Month: June 2011

An evening on the deck

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

It’s 11 p.m. and I’m relaxing with a glass of rosé after two days of medium-heavy cookery and other minor labors in honor of a couple of friends and neighbors who are shuffling off to another area code.

Mexican feast
Cuidado señores ... hot plate! The leftovers are good, too.

I started yesterday, roasting some Whole Foods poblanos and Anaheims on the gas grill, then whipped up a basic posole (a recipe so old I can’t remember where I found it) alongside a pot of pintos with chipotle (from The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook). Herself, meanwhile, got busy on a killer lemon-vanilla pudding, saving the final touches for just before mealtime.

Today I hosed down the back deck and zip-tied down the fabric pergola cover — a good thing, too, as Bibleburg tied a record high of 91 degrees — and broke out the patio table’s umbrella for backup. Then I made a little pico de gallo salsa, roasted potatoes with Chimayo red chile, and a green chile sauce (all three from the Santa Fe folks). Poached a pound of chicken, shredded it, made enchiladas with blue corn tortillas, some Monterey Jack and that pot of green chile, and hey presto! Dinnertime.

There was wine, of course, and also beer. The 2010 Thierry Delaunay Touraine from the Loire Valley seemed a bit thin, so I switched to a 2010 Le Cengle Côtes de Provence, which has a beautiful copper color and a tart flavor that, oddly, reminds me of Jolly Rancher watermelon candies, an item I was addicted to as a much younger dog.

The beers were two seasonal items from Deschutes Brewery — Red Chair NWPA, which is hard to find right now, and Twilight Summer Ale, which should be around until September. I should have Vespa’d on down to Bristol Brewing for a jug of their Red Rocket Pale Ale, but tomorrow is another day, eh? As it is I barely had time to grab a shower before the guests of honor arrived.

We ate and drank and shot the shit until long after sundown, and now I and my wine are surfing Al Gore’s Innertubes in search of evil tidings, which are regrettably easy to find, and enjoying a cooling breeze from somewhere.

Or we were. A small yet authoritative voice in another room has chimed the hour in a style that Big Ben would envy. See you tomorrow.

Voting with my feet

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Rock on
Make a great downhill course, wouldn't it?

Every now and then I get tired of being a vehicle and become a pedestrian instead. Today was one of those days, so I spent 90 minutes hiking various trails in Palmer Park.

I ride the park at least once a week, usually on one cyclo-cross bike or another, which limits my choices from the trails menu. There may very well be people who can ride the entire Templeton Trail on a ’cross bike, for example, but I am not one of them. So today I stomped around on a mess of trails my wheeled self generally gives a wide berth — the Templeton, the Kinnickinnick, the Cheyenne and the Edna Mae Bennet.

It was a nice change of pace, and also a reminder of the price Bibleburg is paying for the honor of serving as a pilot project for Grover Norquist’s wet dream of drowning a shrunken government in a libertarian bathtub. The park crappers are locked and the water faucets shut off, and I get the impression that a lot of the recent trail maintenance was the work not of parks staff but of volunteers, specifically the Guardians of Palmer Park.

Just outside the park sit empty bus benches bearing signs saying the bus doesn’t stop there anymore, and downtown an even hundred of the century-old trees that make the Old North End so homey are coming down because they are either dead or dying thanks to an extended drought and reduced watering by the city. Plenty of our once-green parks are in a similar woeful state.

Elections have consequences, as folks here and elsewhere are learning the hard way. At least I hope they are.

• Late update: Meanwhile, we’re pouring another $21,500 down the five-ringed loo at the U.S. Olympic Committee — which already cost us $42.3 million in taxpayer dollars — for a temporary mural featuring a local gold medalist in an ludicrous attempt to make ourselves look pretty. Once again, satire runs a very poor second to reality.

The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

We’ve been enjoying the kind of weather former Bibleburger Robert A. Heinlein described in “Glory Road” as “the sort that Florida and California claim (and neither has).” If it weren’t for wind bringing us secondhand smoke from the jillion or so massive fires to the south and west of us, I wouldn’t have anything to bitch about.

But I can always find something. I’m funny that way. Maybe not.

Chairman Meow and Mia
Miss Mia Sopaipilla and the headstone on Chairman Meow's grave prepare for a two-cat team time trial.

Today I rode the Voodoo Nakisi south and west, climbing along the trails of Bear Creek Regional Park to Gold Camp Road, where shortly I was passed by a trio of roadies who spoke not a word as they rolled by on their plastic fantastics just past the Section 16 trailhead. They must have been fresh from the 26th Street/Gold Camp ascent, a popular and unofficial time trial in these parts, and I with my dusty steel MonsterCrosser®, burly tires and hairy legs no doubt offended their delicate sensibilities somehow. Maybe it was the VeloNews bibs. Who could know?

What I do know is that they weren’t nearly as nifty as they thought they were, because I was able to hold their wheels on the swift descent along 26th Street to Highway 24, and anyone who knows me will confirm that I do not exactly descend like Lucifer, “hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky.” This assholy trinity may be better than me on the uphills, but then that’s not a very high bar to hop, either.

I didn’t recognize any of them, but then I don’t ride the road much, because it is mostly curb to curb with dickheads, some on four wheels, and others on two. On the trails folks say “Howdy!” to each other.

Welcome to the West, buckaroos.

The Bike Clinic Too needs our help

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Two local programs that help put needy Bibleburgers astride free bicycles are struggling after one full-time mechanic sliced off a big chunk of one thumb and a part-timer found himself overwhelmed by the subsequent referral work and woefully short of funds, tools and parts.

Peter Sprunger-Froese and Brian Gravestock founded the Bike Clinic nearly two decades ago, making it work through a combination of cash support, donated machinery and low-cost and/or volunteer labor. Brian opened a sister shop in 2010, the Bike Clinic Too, and the two locations did a land-office business refurb’ing beaters for the beat.

Then Peter injured that thumb, and Brian abruptly found himself with a backlog of 80 bike orders.

I talked with Brian yesterday at Old Town Bike Shop, where he earns his living (owner John Crandall is also a supporter of Bike Clinic Too), and asked what he needed most to get the clinic back up to speed. He immediately replied, “Money.” He could do with some shop tools, too, and promised to get me a list of the most desperately needed items if I can pop round to an open house at Bike Clinic Too this Sunday (1-4 p.m. at 737 W. Monument, if you’re in the area).

If you can spare a buck or two or three, checks can be written to Pikes Peak Community Foundation — put “Bike Clinic Too” in the memo line — and mail them to PPCF at 730 N. Nevada, Colorado Springs, CO 80903. There’s probably a way to donate online but I don’t see it in a casual search of the PPCF site. If you have any tools you can do without, give me a shout and I’ll put you in touch with Brian and his colleagues at Bike Clinic Too, Eileen Brodie and Jon Hurly. I should be better informed and in possession of a photograph or two after the open house on Sunday.

Meanwhile, you can read more about the op’ here. A tip of the Mad Dog Campy cap to reporter Angie Jackson at my old employer, the Gazette.

Newt-ered

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Imagine my dismay: Newt Gingrich’s brain trust spun on its collective heel and marched out the door after the alleged candidate for the GOP presidential nomination decided to go on a two-week vacation a few weeks after a series of miscues right out of the starting gate that would have The Three Stooges muttering, “C’mon, don’t you think that’s a little over the top?”

The inside chatter centers on who wears the boxers in Newt’s most recent marriage, and that would appear to be Callista Gingrich, who is said to have insisted on the vacation. Mama spank. Ouch.

Meanwhile, some folks think this gives impetus to the latest asshat to serve as governor of Texas, Rick “Goodhair” Perry, as the late, great Molly Ivins used to call him. The Texas Observer has had the 411 on this bozo for the better part of quite some time, and their Bob Moser would like nothing better than to see him run and get beat like a rented burro.

But it looks like we’ll have Newt to kick around for a while yet. According to Politico, he announced on Facebook that he was still in the race, “committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring.”

I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. After all, the Stooges have been absent from the national stage for decades.