last night, and the problem persists this morning. Khal S. reports that he and a few thousand of his fellow Santa Feos were back to kerosene lanterns, wood heat, and carrier pigeons too. Up north my man Hal Walter was likewise back to a traditional mountain lifestyle (freezing to death in the dark), and woke up to snow; the icing on the cake, as it were.
All in all, it seems a good day to stay indoors and listen to Miles Davis. Even if it’s not ’round about midnight.
I had just turned into the cul-de-sac when it started raining.
My timing couldn’t have been better. I had left El Rancho Pendejo 90 minutes earlier for a brisk morning march along various foothills trails, because the weather wizards were predicting thundershowers. And when I turned around, up by Embudo Dam, I saw that they did not lie.
The Sandman cometh.
So I cranked up the pace a bit as the skies darkened, and then darkened some more. The wind sprang up, as it will, out of the north. Onward.
Finally, just past Candelaria on Trail 365, I broke into a run. Or what I call a run, anyway. A runner might disagree, or perhaps just laugh out loud.
And then, boom, just as I got home, the skies opened up and pissed rain … for a solid minute. Maybe two.
Oh, well. In the desert, two minutes of rain is better than none.
Well, it was pretty easy to do the ol’ social distancing today.
The fog crept down the foothills like something out of a Sherlock Holmes movie, followed by the rain, and finally, the snow.
A fan. I’m not a fan of this fan, either.
Well, it was “snow” only in the sense that it involved fat white flakes falling, but nothing stuck around long enough to be shoveled. It certainly wouldn’t have kept a Belgian off the bike. I don’t think anything can.
But it did the trick for me. I rode the trainer for 45 minutes, which I hate, and then did a little light resistance training, which also, too, and likewise.
Still, anything beats watching our national “leadership” act more like Al Capone than Al Schweitzer. These pendejos couldn’t organize a beer run for a frat house if the liquor store were downstairs.
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