Tag: The Duck! City

Retracing my steps

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
This is what a juniper dusted with snow looks like at 5:14 in the ayem.

I meant to post this pic the other day and completely spaced it whilst mumbling on and on about podcasting and whatnot.

We woke on Wednesday to a measurable amount of precip’, not enough to resolve the megadrought, but just enough to keep me off a bicycle. Instead I went for a short run once the temps rose a bit.

I have no idea what made these tracks in the backyard. Fox? Coyote? La Llorona of Hobbiton?

Ten years ago I would come to The Duck! City from Bibleburg in February to get away from winter.

I’d check into the Hampton at Carlisle and I-40 and ride the bike all the doo-dah day, and in shorts and short sleeves, too.

Hit the Mexican restaurants, or fetch a sack of tasty treats from the Wholeazon Amafoods across the interstate from the motel. Binge-watch HBO in the room come evening.

I had no idea that in a year we’d be living down here. Zee-ro. If you’da told me I’da laughed in your face.

“Herself is going to get a job at Sandia National Labs that pays more money in one year than I’ve made in my entire life? We’re moving to Albuquerque? Ho, ho. Pull the other leg so I’ll be even when I go out to run in the snow. Albuquerque. Hee, and also haw.”

Well, she did, and we did, and here I am, running in February on the New Mexican snow.

A matter of degrees

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Bare trees, gray light. Oh, yeah, it was a cold night.

We’re still in the freezer section here in The Duck! City.

The thermometer has been pegged at 13° since I got up way too early this morning because I was feeling chilly even in the bed, which Miss Mia Sopaipilla appropriated after I had adjusted the thermostat (and provided her a couple helpings of kibble, a tuna-water ice cube, and a soupçon of butter from my morning toast).

“I’d like my meals delivered, please.
As in ‘now.'”

Of course, 13° ain’t shit to you stolid Midwesterners, Canucks, and other polar explorers. And my man Hal reports minus-11° this morning at his compound in our old stomping grounds of Crusty County, which makes me miss the place not at all, not one itty-bitty bit.

I remember stuffing chunks of cedar, oak, and aspen into our Weirdcliffe woodstove like a Vegas bluehair shoving nickels into a one-armed bandit. But Hal can’t even do that, because his stove is on the DL.

Thus he burns propane and electricity like a city feller while he awaits parts for his wood-burner, a Drolet Outback Chef, some Quebecer deal with an Eyetalian overlay.

I don’t suppose Hal will pass the time by reading the continuing adventures of The Count of Mar-a-Lago, now available on Twatter and Buttface. But he does have a perverse streak. How many people do you know who cook their meals on a woodstove in the the Year of our Lard 2023?

Blowin’ in the wind

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
The wind is shrieking like a House Repuglican
whose Koch Brothers rent check got lost in the mail.

God is running His leaf blower today, and my back yard sports more needles than the alleys around Pennsylvania and Central.

Speaking of the mean streets of The Duck! City, a couple state legislators did a photo op over the weekend, kipping in a tent at 4th and Marble to draw attention to homelessness.

A few of our local TV stations took the bait, because they are local TV stations. And while some might take offense that one story was peppered with ads from Vrbo, Hotels.com, and Expedia.com, I doubt that many of the unhoused were browsing the ’Net from their cardboard condos. No harm, no foul.

The legislators would not have enjoyed street life today, though I hear Oz is lovely this time of year, and Emerald City Airlines rarely loses your tent.

Meanwhile, there’s an air-quality alert in place until noon tomorrow, and anyone who likes their air regular instead of extra-crispy is advised to hold their breath until then.

Snow? No

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
It ain’t easy getting green.

We was robbed.

Just as well. The ladies have plans, and though they are Marylanders and used to snow, only Herself has enjoyed winter motoring in The Duck! City, whose drivers can’t keep the shiny side up on a sunny day.

Yesterday it was a Tesla and a pick-’em-up truck that ate shit at Comanche and Tramway, where the debris from old crashes piles up like the fast-food wrappers, liquor bottles, and dirty diapers drivers toss from their vehicles between texts as they breeze through the red five seconds late and 20 over the limit.

You want to keep your head on a swivel when your light turns green. Left, right, left again — count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, etc. — then proceed as though you believe in an afterlife.

Never mind the asshole leaning on his horn behind you. Hell ain’t half full, as s/he will learn after finally honking at the wrong person, who then climbs out of the vehicle with something more authoritative than a middle digit extending from one white-knuckled fist.

The honkers are usually tailgaters too. Some of these yahoos will crowd you so closely you can smell the beer on their breath.

Doc Sarvis, the brains and bucks behind “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” had a solution to that sort of harassment. The Ukrainians are giving these ancient anticavalry weapons a go, and why not? I bet they work against horses and horses’ asses.

Red vs. white

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
March keeps pitching its meteorological curveballs.

It just snowed for a solid 10 seconds, so I guess the drought is over.

Whoops — on its thin white heels comes the red-flag warning. Winds of 25-25 mph, with gusts to 55? Ixnay on the inklerspray, hon’; we’d only be steaming the neighbors’ raggedy-ass cottonwood.

What a fine day to not be towing a rented travel trailer, as the neighbors will be doing directly. Even a bicycle will be too high-profile a vehicle for Your Humble Narrator.

Here in a bit I hope to squeeze in a short run. Got to keep the muscle memory alive in case Voldemort Poutaine decides he’d like to add The Duck! City to his collection.

Of course, the old spook might be having second thoughts about property acquisition given his struggles in Ukraine. And if he isn’t, he should be. To paraphrase Rick from “Casablanca,” “There are certain sections of New Mexico that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”

“Boris, is this not where we parked the tank?”

“Da, Mikhail, it was right here. Central and Pennsylvania. Remember the friendly lady behind the In & Out who beckoned to us as we passed? She offered to take us around the world and you said, ‘But we just got here!'”

The dust storm we had on Friday would have reminded their fathers of the good old days in Afghanistan. It looked like one of the haboobs that periodically buggers traffic between Tucson and Phoenix. Blotted out the valley to the west and a slice of the Sandias to the east, redistributing portions of the Upper Chihuahuan Desert without need for tanks, aircraft, or artillery.

I didn’t ride or run Friday. But I got out yesterday for a 90-minute ride, and found myself dealing with another sort of Eurasian invasion — trails clogged with tumbleweeds, also known as (wait for it) the Russian thistle.