More rain, which, yay. And sunshine this morning, which, likewise.
Leftovers from last night’s rain.
It’s pleasant upon awakening to reach for socks instead of sunscreen. And to have nodded off to a stout rain backed by thunder! Lightning! And the rest of that Eddie Floyd-Steve Cropper lyric, too.
We basically got an entire September’s worth of precip’ in the past 48 hours. Morning temps are in the 50s. HVAC/irrigation systems are on pause.
As is cycling. I was feeling a bit overtrained, though I’m not training for anything. So I’ve spent the past few days being a pedestrian, either running or walking the local trails network.
Anyway, just because I have three bikes with fenders — hold on, make that four, just outfitted the Double Cross yesterday — doesn’t necessarily mean I want to use ’em.
Because next it will be knickers, and then arm warmers, and before you know it — winter!
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.
Some days you just have to avert your eyes and fuck off somewhere. The Abyss will still be there when you get back.
Yesterday I distracted myself with our regularly scheduled Geezer Ride. Afterward I put some new tires (Hutchinson Caracals) on an old bike (Soma Double Cross), and this morning I slipped out for a couple hours of “me time” on chip-seal and singletrack before the thermometer could come to a rolling boil, fanned by the wind.
Being a huge fan of the venerable Hutchinson Python I bought the Caracals from Rivendell the instant they started carrying the brand. And ever since I had been dithering about which bike to put ’em on.
When I flatted the DC’s rear Soma Cazadero, I suddenly had a candidate.
The 700×42 Cazadero (510g) is a great tire for the trails around here, but it can feel like overkill for the road, even our roads, especially with sealant-filled inner tubes. And one of the things I like most about the Double Cross — a 54cm frameset with a longish top tube — is that with the right tire it can be as frisky as a young pup.
The Hutchinson Caracel
The plump 700×35 Caracal (487g) felt both lively and cushy on pavement at 30/35psi, and it wasn’t too shabby on the Elena Gallegos trails, either — just knobby enough for the most part, hooking up nicely in everything save for deep sand, where it tended to swim a bit.
The Cazadero just floats over the soft stuff like a magic carpet. I can ride that tire uphill through a sandy wash, though it can overwhelm the front end in the twisty bits if you’re not paying close attention, which frequently I am not.
“I wanna go there!”
“AIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!”
Etc.
I might relocate the Caracals from the Double Cross to the New Albion Privateer, because I’ve been wanting to see how that rig fares on an occasional off-road adventure. It has a pair of Soma’s The Everwear in 700c38, a fine setup for the road (their Shikoro is even better) but slicker ’n’ snot on a doorknob, not exactly the ticket for when the going gets dirty and sharpish.
Then again, maybe I’ll buy a set of Caracals in 700×40 for the Privateer, see how the old pirate dances with French shoes.
The Memorial Day Shopping Fiesta and Family Barbecue Getaway (Nothing to See Here, Move Along, Move Along) kicks off today with the murders most foul of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” and CBS News Radio, along with any remaining illusions that Americans live in a functioning democracy.
There is no truth to the rumor that the new national anthem for our next 250 years — or perhaps 250 days? Hours? — will be the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” reimagined by Black Sabbath. Or so we may hope, anyway.
One thing is certain: That cheery little ditty, along with an unauthorized Kid Rock cover of the Eagles’ song “The Last Resort,” will be in heavy rotation down in the Adolf & Eva Memorial Ballroom & Führerbunker. The lyric “Some rich men came and raped the land / nobody caught ’em” will be a huge laugh line for everyone save the slaves serving up the Big Macs and Diet Cokes.
Meanwhile, some good news: M-Day weekend gas prices are at a four-year high! But that won’t keep 39 million of us from cranking up the Family Yacht and burning a few tanks’ worth to spend time eating bad food poorly prepared and swilling tins of thin industrial lager with people we really don’t like all that much.
The Soma Double Cross takes five in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Last I looked go-juice was between $4.50 and $5 here in The Duck! City, which didn’t make AAA’s list of the top-10 Memorial Day getaways (the podium: Orlando, FL, Seattle, WA, and New York).
No worries here, bruh. I got my holiday shopping done early yesterday, before the ravening hordes could descend upon the grocery and strip the shelves bare like a cloud of fat betatted locusts. And today I ain’t driving nowhere, nohow, though I do expect to get out on a bike at some point. Yesterday was stellar in the Elena Gallegos Open Space; I saw only a few other trail users as I rumbled along on the old Soma Double Cross, and most seemed to be enjoying the wide-open space as much as I was.
Meanwhile, Republicans will be traveling home after shitting the bed in Congress. Here’s hoping their constituents have a few words with them about the horrible smell.
Hell, I do this a couple times a year. Drop the Subie downtown for a little love at Reincarnation, ride a bike back to El Rancho Pendejo. Repeat in reverse to collect the old warhorse and drive ’er home. Ain’t no thang.
Except Tuesday, it kinda was.
God damn, but it was cold.
I had been expecting a temp in the low 30s, which for some reason sounds a lot warmer than high 20s, which is what it was. So I wore a jacket over a long-sleeved jersey over a long-sleeved base layer, tights over bibs, wool socks, cold-weather shoes and gloves, and tuque.
Wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. And I knew it at 9 a.m., a half-block into the 14-mile ride home.
O, lawd, I will never be smart. I had Buff neckwear, beefier tights, an old balaclava, and an even older pair of sure-’nough winter gloves … and they were all in a drawer back at the Rancho.
“Well,” I thought, “at least it’s all uphill.” And so it was, 1,200 feet of up, not including a long stretch of that fabled “invisible hill,” which is to say a damp, bitter wind out of the NNW and straight into Your Humble Narrator’s chattering choppers.
Whoever coined the phrase “What can’t be cured must be endured” was probably not thinking about stupidity. But I was as I grumbled my way up the North Diversion Channel Trail, whenever possible sitting bolt upright with hands tucked into armpits.
At Montgomery I came upon a street person’s smallish campfire underneath the bridge. I couldn’t decide whether to report him or join him. So I did neither. Onward!
By the Arroyo del Oso Golf Course, with six miles to go, I had gained some altitude, caught a soupçon of sun, and warmed up just a bit … so much so that I began contemplating some extra-credit stupidity, to wit, leaving the pavement at Juan Tabo for the trails that wind through Bear Canyon Open Space to the Embudito trailhead.
Now, in my defense, we’re talking extremely non-technical trails here, and I was on the Soma Double Cross with its 42mm knobbies. Easy breezy like a cover girl! Assuming she were properly dressed for conditions and had a pro mechanic to get her rolling again in 30 seconds after a puncture.
I, on the other hand, was dressed for conditions that existed only in my head, which was up my arse as per usual. I would be fixing my own flat with half-frozen fingers, only 80 percent of which are fully functional when warm. It would take longer than 30 seconds. Finally, there was the absolute certainty of some rapid evaporative cooling on the 1.5-mile paved descent from the trailhead to the Rancho.
So for a change I did the smart thing: took the pavement home, slammed a steaming mug of tea, and spent way too much time in a hot shower. Around 3:30 I got back on the bike and zipped down to fetch the Subie. Didn’t even need the jacket for the return trip. Ah, the desert Southwest, with its 30-degree temperature swings.
This is hardly the stuff of legend, or even unpaid bloggery. There was a time when I would drive for hours in much worse weather just to race bicycles in it, then tidy up at the car wash afterward. But that was when I was a man — a slightly better insulated man — instead of whatever it is I am now.
Plus my auto mechanic was only 14 minutes away by bike. Sometimes I’d just run home.
Mad Blog Media 