A few more days like this and the trails will look more like trails and less like muddy creeks.
It’s hard to believe, but today’s outing was my first road ride of the new year.
Oh, sure, I’ve been riding the road, but on a cyclocross bike, or a gravel bike, and then only to get to the dirt, where the fun is.
But the trails have gotten pretty gooey lately, and with the sun peeking out and the temps inching up I’d just as soon not add my 33mm scrawl to the graffiti being carved into Mother Earth. Thus, today, the road.
In other news, my man Hal Walter is talking about pulling together another e-book with the tentative title of “American Flats,” a reference to a section of the World Championship Pack-Burro Race out of Fairplay. More as I hear it.
It’s -30- for Jim Lehrer, co-founder of “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS.
Lehrer started out as a print guy, and maybe that’s why I liked him. He worked for papers in Dallas, where he covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and then shifted to TV, where he and Robert MacNeil were all over the Watergate hearings. He went on to moderate a dozen presidential debates.
MacNeil praised Lehrer for his “very direct manner of interviewing” and his “extraordinary ability to listen.”
“You know the hardest thing to do on TV is listen,” he added.
Sometimes the hardest thing is to watch, especially given the motley crew of talking heads that fills screens these days. Unlike the bulk of them, Jim Lehrer will be missed. You can read his obit in The New York Timeshere.
Oh, good. Waymo is bringing its self-driving minivans and trucks to New Mexico.
The Duke City’s drivers can’t wait to take their hands off the wheel for real. Then they won’t have to steer with their knees while texting, smoking meth, swigging hooch, spitting out the fire in their laps (spilled hooch and pipe sparks), and shooting at the punk-ass bitch who gave them the side-eye at the last stop light they ran.
I asked for impeachment. And now that I’ve gotten it. …
Well, for one, it looked a lot better online.
Two, it seems several sizes too small.
And three, it smells funny, like maybe a turtle dragged it down a toilet.
Nevertheless, here it is. And here we are, striding boldly down the runway wearing yet another fashionable edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, then edited in Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “Dramatic Climax” from Zapsplat.com. The party chatter comes from dbspin at Freesound.org with an underlay of “Buddy,” an iMovie jingle. And Nick Danger (“All Things Firesign”), Mark Time (“Dear Friends”), and Principal Poop (“Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers”) appear courtesy of The Firesign Theatre, without whom none of this would have been necessary.
One of our family jokes is, “’Ee’s not the Messiah, ’ee’s a very naughty boy!”
That was only one of the innumerable killer lines delivered over the years by Terry Jones, who died at home Tuesday. He was 77, and had suffered from primary progressive aphasia, a cruel disease that stripped him of his marvelous powers of communication.
As a member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Jones generally wrote with Michael Palin, co-directed “Holy Grail” and “Meaning of Life” with Terry Gilliam, and flew solo as director for “Life of Brian,” which gave us that family gag we use so often.
Condolences, peace, and egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam, or Lobster Thermidor au Crevette with a Mornay sauce served in a Provençale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and with a fried egg on top, and spam, to Jones, his family, the surviving Pythons (“Two down*, four to go,” notes John Cleese), and their friends and fans.
* Cleese forgot to count the Seventh Python, Neil Innes. No spam for him.
First trip up this rocky little slope my wind jacket slid out of my handlebar bag. Good thing it didn’t wind up tangled in the spokes or I might have lost some psi from my head.
Speaking of flats, I went out looking for some today.
I was actually shooting some video of the Cannondale Topstone 105 for Adventure Cyclist, but you never know. Sometimes you shoot the cycling, and sometimes the cycling shoots you.
But not this time. Not this time. The tires, in case you were wondering, are WTB Riddlers in 700×37, and I’ve already flatted the rear once.
Today’s ride also served nicely to flush out the old headgear. We watched some of the Democratic “debate” last night, and this morning brought more impeachment drama, so, yeah, definitely time to get moving, preferably away from all news sources.
Didn’t hurt that the temps were in the mid-50s. Dude grinding past on a mountain bike sez to me, he sez, “What a perfectly terrible day.”
“Awful,” I agreed, adding, “Try not to suffer too much.”
The suffering will arrive tomorrow, in the form of a winter storm. Happily, I have video to edit, which should distract me from whatever befalls us, from the skies or the scribes.
My old bro’ Dr. Schenkenstein practices the mystical art of puncture resolution during a February 2011 ride around Bibleburg.
Do you remember when you learned how to fix a flat?
I don’t. But I’m pretty sure that in my first incarnation as a cyclist I served my time as one of those guys you occasionally see trudging gloomily along, pushing a bike, instead of spending a few moments at roadside swapping tubes and getting back after the riding of the thing.
No doubt some lucky shop handled flats for me until I got “serious” about cycling in the mid-Eighties. I didn’t have any mentors, or friends who were deeply into the sport, so I read every bike magazine and book I could lay my hands on and got my basic training and maintenance tips from a distance as I moved around from job to job, town to town, Pueblo to Colorado Springs to Denver to Española to Santa Fe, where I finally joined my first club and started taking instruction the hard way.
Flats, it seemed, were part of the price of admission to the game. You want to play? You got to pay. It’s like taking your pulls, or sharing food, water and kit as circumstances dictate. Sooner or later you have to give it up. Patch it up. Whatevs.
It’s no big deal. Unless you have been seduced by what the engineers call “progress,” fixing a flat on the fly is not rocket surgery or brain science. Open the brake caliper, flip the quick release, remove the wheel, pry off the bead, remove the old tube, check to make sure that whatever violated its integrity is no longer in the tire, install the new tube, inflate, replace the wheel, close the QR and caliper, stuff the flat tube in a jersey pocket, and get on about your business. Easy peasy. Even the Irish can manage it.
Of course, they’d have to make a short story out of it. Perhaps a song. Or maybe a podcast.
A podcast?
Yes, yes, yes — pull out your patch kits and push in the earbuds, it’s time for another thumb-fingered edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.
“My compliments to the chef. His cooking tastes much better than his hand.”
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), is a stout fellow and a resolute trencherman.
So when a crook gut puts His Excellency off his feed, as it did Friday evening, it’s a matter of utmost concern for the general staff.
He retired to his quarters, leaving orders not to be disturbed, and stayed abed throughout Saturday, refusing both food and drink.
An expedition to the emergency room was considered, and rejected. He prefers his personal physician, who is unavailable on weekends, and the ER is not a secure facility, especially when His Excellency is being treated. Anything might happen to anyone at anytime. When under stress the grizzled old soldier takes his tactical cues from the late Richard Pryor’s character Mudbone: “If somebody get hurt in here, I ain’t gonna be the last one.”
So we waited.
Finally, come evening, he agreed to take a soupçon of nourishment. An inspection tour of the litter box followed. And after a good night’s sleep, His Excellency greeted the morning with a substantial breakfast and the traditional nip at the hand that feeds him.
“The Constitution provided against every probable vacancy in the office of President, but did not provide for utter imbecility.”
—Senator John Sherman, brother of William Tecumseh Sherman
Who’s this Mad Dog guy?
Patrick O'Grady sells words and pictures to Adventure Cyclist, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and pretty much anyone else who can spell his name correctly next to the phrase which sounds so musical to his aged ears: "Pay to the order of. ..." For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
Radio Free Dogpatch
Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink. He got worse with a keyboard. Now he has a microphone. God help us all.
Listen to the latest episode
Get kit
If you need a tub of margarine, a spatula, and the dubious assistance of a giggling friend to squeeze into your old team jersey, it's time to step up to some kit that fits. Click the pic to join the Old Guys Who Get Fat in Winter Racing Team!
Know your rights, and defend them.
Fight hate.
Defending press freedom since 1970
Hal Walter
Colorado Central columnist Hal Walter cranks out a book now and then, and they'd look swell in your library (they also read nicely, too). Click the image to order yours.
