Last leaf on the tree

Bibleburg as seen from Palmer Park. I used the Vivid mode on my little Canon 300 HS to pimp up the colors a bit.

People often ask me why I choose to live in Bibleburg. Seventy-degree days in late October have quite a bit to do with it.

I slipped out for a pleasant afternoon ride yesterday. Took the arm warmers, just in case; never needed them.

Lots of people were playing hooky. Dog walkers and joggers, moms pushing strollers, folks just slouching along, soaking in those last few sunny moments before it all goes sideways and snowy.

At one point I was high up on the south side of Palmer Park, looking west across town at the mountains. You can’t see the vacant storefronts, unpatched potholes and tinfoil-beanie wingnuts from up there. It’s all fall, all the time, green, orange and gold on a blue background.

This morning I streamed the new Tom Waits album, Bad As Me, and it included a poignant number, “Last Leaf.” The refrain goes:

I’m the last leaf on the tree

The autumn took the rest

but they won’t take me

I’m the last leaf on the tree.

Good stuff from start to finish. We’ll be adding that bad boy to the Waits library when it’s released on Monday.

Sayonara, September

A bit of color in the Old North End.

Judas Priest. How did September slip away so fast? Was it that week in Vegas? Confusion caused by allergy meds? Could it have been downsized along with everything else?

Whatever. Tomorrow it will be October, and I’m betting we get our first snow before Halloween. The furnace just clicked on at midday and the thermostat is set at 67 degrees. Sheesh. Close the doors, shut the windows, batten down the hatches.

It sure is pretty out there, though. Fall will always be my favorite time of year, even though it means hunting up my comfy samue pants for around the house, and arm/knee warmers for outside of it.

The rise of fall

The season is changing with a vengeance.

Hello, autumnal equinox. I didn’t expect you quite so soon. Still, there’s something to be said for lows in the 40s and highs in the 70s, especially for those of us who like to spend a lot of time outdoors.

Indoors, the evening libation is shifting gradually away from ice-cold beer to blood-red wine, and we need an extra blankie come bedtime. Occasionally the furnace clicks on. Perfect sleeping weather, if you don’t mind a snuffling mutt periodically rearranging himself around your ankles.

It’s cyclo-cross season, of course, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing much racing in person since I work the weekends for VeloNews.com. Looks like there’s only one local ’cross, too, on Nov. 19. All the action’s up north these days, which is one of the many reasons I no longer race. Who wants to drive for five hours to race for 45 minutes? Not this old dog.

Speaking of racing, it seems VN.com doesn’t have the wherewithal to pay Charles Pelkey for live updates from Sunday’s elite men’s race at road worlds, so I’m going to try to embed the code on this site for your viewing pleasure. If for one reason or another it doesn’t work, you can always visit CP directly at Live Update Guy.

Our house is a very very very fine house

Our two cats in the yard, Turkish and Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on safari in the backyard jungle. Shhhh — they're hunting grasshoppers. Hahahahaha. ...

There goes the neighborhood

Blue skies (not) smiling at me.

That’s the last of the blue skies around here for a bit. The temperature just dropped like a poisoned pigeon, Herself reports that she is driving home from Denver in a snowstorm and the forecast calls for rain and perhaps an inch or two of snow. Can’t be 70 and sunny forever, I guess.

After committing a bit of journalism in the morning I broke out a Steelman for a pleasant hour or so of low-impact cycling, then hopped on the Vespa for a quick spin downtown for lunch, just beating a light sprinkle home. Now it appears to be snowing, so I’m fortifying myself against pneumonia with a delicious glass of 2006 Ramón Bilbao Tempranillo Limited Edition.

Hey, it could be worse. I could’ve had to drive to Fruita for the VeloNews gang’s annual clusterfuck, and right now there just ain’t no good way to get there from here.

Happily, I wasn’t invited to attend this year, in part because I insist on being paid for hours logged and travel endured and in part because I refer to annual retreats as clusterfucks.

Coyote ugly

More dry, dusty cyclo-cross today, domestic and foreign alike.

At the U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross stop in Kentucky, Georgia Gould laid a humiliating beat-down on the women’s field, outclassing everyone for a second consecutive day, while Jeremy Powers took over from Tim Johnson in putting the ol’ Louisville slugger to Ryan Trebon.

Across the pond in the Czech Republic, Zdenek Stybar played the Roadrunner to Niels Albert’s Wile E. Coyote, going “Beep-beep” and then kapweeeng on the bell lap, leaving Albert standing there with his jaw on the ground, his Acme® ’cross bike collapsing into a pile of parts underneath him. I swear I actually saw the course rise and settle under Stybar’s wheels as he rocketed along to keep his undefeated streak intact in front of a partisan, boisterous crowd in Pilzner (mmm, beer).

I didn’t get out myself, unless you count a bout of leaf collection and removal in tandem with Herself. A neighbor uses our maple’s leaves for compost in her extensive garden, and it looks like we’ll have a record haul this season — we’ve already collected six bags’ worth and there are still a few green leaves on the tree.

Tour de meh

Blue skies, smiling at me. ...

Oboy, oboy, oboy — the route of the 2011 Tour de France is announced today and there’s an Apple proclamation slated tomorrow. My cup runneth over.

Well, actually, not so much. I don’t give a shit about the TdF, other than as a source of income. Cav’ wins all the sprints, the Schlecks win all the climbs, the Euskaltels hit the deck, there’s no time trialing to speak of and the winner tests positive for something you never heard of. There’s your Tour.

And if Apple announces a leaner, meaner and cheaper MacBook Air, as is widely expected, well, I don’t much care about that either. The old black MacBook seems to be ticking along, and if it croaks again and I need to leave the DogHaus to do a job of work there’s always the 12-inch G4 PowerBook, the 12-inch G3 iBook, the 14.1-inch G3 PowerBook … we got more Apples than the average Washington-state orchard, is what I’m sayin’.

Meanwhile, it’s a beautiful fall morning — 30-something, with a high in the mid-60s forecast. A guy with any brains would be out riding his bike. And if he did, he might see me out there riding mine, too.

The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

One shot, three seasons: Summer in the lawn, fall in the trees and winter on Pikes Peak.

Deadlines suck. Like The Turk, I’ve been indoors more than I care to be lately, in my case generating bicycle comedy for fun and profit (well, for profit, anyway, and only just barely). This is particularly irksome because we’ve been enjoying a stellar fall here in Bibleburg. It’s 76 right now — 76! — at 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 15. Imagine my amazement.

This will change, as it must. Tomorrow and Sunday look pretty damn’ nice, and wouldn’t y’know, I have to clock in for a couple of shifts in the old VeloBarrel. Come Monday, the weather should become a bit more seasonal, as in 50-something with a chance of showers. Ick.

After that, it’s the Colorado lottery, which means exactly what it sounds like — a total meteorological crapshoot, which I must say keeps life interesting, like the wining jug in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” a punch blended by understudy barkeep Eddie using any booze left in glasses by the patrons of La Ida. A Palace Flophouse roommate, Jones, first pans, then praises the concoction:

“You take whiskey,” he said hurriedly. “You more or less know what you’ll do. A fightin’ guy fights and a cryin’ guy cries, but this —” he said magnanimously — “why, you don’t know whether it’ll run you up a pine tree or start you swimming to Santa Cruz.”

That’s the sad part. Pine trees we got. But Santa Cruz … not so much.

And on the seventh day, he flatted

Autumn is on us with a vengeance, if you happen to be a plant or a penniless drunkard without a furnace. But midweek the temps should be in the low 60s to high 70s, which means I can dial the ethanol heater back a notch or two.

Screw the calendar — today was the first official day of fall. I know this to be a fact because when I set out for a quick 45 minutes of cyclo-cross after a morning of light labor I was wearing arm warmers, knee warmers and an undershirt in addition to the usual kit, and wishing I’d opted for long-fingered gloves.

I had planned to do a few go-rounds at a nearby school that has a gravel track, some short, sharp run-ups, a bit of asphalt and even a log to hop. But some anonymous teabagger has let the grounds go to hell, so after trying and failing to find a suitable path through the weeds I rolled off to my old standby, Monument Valley Park.

Unfortunately I apparently took a couple of goatheads with me, and just as the ’crossing was starting to feel good the front tire went soft. Oh, bugger. Out with the bad tube, in with the good tube. This mini-pump works about as well as the Senate. Look at the time. The sis and bro’-in-law are en route from Fort Fun, expecting lunch. Home wi’ ye, ye bald-pated tosspot.

And that was my Sunday in Bibleburg. How was yours?

Real wool socks and virtual ravioli

Thank Buddha for wool socks. The only way to get a gas flame around the DogHaus today is to light one’s own farts.

Happily, it is October, not February — which means it’s about 55 outside and 65 inside as we speak at 10 a.m. Bibleburg time. That ain’t bad, though I confess I miss our old Weirdcliffe wood stove. It, unlike our rooftop solar unit here, worked even on cloudy Sunday mornings like this one.

Meanwhile, Friend of Dogpatch Larry T. sends word of his raviolipalooza. Watch and weep as you nibble your shredded wheat.