Month: April 2012

Light snow, big wind

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
April showers
Oh noes, it's the Blizzard of 2012!

April showers, May flowers, yeah, right, got it. But my idea of “April showers” does not involve a gram of snow scattered across the Lesser Bibleburg Metropolitan Area by 35-mph winds. All a guy gets out of that is cold.

Could be worse, though. Apparently not satisfied with making chumps out of Rick “Governor Goodhair” Perry and Ron Paul on the national stage, God laid a dozen tornadoes on the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where they caused several million dollars worth of improvements.

Elsewhere, a three-judge panel of the 5th Judicial District is in “full wingnut mode,” according to Mother Jones; Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan chats up David Duke’s old gang, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (as I did back in the Seventies, when I spoke with The Head Hood Hisself); and the RomneyBot v2.012 wins the GOP primary in my birth state of Maryland.

But lest you think the contest over, know this: Rick Sphinctorum says it’s only “halftime.” Jesus wept.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Buck at Bear Creek
The buck stops here, nyuk nyuk nyuk.

My friend and colleague Charles Pelkey cranked up the old Live Update Machine today for the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, and a couple other refugees from the other outfit joined in toward the end to provide wit and wisdom, kinda, sorta, as Fabian Cancellara crashed out with a broken collarbone and Tom Boonen took the win ahead of Filippo Pozzato and Alessandro Ballan. You shoulda been there.

But if you weren’t, well, you can catch the act next week during Paris-Roubaix.

No cobbles in these parts, but the riding is pretty damn’ fine regardless. The weather is officially insane for early spring — as in 76 degrees yesterday — and I rode south on the Trail of Many Names to its southern terminus in Fountain, then turned around and headed for home, with a quick detour into Bear Creek Regional Park for extra credit and a deer sighting.

It was headwind out, tailwind back, and good for three hours in the saddle, which should reduce my gravitational potential somewhat if I keep it up. I can manage another such outing today, but tomorrow — not so much. The weather wizards predict a 50 percent chance of showers and a high in the mid-40s. Oh, the humanity.