Autumn Rides in the Bosque

The Great Acequia Clean-up

This time of year, the ditches typically look like this:  

The Alameda Interior Drain along North 2nd St.

Bullrushes, grasses, sunflowers, and horsetails happily take in the autumn sunshine along the acequias that are still flowing.  But recently the MRGCD has been making things tidy.  My local drain now looks like this: 

The Alameda Interior Drain adjacent to Matthew

Even the smaller ditches have been cleaned up, but the Alameda Drain requires heavy fuel. 

The Machine

This beast has a 4' scoop and a huge arm enabling it to scour one side on the down sweep and scour the near side on the up sweep.  They've been working for a couple weeks and have turned the corner now to the south. 

The good news is that in many areas, the goatheads are gone, but the bad news is that the ground surface is often churned up and very soft.  I find myself mostly risking the goatheads and riding on hardpacked surfaces.  Some of these are as good as pavement. 

North of Montano aloong the Griegos Interior Drain

The other good news is that my workout frequency is getting much better.  Certainly I'm adapting to retirement with more exercise than last year at this time.

Also, in preparation for a cold and wet winter, the treadmill has been turned into a treaddesk.  More on that in the next installment.