As we focus toward appealing to the absolute lowest number of readers possible (I write this half-jokingly), which of the two following facts is more obscure (note: this is hard):

• You can get Wandrer miles on an ebike, but not Squadrats tiles/bingo squares/squadratinhos. So you e-ride to the Squadrats starting point, turn off the motor during tile/etc. acquisition, and go back to e-riding back home because you’re in a headwind/lazy.
• Sri Lanka just asked for an immediate second new ball at its ICC World Cup ODI match versus Bangladesh at Delhi, after apparently the first new ball was too wet for their liking out of the ball box, given officials wanted to best simulate the old ball being played in dewy conditions).

If we were asking the above in Colombo, Sri Lanka right now, this would be a no-brainer, but for almost all of us here in the States, I had you at ODI. Passionately following obscure endeavors is what makes life worth living. Yes, I know there’s things like “family,” and “faith,” and “professional fulfillment,” but to my mind nothing currently beats diving into the mental process required to decide where to start a bike route based on factors 99.99% of cyclists (an already small percentage of our overall population) don’t give a rat’s ass about.

Because explaining obscure passions is sure to drive readership down even further, let me elaborate. We started this past Sunday’s bike ride at the heretofore (to me) unnamed Bosque access parking lot known as “Shining River” (which is actually part of a book title by local authors Kathryn “Kit” Sergeant and Mary Davis, I now only know because riding buddy told me).

This access point is adjacent to the not-so-shining river that is Paseo del Norte, Rio Grande Blvd., and the Bosque Path. From there, the ride went something like this:

The round checkerboard symbol near the Coors Blvd hellscape on the lower left is where I ended this ride and went back to ebike mode. In between the green dot at Shining River and checkerboard near hellscape was some outstanding Autumnal riding, primarily trail/levee, on a 53 pound bicycle with the motor turned off.

As conditions ranged from sandy to very sandy to not-quite-as-sandy, it was fun to assess how well the new ebike navigated things sans motor. I’d say it did pretty well, even in conditions somewhat sandier than above, and there was about the same amount of walking the bike relative to my analog bikes with ~2 in. tires. That said, riding the levee down from Coors hellscape to Sagebrush Church with the motor on was heavenly, a striking contrast to the hellish journey through the overstuffed Sagebrush Church parking lot (with loud PA system blaring the sermon outside for those folks sneaking cigarettes out in their big ass trucks in the parking lot).

It is my opinion that if you need a church so big it has tons of orange cones and off-duty cops directing you to the parking lot, you need more than a church. But I digress.

In the past two Sundays, riding buddy and I have soaked in the wondrous, one might also say heavenly, Fall colors from pretty much the River and I-25 down south to the Sandia Pueblo gates north of Alameda. Our average speed in doing so was something like 5 mph, and no four-inch tires and/or ebike motors were engaged in doing so. Your humble blogger had one spill in some dense brush right alongside the River, which serves him right and only served to make the ride more fun. I find it always fun to contemplate a narrative in which one is helicoptered out of the Rio Grande Bosque with broken bones and severed arteries. Like a United States citizen following international cricket, I’m weird that way.

Diving into the obscurity wouldn’t be complete without a look into what our ride meant for my Squadrats tile/squares/squadratinhos situation. I’ve been in the brown ones below, not yet ventured into the white ones, and turned a few from white to brown yesterday.

The blue-green above marks newly “browned” tiles in yesterday’s ride or adjacent tiles that touch on….okay, I’ll stop now. We’ve gotten too deep and nerdy, even for me. Still, I remember the good ‘ol days when you went to a news stand/bookstore and could wade through the hundreds and hundreds of magazine titles on the most obscure of subjects. As a young person, it was during this wading that I learned some folks were crazy about things like model railroading, musical genres I’d never heard of when I was 14, and National Lampoon.

Yes, there was a print version of National Lampoon magazine. I’d tell you youngins about it, but that woudl be another digression.

The internet is supposed to be an equivalent to that news stand of 1975, but the “wading” is quite different. I wonder sometimes how many folks stumble/surf these days into obscure worlds they never knew about and the weird followers of this obscurity.

For whatever reason, you’ve stumbled into this one today. Thanks for falling in.