Four wheels warm, two wheels cold

December 22, 2008November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

I'm melting, melting ... what a world, what a world.

My Subaru has a thing for thermostat gaskets (it doesn’t like them), and this morning I had to drop it off at Heuberger for the annual replacement of same. Herself was rocketing about the house, getting ready for work, so I chucked the Voodoo in the car, cranked up the heater and the seat warmer, and rolled off to Motor City. Fifteen degrees, said the dashboard thermometer. O, goody.

The mechanics all looked at me like I was from another world; Pluto, or maybe Goofy. And it’s true, I did not look as though I had just stepped from the pages of Bicycling magazine. In point of fact, I may be the worst advertisement ever for fashionable cycling.

My winter kit is a motley collection of premillennial gear, most of it so old I can’t remember where or when I got it (though most of it was made in the USA, which is something of a tip-off). From top to bottom, today’s ensemble went like this: Columbia tuque; Patagonia ski mask; Smith glasses; Cannondale jacket; Patagonia turtleneck; Pearl Izumi gloves, bibs and heavy-duty tights; SmartWool socks; Hi-Tec GT Euro shoes. Only the gloves, glasses and shoes came from overseas. And I know for a fact that the socks are the only item purchased in this millennium, from Colorado Running Company.

The Sammy Safetys among you will notice that this list does not include a helmet. So sue me. I wear a 7 5/8 hat. Try stuffing that fat bastard into a helmet without a pry bar and some Vaseline.

Late update: The Subaru remains unfixed (shorthanded at the shop), and the ’83 Toyota 4WD won’t start (a battery that even my charger won’t reboot). O, bugger. And me with an incomplete holiday grocery list, too. Off to the auto-parts store for a heavy-duty battery.

That sinking feeling

December 21, 2008November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

You know it’s cold outside when The Mighty Turk would rather be curled up in a nice warm bathroom washbasin than outdoors, oppressing squirrels in honor of the winter solstice. We put him out a couple of times, but like a furry boomerang he just kept coming back.

Tonight I’m making a chicken cacciatore for Herself and a couple of pals. It’s a variation I picked up from Emeril back when we lived up in Weirdcliffe and still had TV, and it’s pretty hard to screw up. I do without the wings, which I consider too much trouble to eat, and on occasion I’ve used whole wheat flour and red wine instead of the white stuff, and somehow it almost always turns out edible.

Of course, a true Zappatista would be serving up the Lonesome Electric Turkey for a solstice banquet. But I’ve always been something of a backslider, no matter which faith I happened to be professing at any given time.

I’m stuck in this old city now

December 20, 2008November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Oh, Colorado’s calling me
From her hillsides and her rivers and her mesas and her trees,
When blizzards snap the power lines
And all the toilets freeze
In December in the Colorado Rockies
—Colorado, by Christopher Guest, Sean Kelly and Tony Hendra, 1973

The wind sang us a lullaby, the snow was thick as cream. . . .

People and critters get weird around these parts come December. My old pal Hal, who ranches chickens, burros and beeves outside Weirdcliffe, claims the deer ate his Internet the other day. It seems only fair, as he’s been eating them for years, along with elk, antelope, and other four-legged neighbors, generally after shooting them first. But still, it leaves a country boy a tad isolated, especially if his TV blows up about the same time.

Meanwhile, down here in Bibleburg, our large and ferocious feline Turkish has developed a fondness for my lap, in an oddly closeted sort of fashion. If Herself is not in evidence, Turk’ will leap up on my drawing board, stalk across my closed Asus Eee PC laptop to the next table over and give me the big blue eyes until I pat my quads a couple of times. Then he hops aboard and commences to purr, knead, nap and otherwise act like an actual cat instead of a furry Edward Scissorhands.

If anyone walks into the office, of course, I am less of a love boat than a launching pad, much to the detriment of my sweat pants (and quads, or what remains of them). But that’s December in the Colorado Rockies for you.

Didja get any onya?

December 19, 2008 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The Decider has finally turned the money hose on Detroit, and don’t I wish I were standing nearby with a bucket. One of my paychecks has mysteriously gone walkabout again and Visa would like nothing better than to get me by the plums with a downhill pull.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of the holiday season, there’s a fresh rant up at VeloNews.com. No charge. Think of it as my little gift to you this Zappadan.

Interesting concept, eh? I get paid (or don’t, as the case may be) to dash off my little online japes. The editors get paid to read and post it. And the publisher has to write the check (or not). But you, you lucky devils — you get off scot-free. Except for having to notice all those bloody ads for this and that in your peripheral vision, which does tax the eyeballs, does it not?

Not only is my stuff free to you, it’s easily accessible. Couple clicks of the mouse and there I am in all my pointless, content-free glory. It’s a pretty specialized delivery system, when you think about it. If all you care about is reading me, or Lennard Zinn, or Bob Mionske, you don’t have to thumb through a wad of other stuff to get to us. Click, click and off you go.

(More on this later. Herself is screeching that I look like a coconut and am in dire need of a haircut.)

OK, I’m freshly shaven and back to deep thought. I click the mouse for my national and international news, coverage of fringe sports like cycling, leftist political commentary and expert advice I can use to make my life richer (investment advice, recipes from elite chefs, and so on). I know where to go and how to get there.

I would like to read local news, too, and plenty of it, without having to wade through a wad of other stuff that is more easily available online: the aforementioned national and international news; pointless coverage of mainstream professional sports already covered to excess by TV; and the endless smelly pile of treacly features keyed to days of the week (Food, Life, Money, et al). But I can’t get local and regional news — not a lot of it, anyway, and certainly not reliably — with a click of the mouse.

If the Gazette were to do without all the trappings that defined the Newspaper v1.0 and become a strictly local news source, I might subscribe again. But if it keeps trying to be all things to all people, I’ll continue to withhold my pennies and watch it die a slow, lingering death.

Late update: Incidentally, if this post seems even more scatter-brained than usual, it may be because the cats were dancing on my head at 4 a.m. and set me to thinking creakily about some of the excellent comments in an earlier post.

We’re only in it for the money

December 17, 2008 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

The decline and fall of American newspapering has been much in the public eye of late, what with the Motown rags going digital, The New York Times tapping its building for a quarter-mil’ in operating cash, and the Rocky Mountain News and other cage-liners either going on the auction block, shedding staff or both.

Now, James Surowiecki has written in The New Yorker something I have been saying all along, that newspapers’ problems extend beyond inept management and the rise of the Internet — the readership bears plenty of blame, too:

The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.

Quite right. “Absolutely Free” was a Zappa song, not a business model. Ass, gas or grass, baby — nobody rides for free. Newspapers and magazines have been slow to realize where we and our money were going, but now that they’ve figured it out, we should expect to start seeing virtual paper boxes popping up in our digital neighborhoods.

So keep a few coins handy. You want to hear the Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny delivering its wisdom, you got to give up the em oh en eee why. The alternative is not a good one. Concludes Surowiecki:

For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime — intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on — and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.

Late update: Here’s a case in point for you. Despite two wars raging, a new president stepping into the Oval Office and a crumbling economy, newspapers are closing or downsizing their Washington bureaus because they can no longer afford them.