Month: March 2010

(Un)freeze frame

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
New Mexico via the iPhone through the windshield.
New Mexico via the iPhone through the windshield.

Whaddaya know — I found a weather window and drove right through it. Raton Pass was dry as the proverbial popcorn fart and the snow didn’t start falling until just outside Santa Fe, when the fuel light blinked on a few miles earlier than usual thanks to a stiff headwind.

The food and service at La Choza was undistinguished once again, which is a shame. It used to be the cheaper, easier little sister of The Shed, but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to start cuddling up to the higher-priced spread on the Plaza.

Happily, the IPA at Second Street Brewing was excellent as always, as was the cream stout. It was open mic’ night, and there was a kid’s birthday party going on right next to me, but the right beer takes the edge off that sort of thing.

It was interesting to watch as nearly everyone who walked into the brewpub instantly checked their smartphones to see if they’d missed anything in the handful of minutes they’d been untethered from the Giant Electronic Titty (this from a guy who just sent an iPhone pic to his PowerBook).

There won’t be any riding here tomorrow. The place has mud season and snow season going on simultaneously, and I didn’t bring a power washer with me. Maybe I’ll just grab a breakfast burrito at Tia Sophia, enjoy a leisurely soak at Ten Thousand Waves and then beat it for sunnier country — either Las Cruces or all the way to Tucson. I want tan lines, not brown stripes.

On the road again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Left behind: The Turk', as captured through the glass of the front storm door.
Left behind: The Turk', as captured through the glass of the front storm door.

Upon finally getting out of Dodge I usually snap a shot of Bibleburg receding in the rear view mirror, but this time I thought I’d take a pic of Turkish wondering why I get to be outside and he doesn’t.

The Turk’ is fond of me in a benevolently rapacious fashion, but what he really loves is to be outside on a sunny day, rolling around in the driveway, thunking his shovel-shaped skull against the concrete with each ecstatic flip.

Turk’ can’t follow my peregrinations online, lacking the requisite interest, computer skills and thumbs, but you can continue to catch my little act here and/or at my backup blog, maddogmedia.wordpress.com. That rascal has up-to-date software and can be managed from the iPhone.

And should you pop round on Friday, be sure to wish Herself a happy birthday. No matter how many laps she jogs around the sun, she retains her ageless beauty. Maybe she’s running backward.

Winter, discontent, etc.

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Well, son of a bitch. There is a winter storm warning between me and points south. It seems a pile of snow is anticipated in Trinidad, Sex Change Capital of the World, and if it closes Raton Pass I will be in something of a time bind.

I do have a substantial cushion — I don’t really need to be in Tucson until Saturday afternoon. But I like to take my time on road trips, savoring this, that and the other, and this friggin’ storm may cost me some much-anticipated eating, drinking and soaking time in Santa Fe.

At moments like this I can understand why some people fly. Buy the ticket, check your luggage, fork over $175 each way to take a bike along, sample any number of airborne viruses while strapped down in your pressurized aluminum tube, reassemble the bike at your destination — assuming that (a) it and your toolkit get there, and (b) none of your stuff is destroyed — do your ride, then repeat the whole process in reverse, only this time with a severe upper-respiratory infection and an $8,000 bike with a dent in the down tube and an inexplicable stain on the saddle.

Y’know, come to think of it, driving a Subaru Forester packed to the gunwales with bike crap, journalism tools and camping gear through blizzard conditions seems kind of pleasurable by comparison.

On the road again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
I call this composition "Cyclist with iPhone and Too Much Time On His Hands."

Technology can be fun, when it works. But occasionally this bit doesn’t make nice with that byte and as serenity and higher-order thinking begin to desert you the way fleas do a dying dog you inevitably find yourself channeling your inner primate, bashing on this and that with a big rock or thick stick between frantic bouts of bounding about screeching, “Oook ook ook chee chee chee!”

Case in point: I’m on the road for a spell, soon to be enjoying a supported tour courtesy of the Adventure Cycling Association, and if there’s anything I like more than playing while the rest of you are working, it’s telling you all about it from a safe distance.

But where I’m going I may not always have access to the old PowerBook and wi-fi, which causes the exhibitionist in me to recoil. What to do?

Aha!  The iPhone, that nifty device which is so much smarter than many of its owners. Take a pic, write a post, upload same to website via AT&T — it’s easier than double-flatting in a Colorado pothole, right?

Well, not so much, as it turns out.

As I discovered a couple of days before hitting the road, my website uses an old version of the WordPress blogging software — too old to be updated via the WP iPhone app. And updating via the Flash-impaired iPhone’s version of Safari is an exercise in eyestrain and anger management.

I caught myself looking around for a nice hand-sized rock. No, don’t do it, this shrunken head of a computer cost a ton and you may need it to call a cab somewhere around Patagonia. But the question remains, as posed by Lenin: What is to be done?

This is the answer, right here. I’d forgotten about this WordPress blog, one of several I set up a couple of years back when I was in an experimental frame of mind. Its software is up to date, and a test post from the iPhone went more or less smoothly. So expect to see regular updates about how much fun I’m having.

And try not to work too hard, OK?

Where’s Hayduke when I need a strong back?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

If God is trying to make me even happier about the thought of spending a week cycling through southern Arizona, He’s certainly on the right track. The weather here in Bibleburg is deteriorating rapidly — blowing, spritzing, shivery, even snowing up in Black Forest — which is to say it’s a fairly typical March day in Colorado.

As a consequence, I didn’t bother to ride. I figure I have plenty of that sort of thing coming up soon, and in a more hospitable climate, too. Instead, I visited my chiropractor, started packing and scored the fixings for a big pot of chicken noodle soup, which is simmering as we speak.

Soup sounded good, and more important, there will be leftovers, which will come in handy during my absence. Herself will cook an egg, or a holiday feast, but leaves the shopping and three-squares-a-day stuff to me. If you like to eat, you want a great fat bastard running the kitchen, not some 95-pound sprite whose capacity is about equal to that of a baby robin. I’ll cook up a couple more items tomorrow and freeze ’em so she’ll have heat-it-and-eat-its while I’m pushing envelopes down in cactus country.

The fun part of all this is the packing. Ordinarily when vacationing in Arizona I park myself in McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, so any forgetfulness on my part is easily remedied. But bike shops, REIs and other dispensaries will be few and far between south of Tucson, so I have to try to transcend my brain damage and take everything I might possibly need, including a bigger vehicle to carry it all.

George Washington Hayduke got along fine with his own two legs, plus 60 pounds of gear in a backpack, but I’m going to need something with more carrying capacity. Maybe a Peterbilt, or a CH-47F Chinook helicopter.