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Month: February 2009
Dog day afternoon
Gave myself the day off in honor of William S. Burroughs’ birthday. I can do that, because Mad Dog Media is a one-dog shop. Unsnap the leash and off I go.
It being 60-something and sunny, I broke out Old Reliable, my Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocross, and rode the trail to Fountain and back. It’s about a two-hour U-turn, if you throw in a few didos on the return leg, like a lap of Monument Valley Park for extra vitamin-D absorption.
A couple largish downed trees this side of Highway 85 require a quick zig and zag; a short pair of run-ups around a washed-out concrete climb follow. Other than that it’s smooth sailing. A guy could do it on a road bike. Not me, though. Not as long as I have five ‘cross bikes taking up space in the garage. Put those fat bastards to work and save the skinny rubber for the streets.
A bit of drama greeted me on my return home. An elderly neighbor needed an assist with her equally aged greyhound, which has been having balance issues and today lost control of its front legs. Being creakily past my own prime I commiserated briefly and then helped load the dog into her car for a trip to the vet. She was expecting bad news and got it. The vet prescribed a dose of steroids, but confessed it was a delaying action, the equivalent of locking up the cantis on a sandy descent. You may slow that long downhill slide but you ain’t gonna stop it.
Upset me, it did, in part because I have a beloved cat — Ike, a.k.a. Chairman Meow — buried in the back yard. I miss any one of my departed animal pals more than all of my deceased relatives. So I showered the grit off and went to Trinity Brewing Company for a couple of IPAs and a bowl of their mac’ and cheese. I’d never been there, and the online reviews were not encouraging, but I was not in the mood for my usual haunts, so I took a chance and it paid off. Good beer — the brewmaster used to whip up the popskull over at Bristol Brewing — and a friendly, attentive staff. Just what the doctor — or, in this case, the vet — ordered.
BRAIN damage
Ho, ho. My colleagues at Bicycle Retailer & Industry News have finally bitten the new-media bullet and launched a blog, in which they mention the likes of Interbike’s Rich Kelly, Masiguy Tim Jackson and BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus — while saying nary a word about your humble narrator, their very own columnist and cartoonist, who has been blogging about this, that and the other since before the millennium.
Hell, I have archived posts dating back to three years before BRAIN wrote its first story on bike-biz bloggery. I’m on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, Blogger and WordPress and Hostcentric. I’m so Web 2.0, I’m virtually digital. Or digitally virtual. And yet I get no respect. Oh, the humanity.
Late update: BRAIN honchette Megan Tompkins feels my pain and responds to my NastyGram® thusly: “Sorry for failing to mention one of our own in our initial post. I didn’t mean to overlook you; indeed I was hoping that we might be able to collaborate between the two blogs. How can we work together to drive traffic to both our blogs?”
This is exactly what BRAIN needs in order to more tightly wrap its sucker-tipped, Cthulhu-like tentacles around the rocklike thighs of cycling trade journalism: regular congress with a minor-league blog whose proprietor says “Fuck” more often than The Dude in “The Big Lebowski.” Naturally, I am happy to oblige, and insist that all of my readers — yes, all three of you — visit the BRAIN Blog at least thrice daily, clicking this and that until your mouse fingers bleed.
And you’re working for no one but me
Dashed off a wee bit of semi-journalism for the VeloNews.com gang and then took off for a short, slightly hilly ride into the Garden of the Gods. I looked just like a cyclist, only slower. Much, much slower. I’d blame the cyclo-cross bike and its fat rubber if there weren’t something even fatter attached to the saddle.
Head-clearing exercise was a must after glancing at The New York Times coverage of the trio of turds who somehow thought that dodging the taxman would never catch up with them. Housekeepers, cars and drivers, Jesus H. Christ. All that’s missing is the Zil lane so the Party bosses never need be delayed by traffic jams en route to the Kremlin.
The worst part of this is the insane sense of entitlement I get from these people and their Beltway buddies. Doesn’t everybody have a car and driver? A housekeeper? Well, yeah — I have a car and I drive the sonofabitch. Make the monthly payment and pump my own gas, too. As to the housekeeper, I’ve been married to her for nearly 20 years, but I’ve never checked her papers. I could be in deep shit here if Obama rings me up, asks me to be Minister of Cyclo-cross or something.
At least I know where our cook comes from. He’s a cranky, bald-headed old fat bastard from Annapolis, Maryland. And he pays his fucking taxes before the newspapers ring him up to ask why he hasn’t. You know you have a retarded cat when he doesn’t even bother trying to cover up his stanky shit. Welcome to the New and Improved Land of the Pharaohs.
Six more weeks?
That miserable rodent Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow again this morning, heralding six more weeks of winter. If it were up to me that furry forecaster would see the lands and grooves of a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, but not for long.
Now here’s some weather news you can use. Steve Anderson, a correspondent of mine at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has teamed with a colleague to design some official NOAA cycling kit — jersey, shorts, gloves and cap. The club is an official USA Cycling outfit with some 40 members, from the current head of NOAA to the newest student intern.
I plan to order a jersey up because I’m certain that in addition to matching my eyes it will make me faster. Plus it will serve as camouflage should I decide to attack that Punxsutawney punk from the air.
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