It's Pancake Sunday! Been awhile since we've had a breakfast o' flapjacks, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping we still have the Snoqualmie Falls pancake mix. What restaurants in Albuquerque make good pancakes? Anyone? Anyone?

Oops, and flapjacks aren't really pancakes. Thanks, Wikipedia.

I have a bone to pick, and hopefully that bone I seek to pick won't be (a), MINE, and (b), plucked from the side of a motor vehicle. My consternation has to do with this: WHY must I share a bike lane with passenger-side rearview mirrors? What is it about many motorists in this fair city that leads them to drive so far right of the freakin' crown of the road? I realize I have a bias here; Portland motorists by and large skirt bike lanes by a fat margin because of the amount of bicycle traffic, and those who ride bicycles in Portland are a vocal and litigious lot (and USUALLY rightly so, although some are all too eager to pick a fight). There is, however, in my mind no excuse. A bike lane is a bike lane no matter in what city it may be found. It is NOT a bonus space for automobiles, demarkated to show motorists just what a deal they're getting, like a line on the outside of a cereal box showing how much less cereal you'd get if it weren't for the graciousness and largesse of the producer. "Dang! Looka this, honey! Twenty percent MORE ROOM on the right!"

Don't misunderstand, please. As a vehicular cyclist I have found that sometimes bike lanes aren't the optimum path to safety, and so I will eschew the confines, and pedal outside the lines, for broader avenues the cyclist he pines (awright, knock it OFF). Often, when they lead where I want to go, I'll be on the many and delightful trails 'twixt the ditches anyway since they're scenic and fun to ride. However, while I'm IN the bike lane, it's MINE. I'm thinking the law itself says so unless New Mexico's traffic laws are very different from Oregon's. Please keep all your metal and glass bits to yourself and well to the left, because if you don't and I get clobbered by your mirror or any other part of your vehicle, I WILL try to get some of my blood on your physical person. STAY OFF MY PATCH.

That issue aside, I've had an easy time commuting to work. Now I have to gird my loins and start riding more often AND ride home FROM work as well. So far one thing or another has made riding home impractical, but I'll be honest here and state that the few times I could have ridden homeward, I didn't. Shame on me. Not warrior-like at ALL. This next week I'll make the effort to ride round-trip on my commutes. What does not kill me makes me stronger, once I've stopped heaving behind the shrubbery.


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We recently discovered the Bear Canyon Arroyo Trail a mere two miles or less from our front door. Excellent place for a walk and to see lots of animals and flora. Now I know where those prickly pear things come from.









There are always roadrunners, rabbits, lizards, and birds everywhere, just as on all the trails we've walked. And QUIET. The kind of quiet that makes cresting the path beside the dam overlooking Juan Tabo Blvd. somewhat startling when the sound and sight of traffic reassert themselves. Actually, everywhere seems a might quieter; is it possibly the rarer air? Or the fact that we aren't hugged on all sides by hills?

My friends in PDX are gonna get awfully bored with me waxing rhapsodic about the Southwest but I mean to say, even the SKY is a wonder here. The clouds are soaring sculptures suspended in the fathomless blue.



Our favorite time to take walks is at dusk, watching the sun go down and set the clouds aflame on the horizon. Truly stunning.

One last note. I keep hearing a gotta go to this place, and now I see THIS.




Gotta go. It's been real.