Farewell

BeanSS and I moved to Tucson from Sacramento a little over 5 years ago. We'd been in Phoenix (and the Sonoran desert had been in us) for many years before the NorCal detour and so moving to the Old Pueblo was a homecoming of sorts.

As we began to move forward in life with new jobs, our first home, a second dog, and all of those grown-up things, another aspect of our lives was moving backwards. It began with my mother's death two weeks after we arrived in Arizona. Three years later, we lost our two beloved dogs within months of one another. There were other scares, tragedies, and losses that I won't describe because I don't own the grief they caused, but they took their toll as well. And then, last night, as the first winter storm of the season began to soak the desert in earnest, my dad slipped away in a hospital in Glendale.

I only learned of my father's passing this morning and it's still processing. Given his overall health, it wasn't entirely unexpected. Then again, he oftentimes seemed so bulletproof (he survived World War II, after all) that his living for another 10 years wouldn't have been a surprise either.

So far, I've experienced a strong desire to go wet a line somewhere - my dad taught me to fish as a kid and took me to so many great places. I still have all of his old tackle and even his boat. He was singlespeeding before singlespeeding was cool. My dad tried to be the chronicler of a family that had spread across the country. Well into his 60s, he could pin me at will in arm wrestling. He adored his six children and three granddaughters. He loved sharks.

BeanSS reminded me of when she first met my dad and he said in a rather loud voice "Hello, Connie!". My wife is not named Connie or Constance or anything even similar, nor is anyone else I've known for that matter. My dad used to surprise me with Orangeboom Lagers from time to time, so I plan on toasting him with a couple of those later on this evening.

If these good memories keep coming to the surface, then I know things will be OK.

Miscellany

I'm sitting here at home today, well into the autumn/winter season where I am off probably more than I'm at work. The amount of vacation time I get is one of the major perquisites of my job. Perquisites - I like that word because at first glance, it appears I've botched the spelling of prerequisites. My job has those, too.

I was off work yesterday but dawdled around so much that I blew my chance at doing any sort of longer-duration bike ride. I had to pick up BeanSS at work just about at sunset, so I put the bike in the pickup, left early, and did fast laps on the fire roads at the Pima College west campus until it was time to head over to her office.

The Pima trails certainly do not constitute an epic no matter how many laps I do, but I enjoy the occasional ride there. It's also a bit of a sentimental place, as we used to walk Kona and Barnaby on those trails. We even did a family trail run together there once or twice, well into Kona's chemotherapy and before we learned that young Barnaby had hip dysplasia. There's one little connector trail where I always imagine our departed dogs running madly along next to me, off-leash, panting heavily, tongues hanging, Kona with the strange downward kink in her tail that she showed only when running, and Barns with his short, weirdly-proportioned legs galloping along. It's a happy memory.

But as so often happens, I've found my thoughts interrupted by the silence coming from the other room. Dora and Clayton spend much of the morning playing and so I'm accustomed to hearing playful growling, toenails skittering across tile, the bouncing sounds of tennis balls, etc. But when it gets quiet, it usually means they're working as a team to remove the stuffing from their dog beds.

Back now. The beds are intact, and the dogs have relocated to the area around my feet, so at least I can monitor their playtime. Damn, I am crazy about these two.

What is else? I need to lift weights today but I'd like to ride again, too. The latter will have to wait at least until the effects of this morning's coffee bender wear off, unless I want to stop at every third tree to caffeinate the desert soil. Also, after Sunday night's brief but torrential rains, a whole new crop of detached cholla joints and prickly pear pads were washed onto the trails. As such, I fully expect to have at least one flat tire on my mountain bike. If that's the case, I'll probably bag the bicycling entirely because I'm just not feeling a road ride.

Well, I'm glad that's over.

I cannot find the words to convey the absolute elation I feel in regards to what happened in America on Tuesday night. I can, however, find a few words to accompany the weather this week: what the hell happened to autumn?

No sooner had I bitched about afternoon temperatures in the 90s than a cold front hit Tucson with a glancing blow, leaving me to deal with a 42° morning commute today. The cool air wasn't a problem, but the 50° shift between daytime highs and overnight lows means we went directly from late summer to early winter. This will last for a few months and then, if we're lucky, we might have a week or two of spring before the summer hits again.

At any rate, and no matter what the weather ends up being like, I'm looking forward to the coming weeks, months, and years because, to put it indelicately, the Dubya era was a totally fucked up mess if there ever was one.

Thanks, but I'll Pass.

I'm still in test-ride mode, checking out the setup on my new sussy fork. While Sweetwater remains my favorite local ride, I wanted to navigate the sand, babyheads, rock outcrops, wash crossings, and generally gnarlier terrain at Starr Pass to verify the fork's resistance to bottoming out, packing up, and such. And even though dealing with spring rate, preload, and rebound damping are tasks I haven't needed to do for years, I seemed to have had them dialed in pretty closely before I even clipped in.

The ride itself was pretty enjoyable, though it definitely took me a while to get my head around the measurably more technical nature of Starr Pass relative to Sweetwater, not to mention the looser tracking of the Magura fork compared to the rigid Planet-X I used to rock. The part of the trail network I rode wasn't exactly an observed trials course, but it definitely didn't flow like Sweetwater either. In fact, I think I need to mix up my ride selection and introduce a bit more diversity of terrain so I can get back what little technical skill I used to have. It's unfortunate that State Land passes have recently been priced out of reach, because I wouldn't have minded going back to the 50-Year Trail or Fantasy Island from time to time. Oh well.

Anyway - back to today's Starr Pass ride. The valley north of Cat Mountain was filled with wrens of the cactus, rock, and canyon species. The song of the canyon wren is like music to my ears, but they weren't actually singing, just doing their little deep-knee bends and "bzeet" calls. I meant to check out my favorite local cristate saguaro cactus, but I was having too much fun swooping along and didn't want to get off and hike up the wash along which it grows. And it was a bit warm, considering it's now November.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by today's warmth because it got to 93° yesterday. Yes, you heard that right - ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit on November 1st. Enough with the blazing sun already! Of course, as a native-born Arizonan, I am not legally permitted to complain about the heat, but there's an exception for when it's still this warm this far into autumn. On the other hand, it's better than having my trails turn into mud bogs or get buried in snow or something.

That's all for now except to say please, please, please vote on Tuesday and make Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States. Heat I can tolerate; another four years of environmental degradation and abuse of science by a Republican administration I cannot.