Heeeeee’s baaaaaaaaack

May 13, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Whew. Long couple days in the velo-barrel. Sorry about the radio silence, but I had to save my dwindling supply of japes for the paying customers. Trying to wrap up a column for Bicycle Retailer today I looked nearly as grim as Big Tex did going backwards on the Alpi di Suisi.

Clusterfuckery follows this guy like flies trailing a garbage scow. First it was the hoopla over finding a lever to get him into the Gila; now it’s a team-kit change six days into the Giro. The UCI must love seeing his name pop up on the old caller ID.

Big Tex aside, I’ve been having a fine old time watching the Giro online at Universal Sports. It’s amazing how we all demand Enterprise-class flat-panel monitors in the living room for watching dumb-ass sitcoms that rework “The Honeymooners” for the umpteenth time, yet quickly adapt to watching a complicated bike race unfold on a laptop. The video is good, much better than cycling.tv, and it’s free, too. There’s also a pay version, which reminds me of the TourTracker deal the Amgen Tour of California provided, but the gratis model suits me and my budget just fine.

Ain’t nobody’s business

May 9, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

From our No Shit, Y’Think? Department comes the following, from Tom Boonen, who once again has tested positive for the dumb dust:

“The night before the drug test I went out. I stayed for a while and I drank. At some stage I must have taken something. Then I had a blackout. I think I have a problem.”

I can sympathize with the guy. When I was 28, my preferred form of recreation consisted of going out, staying for a while and drinking, at some stage taking something, and having a blackout. The only major difference between us is that Tornado Tom is a former world road cycling champ and three-time winner of Paris-Roubaix subject to regular drug testing, while I was an unheralded copy editor who could piss flame across the newsroom without anyone paying the slightest bit of notice, barring a chain-smoking colleague in need of a light.

Had newspapers been routinely dope-testing hacks in 1982, I would have earned a lifetime ban from journalism between New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day, and there would forever have been an asterisk next to my name in the smattering of headline-writing and cartooning awards I had won.

Happily, they weren’t, and thus I remain at large to annoy my betters, free of nosebleeds and unmolested by white-coats proffering plastic cups. Frankly, if anyone needs drug testing in my game these days, it’s those who employ me against the advice of advertisers, the entreaties of subscribers and their own better judgment.

So I could care less if Boonen is horning lines off strippers in some tawdry Belgium alehouse on Saturday as long as he can ride a straight line on Sunday. As Big Tex noted, “This is more of a social issue than a sporting issue.”

• Special Pre-Mother’s Day Blasphemy: This is my new favorite band: Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse. I mean, with a name like that and songs like “Connecticut’s for Fucking,” “Nipples” and “Alcoholics in My Town,” what’s not to like? Five Hail Marys and two Hello Dollys to former New Mexican colleague Steve Terrell for the tip.

Sooooooooo-ee!

May 3, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

Don't let his sleepy expression fool you — this white guy can jump.

Could I have a mild case of the swine flu? A couple of women suggested today, after seeing me in Lycra, that I may have picked something up at the trough, as in a few too many porky pounds. And I’m married to one of them. The women, not the pounds, though of course we are close, too.

In fairness, I think Herself was just waiting for someone else to bring the subject up so she could do a riff on it, like Miles Davis and John Coltrane trading licks. It’s not as though we both had managed to overlook the fact that my girth has begun to challenge the design limitations of even the most expandable of fossil-fuel garments. When you can get an echo out of a guy’s belly button, and his kit size sports more Xs than a Jenna Jameson flick, that guy is a great fat bastard.

Call me old school. Back in the day, racers who had denied themselves various guilty pleasures throughout the long racing season (with the exception of Sean Kelly) often plastered on a few kilos during the off-season, knowing that they would either have to train them off come springtime or have Captain Ahab hunting them with harpoons, and not just for laughs, either.

So show me a little daylight and I’ll ride right through it. And before you know it, I’ll make Andy Schleck look like the Michelin Man. They say the first ton is the hardest.

Meanwhile, here’s another fat honky for your amusement — Turkish, in the back yard, enjoying a brief gap between rainstorms.

The waste land

May 2, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Mia Sopaipilla auditions for the starring role in a feline take on the noir classic "The Meowtese Falcon."

T.S. Eliot was full of shit. “April is the cruellest month,” my large, pale Irish-American ass. So far, May in Bibleburg sucks like a New Orleans pumping station crosswired to a black hole.

It can’t even rain properly around here, f’chrissakes — just this mincing little dribble that reminds me of why I fled Oregon like a Norway rat rocketing out of a sewer pipe. Fog, gray skies, the temperatures barely above freezing, Mia toasting her bum on the DSL modem and Turkish begging to go out for reasons only known to himself. Maybe he’s sick of dried cat chow and dreams of catching a passing fish, if there are any with legs in these parts. Good luck — that species appears to be restricted to Darwin emblems affixed to Volvos.

Up in Crusty County, meanwhile, my man Hal Walter has taken on the swine whine with recommendations for reducing your vulnerability to marauding bugs. It boils down to reducing stress and eating properly, which is a lot cheaper than building a R. Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome with an airlock and enduring hourly rubdowns with Lysol.

What is to be done?

May 1, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

This being May Day, I should be writing some commie claptrap to show my solidarity with the downtrodden, but I’m just too goddamned tired. I swapped shifts in the velo-barrel with a comrade who was backed up against the wall of higher education and as things turned out there was a pile of pixels that needed pushing. The luck of the draw. I even had to speak to people on the phone and write down what they said for publication. Oh, the humanity. Making stuff up is ever so much easier.

At least we don’t have the swine flu. Not yet, anyway. The wine flu is a possibility come tomorrow morning, but we are spared the Revenge of the Pigs for now.

Meanwhile, Herself has returned from yet another road trip in the service of library science. This most recent excursion took her to the Stanley Hotel — yes, that Stanley Hotel, the one immortalized as the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s famous spine-tingler “The Shining.” The boogers didn’t get her, happily, but they did mess with her sleep by banging on the heater until she had to change rooms at (gasp) midnight.