In the Time of Pandemic, the ability to refill my water bottles has become an unexpected bike riding constraint. Worst case, if I couldn’t find a drinking fountain, I used to pop into a Kwik-E-Mart and buy a bottle. So, yeah, pandemic, amiright? I hate those water pack things, and the discomfort of throwing extra …
Continue reading ‘Google Maps said there’s a uranium mine out here. Also, a Wendy’s.’ »
The pipe that carries Albuquerque’s Colorado River water is not actually all that big!
My current favorite word is “hooligan”. It’s origins are murky, but the authors of the Oxford English Dictionary say it first appeared in newspaper stories in 1898, to whit: 1898 Daily News 8 Aug. 9/3 The constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of young roughs, calling themselves ‘Hooligans’. The story behind its emergence …
In retrospect, the red taco truck represents the moment it all changed. It was parked along Central, old Route 66, on Albuquerque’s west side. My friend Scot and I, out for our Sunday bike ride, had been debating the wisdom of our usual bike ride brunch – tacos from one of our local market food …
With a couple of days left in 2019 I’m at 4,303 miles bicycled for the year, so I made a map. My claimed mileage is almost certainly not accurate to that fourth significant digit, but since I GPS all my rides it’s probably close. There are a few hotel fitness center miles in there, and …
The first bird I formally identified, as in “sat down with the book and then wrote down the result” was a great blue heron. The entry in the old family Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds, red ball point pen: 11/86 Sat on tiny island in Colorado River all morning, picking at its feathers The …
In the fall of 2003, I bought a new bicycle. I wore spandex and those practical (albeit a bit silly) cyclist’s shirts with pockets on the back for snacks. In the years that followed, I rode that bicycle a great deal. While my data are imprecise (my crazy data nerd spreadsheet has all the miles, …
Continue reading ‘The Bicycle of Theseus and the Paradox of Identity’ »
My “job”, as director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program, requires me to pay close attention to New Mexico’s water. So of course when I saw this morning that the Rio Grande’s flow through Albuquerque had topped 2,500 cubic feet per second, I had to conduct “field work”. Anything above 2,300 cfs …
Continue reading ‘Morning bike ride – *totally* work related’ »
I turned down this alley in Albuquerque’s Old Town on a bike ride this morning, amazed that I’d never noticed it before. I spend a lot of time on the bike. I’m long past my youthful zoomy lifestyle, but in my slow and plodding way I have come to deeply value my time wandering Albuquerque. …