They had stayed put Sunday despite a voluntary evacuation order, but this morning Khal told me via e-mail that ash was raining down on their house. A few hours later he sent a brief note: “Outa here: Mandatory evacuation. Talk to you soon. I hope.” He’s been blogging about the fire at Los Alamos Bikes, but I expect updates will be few and far between as they get themselves and their critters to safety.
So, like the headline says, keep your fingers crossed — not just for Khal and Meena, but for all the other folks dodging fiery bullets down there in New Mexico. And I’ll keep you posted.
The Soma Saga, which at present is unencumbered with fenders, racks and bags.
New technology has come to the DogHaus. The fine folks at Soma Fabrications/Merry Sales Co. have sent me a Soma Saga touring frameset to review for Adventure Cyclist, and Herself has handed me down the iPad 2 I bought her for our anniversary just last month. Her boss is a convert and ordered up iPads for the staff. My bosses order up periodic floggings and forget to file my invoices with the bean-counters. So it goes.
The Saga sports a mix of old stuff from the garage, new stuff that Soma/Merry Sales sent along with the frameset, and some fresh bits to fill in the gaps from Old Town Bike Shop, which assembles the bikes I review for Adventure Cyclist because the Irish cannot be trusted with tools.
Thus it has a beefy 36-spoke touring wheelset from Rivendell (LX hubs, Velocity Synergy rims, Vittoria Randonneur Cross tires, all stripped from my Soma Double Cross); Alpina 2 cranks (48/33/24); a Deore rear derailleur and Ultegra front, controlled by Dia-Compe/Rivendell friction bar-cons, connected with a Dura-Ace chain and driven with Shimano A520 SPD touring pedals; IRD Cafam cantis and Soma aero levers (plus Cane Creek Crosstop levers); Nitto B135 Grand Randonneur bars wrapped in Soma Thick ‘n’ Zesty tape, Origin8 stem and IRD Techno-glide headset; and finally a Ritchey WCS seat post topped with a Selle Italia Flite saddle.
Damn, this is some good Kool-Aid. Y'all want some? OK, first you got to show me a black turtleneck.
I have about 65 miles on it so far, and I could tell you about it, but then the editor of Adventure Cyclist would have to kill us all. I will note in passing, however, that it’s interesting to go back to friction bar-cons after all these years.
And the iPad? No friction bar-cons here, my friends. Strictly disco. It does things you haven’t dreamed of, and without my prompting, too. I’ve loaded apps for word processing and photo editing and may take it and the Saga out for an extended test drive, see if I can generate a little paying copy before the Tour gets me by the plums with a downhill pull.
So if the website looks like it was composed in Cretan Linear B sometime in the near future, well, you’ll know whom to blame: Steve Fuckin’ Jobs. He’s The Man. I just work here.
When my family moved from Texas to Colorado Springs in August 1967 we saw a thick white blanket of snow on Pikes Peak as we drove into town.
“Holy shit,” I thought. “It snows here in August.”
The big fella wears his white hat on the first day of summer.
We knew something about snow, having lived three years in Ottawa, Canada. But Randolph AFB, Texas, was “a whole other country,” as the slogan has it. It snowed just twice in our five years there — about a zillionth of an inch each time — and the whole place went batshit. Schools closed, non-essential personnel stayed home, and we scratched our heads, wondering what all the fuss was about.
That glimpse of Pikes Peak was a reminder that in some places, it actually does snow enough to cause a fuss. By arriving in summertime we had been spared a massive winter dumper that had set folks in our new suburban neighborhood to heating with ornamental fireplaces and cooking over camp stoves in the absence of utility service.
I’ve seen plenty of the white stuff since, including a four-footer that had us snowshoeing up and down our road in Westcliffe and a couple lesser storms that let us ski the roads and parks here in Bibleburg.
But it’s been a while, and lately even rain is scarce. So I’m always happy to look up and see a little snow on the big hill. We may catch fire down here, but at least we’ll have water to drink, and something to scare Texans with on the first day of summer.
It’s been heavy lifting over at VeloNews.com this weekend. You know you’re in for it when the memo describing the tasks to be performed bears the subject line, “Glad I’m not you. …”
I slipped out for a quick ride and saw that the recent light rain had lit up the Palmer Park cacti.
Tour de Suisse, Route du Sud, Ster ZLM Toer, Giro del Trentino, Giro della Toscana, Nature Valley Grand Prix, Harlem Skyscraper Cycling Classic, Nevada City Bicycle Classic, Tour of America’s Dairyland, Tour de Grafton, Tour de Beauce, the Race Across America — I’m telling you, the party never stopped. I’m still waiting on stuff and here it is wine-thirty already.
Speaking of parties, I had to quick whip up another tub of pico de gallo for a friend’s 60th birthday yesterday, between bouts of frenzied pixel-pushing, and naturally I was missing a few key ingredients and had no time to leg it to the store. So I subbed a couple jalapeños for the missing serranos and some Deschutes Twilight Summer Ale for the traditional Mexican beer and you know what? It didn’t suck.
But I could do with a break from the kitchen tonight, and thus Herself will be fetching a Luigi’s pizza home after her stint at the local Humane Society, where she spends a couple days each week helping lonesome critters find happy homes.
Me, I’m still helping Mr. Microsoft find a few typos that spell-check can’t handle.
Mad Blog Media 