Finally a bike ride

Salsa LaCruz in summer dress, sans headlight and fenders

Not a long bike ride, mind you. But with the wind blowing out of the south and the air clear, I decided to run some errands on two wheels on the commuter, lightened up for summer riding. It felt good. Here, by the way, is the LANL Air Quality page.

Sikorsky Skycrane firefighting helicopter
No more beautiful sight has been passing over the house lately to fight this damn fire

Here comes the helicopter, twentieth time today. 
Wish the fire would burn out, so it could go away
How many trees we've burned down
Only God can say..
If the forest had some power, it would make somebody pay...
(with apologies to Bruce Cockburn)

Still plenty of fire up there, esp on a hot, dry day.
Shot looking NW over the Los Alamos Middle School

Slurry bomber behind Western Area. 
Photo by Becky Chamberlin

But its still ugly out there, with fire all over the mountains. I have no idea how long this will last, but it definitely impacts outdoor activities, with many roads closed and the air often harsh to breathe. But it was a nice enough day to pick up some groceries and utility goods in the small pannier and carry the ever present Olympus 765, now quite dated but small and very effective.

Night shot of roughly the previous scene
Not a whole lot of trees left when all is said and done

The last photo was just taken with the big Canon T1i in night mode, time exposure on a tripod (~2 sec exposure) using the 18-200 mm telephoto zoomed out to circa 135 mm. We walked the dogs and noted that the entire mountain was lit up like some perverse Christmas decoration so I went back to get the big camera. The whole damn Jemez is still burning.

Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono