Right about twelve years ago, I started riding my bicycle on a pretty much once a weekly basis with John. This morning we checked out doings in my South Valley, some of the biggest doings we’ve had down here in some time.
That’s a crane! In the South Valley! And not that kind of crane!
The reason for the crane, the pile-driving device further at the back of the photo, and all the big and bigger pipes is that NMDOT is fully replacing the 1960 version of Rio Bravo bridge with one to its immediate north. Right now the old one is still in use and the spot of the new one is filled with this stuff. Turning this stuff into a bridge and demolishing the old bridge, a project really just underway, should be complete in about four years. If we’re lucky.
There’s gonna be four years of a lot not to like about this project in terms of that I live west of the River and do pretty much everything on the east side of it, but I’m very much in favor of a new bridge. At some point, who knows when, because NMDOT is doing an even lousier job of public outreach on this project that its typically awful, I’m going to try to cross the old bridge on my bike to get to the Bosque Path, and will have been prevented by a fascinating array of crime tape, jersey barriers, and the other pile of shit necessary to really stop us walkers and rollers when it comes to such things. We’re pretty resourceful in overcoming construction zones. It’s actually one of the most fun things about cycling, if you ask me.
This morning was an easy jaunt through the workzone depicted above. Nobody was working the zone because it was Sunday, first and foremost. The sand has also been packed tight from all the tonka toys hauling all the pipes and such to and fro. Riding this packed sand alongside all the pipes, we then got to the mighty Rio Grande.
Riding buddy John takes WAY better photos than I, and writes WAY better blogposts now that I think about it, and I’d usually just link you to his blog, but remember, we’re not doing that this month.
Over 12 years of just about weekly bike rides, the Rio Grande has figured prominently in probably at least 200 of our cycling excursions together. We’ve seen it high and low, dry, overbanking, just about frozen solid. We’ve seen swallows, ducks, geese, cranes (the flying kind), and even cormorants like we do this morning. We’ve been together over the local bridges all the way from Bernalillo through Alameda and all the others south down to Rio Bravo.
One could get trite and say the River most definitely runs through the twelve years I’ve been riding with John. And yeah, it’s a really short stretch from that triteness to another cliche regarding our shared time and experiences themselves having the characteristics of a river. But when you’ve ridden together pretty much every week for twelve years, you’re allowed at least a wee bit of trite and cliche.
At least, I think so.
