Interbike starts tomorrow with Outdoor Demo West, and I feel a minor twinge of regret about not attending this year, if only because it’s not likely to be raining in Las Vegas.
Here’s the forecast for Bibleburg. And here’s the forecast for Sin City. I’m not certain that I’m up for 96 with a low haze of Marlboro exhaust, but 52 and raining? Again? With a chance of snow? Already? I’m sorry, but this is not acceptable. Even the aspens are complaining. I’ve only seen a few looking fashionably red and gold; the others merely look sodden and depressed, like leafy winos.
I may or may not be commenting on the festivities from a distance. I’m back in the VeloBarrel starting Monday for some extra-credit editing during Interbike, and one never knows how fast said barrel will fill up, or with what.
Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, dead at 72 of complications from chemotherapy for a bone-marrow transplant after developing leukemia. Also, Henry Gibson, perhaps best known for his nonsensical “Laugh-In” poetry, of cancer at 73.
I like to annoy my friend Hal with e-mails whose subject is “A pome,” which probably has its roots in Gibson’s “Laugh-In” shtick. And PP&M managed to make John Denver sound good with “Leaving On a Jet Plane.”
In which I break my own commandment: Thou shalt not use thy iPod while cycling. It's actually an iPhone, and I wasn't listening to music, but that doesn't make it right.
Our long national nightmare is over. Well, mine, anyway. Sorry about yours.
My nine-day, extra-credit stint in the VeloBarrel came to an end last night, so I slept in this morning, enjoyed a medium-heavy breakfast and then went for a ride. The big yellow ball was back in the sky, and I wasn’t the only one enjoying it, but the path was not crowded and so I had time to snap a quick pic of myself — actually on a bike instead of in an office chair — without endangering anyone, including myself.
It was a short ride, because I needed to get busy spending some of the extra money I made. The Forester needs service, the iPhone needs a hands-free kit and I’d really like to buy a new camera. I don’t much like my Canon PowerShot S5 IS — it’s bulky without the corresponding feel of solidity, the battery life is terrible, and the four rechargeable AAs and SD card sit in the same bay, so when you need to pull out the card to transfer pix, well, the batteries pop out, too. Plus the lid to the battery/SD card bay is a pain in the ass.
I’m thinking about the Canon PowerShot G11, but not very hard. The sucker costs a ton, and even with extra money burning a hole in my pocket it’s hard to justify spending $500 on a camera when I already have two of ’em and a wife-slash-accountant who is very aware of this. Ain’t no flies on Herself. She’s small but fierce.
Another gray day in Bibleburg. Big Bill McBeef popped by to say howdy after his Sunday ride, and he was wearing some old long-sleeved Mad Dog Media kit, at least two iterations off the back, the real warm stuff we got from Aussie about a thousand years ago.
Naturally, being a cyclo-crosser (emeritus), I called him a pussy for wearing long sleeves so early in September. But I was slouched in my office chair with a cup of tea, in front of two large, heat-generating flat-panel monitors, editing copy for VeloNews.com, so there was little doubt as to whose manliness was in question.
We have a moment between revenue-generating chores here, so let’s take stock of what’s going on in the hairy-legged world.
First, Jim Carroll, the punk-rocking poet perhaps best known for his memoir “The Basketball Diaries” and his punk anthem “People Who Died”? He died.
Next, The Washington Postcontinues to undermine the notion that the media are controlled by a tiny group of media elites. (Thanks and a tip of the Mad Blog tinfoil beanie to Steve Benen at Political Animal.) Honorable mention goes to The Bibleburg Gaslight, which proudly lists the right-wing harpy Michelle Malkin as an advisory member of its editorial board, which is not unlike Sybil adding another demonic contributor to the list of voices in her head.
And finally, my buddy Hal Walter writes about net worth versus self-worth. Take a squint; it’s most definitely worth pondering over a hot toddy as you wonder why you are where you are — and where you left the snow shovel.
Just a hint of color, nothing like fall in Ottawa, where I spent a few years as a kid.
Hm. The old updates aren’t exactly coming fast and furious, are they? Probably because there isn’t anything particularly edifying about a 55-year-old tosspost chained to a desk, doing an actual job of work for the first time in recent memory.
I’m on my seventh consecutive day in the barrel at VeloNews.com and won’t get out until Tuesday, so amusing digressions, quips and observations will be few and far between for a couple more days at least. We have the Vuelta a España, the Tour of Missouri, the Tour of Britain, the Tour de l’Avenir, Univest GP and even the world military cycling championships going on all at the same time, all in different time zones, and it makes for a fairly long shift, what with live updates, stage reports, results, photo galleries, rider diaries and all the other bells and whistles that draw eyeballs and keep kibble in an old dog’s dish.
I don’t remember the last time I rode a bike, to be honest. I have gotten out for a few hikes, walks, lurches and staggers, and today’s came in a light rain, with cloudy skies, temperatures in the 60s and leaves on the deck. It was something of a shock to my system, as we haven’t really had what I would call a summer.
Mia Sopaipilla doing her Maltese Falcon impersonation.
Can it be fall already? Yep. Disregard the calendar. If we had a woodstove, I would be feeding it a smidgen of aspen and cedar instead of tapping away at the keyboard, waiting for the furnace to click on. It’s about 68 in the office, even with two large flat-panel monitors and a G4 Power Mac cranking out the BTUs. I’m actually wearing socks in the house. Oh, God.
You know it’s brisk when Miss Mia Sopaipilla takes to sitting atop the Motorola DSL modem and Turkish curls up on the boss-fella’s shorts. The big galoot even wanted some time in the actual lap today, which is a sure sign of a tough winter ahead, the Farmer’s Almanac be damned.
Herself is off to some soiree in Mile High, so it’s just me, the cats and VeloNews.com for a few hours. Last night’s buffalo tacos will enjoy a return engagement this evening, as will a few drams of Castillo de Monséran 2007 to ward off the grippe.
Turkish naps in a virtual lap.
If all goes well I will be a free man on Tuesday, and the comedy will resume shortly thereafter. Until Interbike, that is, when it’s back in the barrel for Your Humble Narrator.
What does one drink to ward off a trade show? I used to use single-malt Scotch, but that was in Vegas, when the publisher was buying.
Mad Blog Media 