Where the hell did the week go? Seems like just a couple minutes ago I was wrapping up the weekend’s work when all of a sudden holy fuckin’ shit it’s weekend-work time again.
“There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” That’s there’s Scripture, fella.
And yea, there will be much wickedness this weekend, sayeth the Dog — much of it spewing from his mouth as he works on a holiday weekend — and thus no peace, for him or for anyone else within earshot.
There’s the Giro d’Italia, the USA Cycling National Championships, the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, the Killington Stage Race, all bearing their dark gifts of stories and sidebars, PDF’d results and photo galleries, rider diaries and technical jabber, plus video — did I mention video? And almost none of it featuring podium girls gone wild.
And they call this a holiday weekend.
But there are steaks, chicken and beer in the ’fridge, wine bottles in their racks and bicycles in the garage. And God willing, I will sample each of these between bouts of velo-reportage. You’re welcome.
And should you be reading this from one of America’s various military garrisons throughout the world, please be advised that I’m only bitching for practice in case I should ever have something to bitch about — like serving tour after tour after tour in some overheated nightmare wherein the locals smile at you during the day and prep roadside bombs for you at night.
If you think we’re in the shit now, just wait until they start drafting 57-year-old fat white guys. I can’t think of anything that would bring troops home sooner.
Unless we were to be drafting the 57-year-old white guys’ children.
Peace.
Mad Blog Media 
Thank you….for working this weekend so the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of your labor.
“Unless we were to be drafting the 57-year-old white guys’ children.”
I think you mean “57-year-old RICH white guys’ children.” The one sure way of stopping wars is to start drafting the kids of the wealthy.
Roger that, John. My old man personally drove me to my Selective Service signup, just to make sure that I wasn’t registering as a CO or riding my Schwinn to Montreal. I suspect that as a WWII vet he would have secretly enjoyed seeing my loudmouthed teen-age ass slogging through the paddies with a Mattel-16.
My buddy Ralph turned 93 this year. Bomber pilot in WWII, squadron commander in Korea. When he shipped out for Europe, he wrote his wife once a week … but it took three years for the first one to get home. He only did two tours … but the first one was four and a half years long, the second twenty-four months. And he says he wouldn’t trade a four year WWII tour for a six month rotation in Iraq for all of saddam’s gold.
He saw some shit in his day, and tears up when he talks about bombing targets that were mostly civilian. But the lines were cleaner then. The enemy was everyone on the wrong side of a grease pencil line on his laminated 1:250k map. None of this walking down the street, hoping the kid on the bike isn’t wired to blow.
Plus, there was the occasional bakery, bierhaus, or weingaertnergenossenschaft that needed liberating.
Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
Here is a salute to honor Ralph, Patrick’s dad, my uncles, my machine shop supervisor at Stony Brook (had his B-24 shot down over Germany and spent time in a POW camp) and all those others who have served, and some who have died, in harsh, outa the way places, so we can sit here and bitch about inconsequential things. Thank you all for your sacrifice.