Albuquerque 4th Week

7/23

Flies. FLIES! ABQ is infested with flies. To be fair, Austin has mosquitos, ABQ has flies. But the fly situation here is absurd. At the coffee/restaurant shop I frequent every day (Java Joe's) customers bring their OWN FLYSWATTERS along! Flies land on my arms, hands and head while I sip coffee and type away on the laptop. The boldest flies land on my nose, which I admit, is a generous landing ground. While in my RV, I take great precautions keeping the pesky insects out. My yellow fly swatter is never out of reach. It's a a losing battle, but it does give one pleasure flattening a fly, however temporary. Maybe it's a bad fly season if there is such a thing. This is my fourth time around visiting ABQ. I have never experienced a "fly infestation" situation before so who knows. Hope Santa Fe ain't as bad :)

7/25

Biking in many real ways in any town USA is not without it's hazards, big and small. When riding a bike, there is always the possibility of falling off it. I have fallen off my bike twice in Austin. Once I did and "Endo-O", which means I went flying over the handle bars. Landing is always violent. If you come away with scrapes and scratches and ache's the next day you are one of the lucky ones. Broken bones, concussions or worse are a real possibility. And of course, there's is the Bike VS Cars factor. That always ends the same way. Car always "wins".

Anywhere, any street, no matter how cautious the bike rider is, danger lurks. Some automobile drivers angrily resent a person on a bike on the street because we are just too damn slow, and how dare! we be on the road. Can't that fucking bicyclist see that "I'm (car driver) in a fucking hurry!" Austin, because of the extremely high volume of cars on the road is crazy. When I bike in A-Town, whenever possible, it's all side streets.

In ABQ, the biking/traffic situation is different. The automobile driving here is in a class of its own. RED lights here are meaningless. When the light turns red for traffic and green for you, a person must wait two to THREE seconds, look both ways several times, then proceed with caution. Cars don't just borderline run red lights, they make complete a mockery of them. Even neighborhood streets are iffy. Cars come awful close and awful fast, aggressively fast when passing. ABQ, by the way, has a VERY active bicycling community. Everyone from the serious $1500 biker set ,to the many many low income folks who use bicycles to get around.

7/26

I've lost track of the great stuff I have picked up from the "curbs of Austin": Clothes, furniture, appliances (a washer and dryer, front loading, Bosh!). ABQ, not quite at the same disposable income level as Austin (where people just put stuff out cuz Amazon just delivered something better), I thought the pickings would be slim to none. But NO. Across the street where I have had my RV stationed for nearly a month is a nice apt. complex. Lately, boxes of stuff were beginning to appear in the corner. I went to inspect directly. And boy, was there good stuff! Finally I met the couple who were putting the stuff out. Really nice young couple. They were moving. T-shirts, a super stand up fan, cloth napkins, a bright orange down jackets (for bike riding!), Keto Snacks (yay!). I would have snagged numerous pairs of excellent running shoes - but all one size too small :( More stuff: A fantastic folding table and two brand new folding chairs (now I gotta figure how to take with me). The two full box of remainder stuff I'll put in my RV later today and drop off with my homeless friends who could use every bit of it. "The Buddha", a homeless mainstay among the community appeared in the very first segment of "Wander Lost" and did a terrific job, That's his picture at the top of this page..

7/28

Delivered 3 big boxes of clothes and shoes to the homeless camp yesterday afternoon and 5 or 6 folks immediately began to pick through the contents. The Buddha grabbed a Dallas Cowboy Tony Romo shirt and slipped it on over the t-shirt he was wearing. Most of the stuff got picked through and was taken, left over stuff remained in the boxes. I left, honked a goodbye, and on the way home, as I was driving directly into the sun very slowly, I nearly hit a motorcyclist! There was no collision, but boy did he give me a well deserved dirty look!

7/29

As anyone who know me, knows that I am not shy about looking inside a dumpster to see, if perhaps, there may be something I may want. and is within arms reach. I have discover and retrieved many a treasure this way. I found a a single , nice Levi casual loafer and a nicely broken in Converse All Star sneaker. They were among the huge haul of clothes and shoes I retrieved the other day and delivered to my homeless friends. Anyway, who throws away a single shoe or only one sneaker? Figuring it cant hurt to try, I hung the Levi loafer by the dumpster with a note. Perhaps the other shoe ( and sneaker) may appear one day.

BAGWORMS. These industrious insects hang from the trees all over ABQ this time of the year. With the help of an almost invisible silky string, they go up, and they go down. I'm certain that millions of years of evolution has a damn good for reason for the up/down cycle which is AOK with me. Occasionally they fall to the ground and steadily make their way back up to higher ground at a decent clip. That's one down below using a metal fence on its way to a branch.