Tag: Tramway

The troll of Tramway

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
"Who's that tripping over my bridge?" roared the troll.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll.

If you can’t stand the heat, get under the overpass.

The Tour stages cut deeply into the cool morning hours, so we Live Update Guys can’t get out and about until 10-ish most days.

Today it was already 80-something when I finally got rolling, and 90-something when I got home. Drank two bottles and snarfed down a gel but found myself slightly weary for some reason. Go figure.

The only shade to be found on the entire two-hour ride was underneath Tramway, between Manitoba and Spain, so I took a brief photography break before resuming my climb back to the air-conditioned barn.

When I arrived home I saw that Ronald McDonald McTrump was panhandling his Twitter followers, so I graciously offered him the steam off my piss. Haven’t heard back yet. There’s just no pleasing some people.

Self-funded campaign, me arse.
Self-funded campaign, me arse.

Spring, forward!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
The wide shoulders on Tramway, coupled with its dearth of spotlights (one at the top, one at the casino, and one at the bottom), make it a popular hill with the Duke City peloton.
The wide shoulders on Tramway, coupled with its dearth of spotlights (one at the top, one at the casino, and one at the bottom), make it a popular hill with the Duke City peloton.

Daylight-saving time always cleans my mental clock. You wouldn’t think that surrendering just one of 24 hours would be so much of a much, but every year it leaves me a bubble or two off plumb for a few days.

“A few days.” Heh. I hear you snickering out there.

Herself celebrated another lap around the sun on Saturday, so we went out to dinner at Scalo Northern Italian Grill before having our REMs rerouted for … for what, exactly? I forget. Drowsy for some reason.

Then, on Sunday, she ran and vacuumed, and I mowed and rode. With no new review bikes in the Adventure Cyclist queue until St. Patrick’s Day, once again it was Ride Your Own Damn’ Bike Day®, this time the Soma Saga Disc. Nothing special, just a ride down Tramway to the Sandia Resort & Casino and back, with a digression into the honky-chateau ‘hood of High Desert for some light extra-credit climbing.

All in all, a pleasant diversion from the endless goose-stepping through the media by Il Douche, who’s simultaneously expanding and contracting the boundaries of the First Amendment by (a) offering to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaults a protester at one of his Nuremberg rallies, and (2) ordering the laws to arrest not the assailants, but rather the victims.

It’s a wonderful country, to be sure. Last time I saw a big sack of stale air making this much bad noise a red-headed dude in a kilt was involved.

Look at that turkey

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Your Humble Narrator pretends to be a self-supported tourist on Tramway, about 20 minutes from EL Rancho Pendejo.
Your Humble Narrator pretends to be a self-supported tourist on Tramway, about 20 minutes from EL Rancho Pendejo.

It’s not what it looks like — Your Humble Narrator ripping up the roads en route to someplace sunny, his panniers full of camping gear, bike parts and journalistical accoutrements.

Nope, just shooting a bit of video to tease my review of the Opus Legato 1.0 in the latest edition of Adventure Cyclist magazine. I was out for about an hour, rolling up and down Tramway while taking selfies like all the other narcissists.

Still, it got me away from the Innertubez, where life was busily imitating art again. The Russia-Turkey dick-waving competition was reminding me of the early pages of “Alas, Babylon,” while the GOP pestilential contest was shaping up about like “It Can’t Happen Here.”

These are dire days for fans of apocalyptic fiction and prescient political satire, and my natural misanthropy was on full boil. That is, until a motorist pulled over to ask if I needed any help as I fiddled with my cameras, and a cyclist likewise paused to ask where I was bound, then told me about an actual tour he had wrapped earlier this year, a massive, months-long expedition that basically took him to all points of the compass and back again.

There’s hope after all. Let us be thankful.

Cogito ergo dum

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
The culprit.
The culprit.

I will never be smart.

I’m riding the Soma Double Cross on Tramway this afternoon and on the speedy big-ring drop to Interstate 25 I suddenly hear this high-pitched whine coming from what I’m certain is the front wheel. Sounds like a brake shoe rubbing up against the tire, or maybe Jimmy Olsen’s watch calling Superman. Zee zee zee zee zee.

As this can only end badly on a fast descent, I stop — not once, not twice, but three times — to try to diagnose the problem. No joy. But then, as I turn around at the bottom for the climb back up, the noise stops.

Well, OK, then. Ain’t much bad can happen to me at 10 mph. So on I pedal in blissful ignorance.

Until I shift back into the big ring, get out of the saddle to stretch, and hear it again — zee zee zee zee zee.

A light bulb sputters on, about a 20-watter. I’m running the biggest tires this bike will take, 700×38, and I bet the rear tire is heating up and expanding and rubbing up against the front-derailleur mech. Genius!

Well, maybe not so much.

The Double Cross doesn’t have one of those bulky new Shimano mechs that intrude into the rear triangle the way the NSA does into your life. It sports a svelte old Ultegra model.

And, as I found when I got home, it also has a front-derailleur cable that somehow got itself bent inward, and the cable cap was rubbing the rear tire whenever I shifted into the big ring.

So if you’re ever riding with me and wonder what the funny noise is, don’t worry — it’s just the air leaking out of my head.

 

 

Moving in, on, and around and about

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
The main living area at Rancho Pendejo. A couple Brangoccios will soon adorn that far wall.
The main living area at Rancho Pendejo. A couple Brangoccios will soon adorn that far wall.

Rancho Pendejo is coming together, bit by bit, inch by inch.

The Pink Room is now Livable Green, as is the master bedroom. The living room is likewise livable, but not green, with the furniture more or less arranged, some works from my old college pal Michael Brangoccio on the walls, and the home-theater setup ticking along nicely, serving up Blu-Ray, streaming video via Mac Mini, and KUNM-FM. And the kitchen is open for business whenever I’m inclined to cook, which lately is not often. Folks actually make edible grub here, and it’s been fun playing culinary explorer.

The bike stops here: Just east of Rancho Pendejo sits the Cibola wilderness.
The bike stops here: Just east of Rancho Pendejo sits the Cibola wilderness.

We’ve also been exploring the local trails, which are abundant, eclectic and accessible pretty much from the front door.

The excellent Tramway bike path can be found just a couple blocks west on Comanche Road. And there’s a bike lane on Comanche itself that runs most of the way west to the North Diversion Channel Trail. The Paseo del Norte trail will get you there, too, but there are a few hiccups along the way.

Just a couple blocks east is Foothills Trail 365, a short stretch of which makes a nice out-and-back run for Herself. I’ve been hiking around and about there, jogging the uphills to see how the knees feel, and yesterday I took the Voodoo Nakisi out for a short exploratory ride on the trails that fan out from 365 and stumbled across the entrance to a bit of local wilderness, all of three miles from Rancho Pendejo. Fat city.

We got a light rain last night, and there’s more of the same in the forecast, so I’ll probably give the trails a rest today, maybe have a whang at the Tramway instead. It goes without saying that neither of the two bikes I brought from Bibleburg sports fenders. Duh.