Month: September 2011

Pip pip, cheerio, wot?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

One of my reasons for going to Sin City this year was to ID bicycles that want reviewing in the pages of Adventure Cyclist, and did I come home with a beauty — a Pashley Clubman.

The folks at Pashley have been making bikes for the better part of quite some time — since 1926, to be precise — and they seem to have it more or less dialed in at this point. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a bike draw as many eyeballs as this one has in the short time we’ve spent together. Everybody notices it, even people who couldn’t care less about bicycles. It’s that sharp.

The Clubman reminds me of the bikes I bought when I got back into cycling in the early Eighties: steel frameset, non-aero brake levers, quill stem, eight-speed downtube shifting, 36-spoke wheels, toeclips and straps; a real blast from the past, and clad all in shiny black and silver, too.

I have to swap out the stem before I can put any serious miles on it — I need to get up and out quite a piece to accommodate my geriatric spinal column — and frankly, I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, at least we can gaze fondly upon it. Here are a few pix.

Back to the grind

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 32 Comments

Bilbo Baggins’ Road goes ever on and on, but mine came to a halt on Sunday. Monday I spent in the usual post-expedition fog, and today it was time to get back to business.

Herself lacks my interest in the culinary arts, so it’s a given that when I come home from a road trip there will be exactly jack-shit in the house to eat. After we burned through the steak, spuds and salad it quickly became apparent that someone would have to replenish the pantry, and as usual that someone was me.

Muchos grassyass
The Turk' catches some rays in the backyard.

So today, I hit the grocery — and man, did it ever hit back. Two hundred smacks down Whole Paycheck’s organic rathole for tasty bits of this and that. I should just sign over my Velo checks to these dudes and be done with it.

The good news is that the week’s menu will include fusilli draped with a spicy all’arrabbiata sauce full of red pepper flakes, capers and black olives; kung pao chicken with white rice; sausage and cheese enchiladas in red sauce with Mexican rice; chicken quesadillas; and chicken enchiladas in green sauce with a side of roasted potatoes in red chile. Can you tell I’ve been to Santa Fe recently? Yeah, me too.

Meanwhile, the Turk’ has been enjoying plenty of outside time since my return. Getting him in a harness is like sticking a hand in a running blender, and since he’s mostly my cat he’s mostly my problem.

No worries. I’ve been getting my furry brother hooked up so he can live the feline dream in the backyard, hunting grasshoppers and enjoying the last few days of summertime in Bibleburg.

Return of the Interbiker: The last good breakfast

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Sausage and cheese enchiladas
Sausage and cheese enchiladas at the Guadalupe Cafe in Santa Fe. The wait for a table was hitting 45 minutes when I got there, and worth every second.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Well, the last one that I didn’t have to cook, anyway.

I swung through Santa Fe post-Interbike and noshed at the Guadalupe Cafe, which frankly was batshit crazy at 11 a.m. Sunday, with the sort of line one associates with banks giving away free money.

And small wonder, because the food is always stellar.

I had my usual, the sausage and cheese enchiladas with a side of papas smothered in brick-red chile, and two cups of coffee.

As I ate, I thought briefly about putting a condo on the credit card and never going home. But then I realized that the cats would miss me terribly (yeah, right) and Herself would be eating out of cans while her kin hunted me with baseball bats, and I ain’t talkin’ catch-and-release here. Plus I’d already had a week of waking up without her around and that’s about six days too many.

So I gassed up and beat it for Bibleburg, arriving right around dinnertime.

To atone for my sins, per Herself’s request, I grilled a flatiron steak from Ranch Foods Direct and mashed up some spuds with heavy cream, butter, chives and parsley; she assembled a massive salad and we enjoyed a couple drams while I regaled her with tales from the bike show.

This morning it was what we call “smooshy eggs,” which is basically eggs boiled medium-hard, peeled and mashed with butter, salt and pepper, with spelt toast, java and juice on the side. Lunch was leftover dinner.

And tomorrow? Man. I’ll be lucky to slap together some toast and cold cereal. Someone around here needs to hit the grocery. Guess who? Home again, home again, dancing a jig.

Return of the Interbiker: Songs from Uranus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
On the road again
Eastbound and down, loaded up an' truckin'.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Technology is not always our friend, and all too often the march of progress resembles the drunkard’s stumble that Tom Waits famously described in “Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)” as “using parking meters as walking sticks.”

For example, we now enjoy “Italian” bikes wearing Asian components, “high-speed Internet” that is anything but, and “smart” phones that no longer need humans to place calls, choose music or launch apps.

The Italian-Asian hybrid you already know about. The Internet of the Living Dead was at the Fairfield, where I spent much of last night pushing one pixel at a time through a virtual soda straw.

And the “smart” phone? It was in one of the cargo pockets in my shorts when it decided Interbike was boring and needed a fresh soundtrack. Thus throughout the day my iPhone 3GS would randomly set Tom Waits, Gladys Knight and the Pips or Elvis Costello to singing, Ace Ventura-like, out of my butt, generally while I was trying to conduct a little business.

When that proved so 15 minutes ago it started ringing up people in my contacts list and launching apps at random. What’s next — texting my editors to ask them whether they’re wearing crotchless panties? Some of them probably are, and then where the hell will I be?

Oh, yeah — I’ll be on the road, that’s where. Show’s over, and I’m Colorado bound.

Return of the Interbiker: What, you again?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
The $799 Bianchi Campione is a steel gran-fondo bike that comes equipped with an eight-speed cogset, toeclips and straps — and downtube shifters.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Some things never change. I always think I’m going to have a ton of time to post fresh snark about this and that during Interbike, and then I find myself caught up in the flow, like medical waste in the California surf.

The Adventure Cyclist folks are a great bunch — we’ve spent some hours trolling for toys, drinking, eating and bullshitting, which beats the mortal nuts off being chained up in the Sands basement, cranking out word count for the Show Daily.

The crowd has gotten a tad weirder since I was last here. Fewer booth bimbos, but enough tattooed, shaven-headed, multiply pierced, fat honky bastards to outfit three Aryan Nations chapters and a pirate fleet, for starters.

But what the hell? If they’re all about the bikes, then I love them all like the ugly, surly ADHD children I never had, thank God.

I’ve stumbled across old friends and made a few new ones, drooled over some toys, and even rode a bike to the Sands once — a Bike Friday New World Tourist. That was educational. You want a rear-view mirror for that high-speed run along Sands Avenue to the expo. Maybe some body armor, too.