Month: August 2012

Figures lie, and. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments
The 2011 prologue in Bibleburg
Last year saw crowds in the Garden of the Gods and crowds downtown, but not much in between. This year the city is hoping for 50,000 spectators.

The USA Pro Challenge, a.k.a. The Race of Many Names®, is under way, and so are the rumors that early attendance is not quite what organizers had expected.

In Telluride, The Daily Planet says that the hoped-for 20,000 spectators failed to materialize for the finish to stage one. And in Durango, where the race kicked off, The Durango Herald reported that “the number of tourists in town appeared to be far fewer than the 25,000 city officials had predicted,” adding that there was definitely room at the town’s many inns. The Montrose Daily Press seemed content with a thousand or so folks for the start of stage two. I’ve not looked into the stats for Crested Butte or Aspen*, having my back up against a number of paying chores.

Here in Bibleburg, the city fathers are hoping for 50,000 people to pack the downtown drinking-and-fighting ghetto for Friday’s conclusion to stage five. That would be about half of the throng organizers initially claimed they drew for last year’s prologue, and about five times the size of the crowd that actually showed up, based on estimates by a certain Irish-American cycling scribe of your acquaintance and the usually reliable sources.

Based on recent developments, I’d say they’re whistling past the graveyard. USA Cycling had to cancel a planned “Fun Ride” this past weekend (due to lack of interest, according to one source), and two other supporting events — the SRM Ride with Mario Cipollini and the Ride Stage 5 Criterium are said to be pulling disappointing numbers.

This is not surprising, as most folks who’ve promoted bike races in Bibleburg can tell you. Getting the Boulder-Denver crowd to cross the Palmer Divide is as easy as persuading Mitt Romney to speak the truth. They’re afraid we’ll make ’em go to church and then scrape the Obama stickers off their Subarus while they’re bubbling in the dunk tank, getting right with Jeebus.

When Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs At Large Velo was still running local cyclo-crosses, it took years to even approach the kind of numbers routinely seen at events up north. We eventually settled into a role of providing what amounted to an easy, early-season, transitional sort of event that let roadies ease back into the notion of getting off the bike now and then. Dudes are worse than cowboys in that regard, always wanting to stay on that horse.

And if you found yourself up against a competing event up north, well, then it was time to piss on the fire and call in the dogs, Hoss. That’s like bringing an old banana to a gunfight.

So, good luck to the grunts shoveling madly away behind the folks with the figures, working stiffs who as always have a tough row to hoe. It’d be nice if this town got a rep’ for something other than GOP asshats, junior-varsity Elmer Gantrys and dark streetlights.

* Late update: The Aspen Times reports fewer fun-lovers on Independence Pass, possibly thanks to an ill-considered ban on camping.

And it’s 1, 2, 3, what are we riding for?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

“Pamplona” is the sound of three Garmin-Sharp guys hitting the deck in the team time trial at the Vuelta a España.

Sport director Allan Peiper said Koldo Fernandez laid it down in a corner in the short, technical TTT and took Michel Kreder and Thomas Dekker with him. Ouch. Nothing like shredding the old skinsuit — and the old skin, too — on stage one of what will be a very long Vuelta.

“It’s a little mistake that makes a bigger damage,” Peiper said. “It’s a pity because we had started well.”

Charles Pelkey and I had a similarly rough start to providing live coverage of the stage over at Red Kite Prayer. Time trials are always a pain in the ass to cover live, especially short ones, and extra especially short ones in which the folks on the ground keep changing the times and standings on you in some foreign lingo. It was like herding kittens, to be precise.

But we got ‘er done, and Sunday brings an actual road stage, one for the sprinters. So y’all come. Coverage should commence five-ish Mountain time and end around 9:40 a.m.

Let’s get ready to rumble. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Rig for heavy weather, me hearties —the Vuelta a España starts Saturday, followed on Monday by the USA Pro Challenge, which in just one voyage has had more names than a Limey brigand in an Irish witness-protection program staffed entirely by informers.

I’ll be assisting Charles Pelkey with the former as he performs his magical Live Update Guy act for Red Kite Prayer, so if you’ve nothing better to do around 11 a.m. Bibleburg time tomorrow, drop on by and heckle us. We’ll be on duty throughout the entire three weeks. You’re welcome.

This year’s Vuelta sounds like a real bear. Our old colleague Andrew Hood says it’s even nastier than last year’s edition, which caused cycling scribes worldwide to cramp up, fall off their barstools and abandon the race in tears just watching the goddamned thing. There are only four Americans in the 2012 Vuelta, so nobody on this side of the pond will be paying the race any mind, which means more bandwidth for the rest of us.

Where are the Yanks? Why, in Colorado, of course. Matthew Beaudin at VeloNews and Liquigas-Cannondale pro Timmy Duggan both think this year’s edition could go right down to the final time trial in Denver. This would be a good deal more interesting than last year’s race, which started with a lame-o Chamber of Commerce prologue in Bibleburg and pretty much ended with the Vail time trial … on stage 3.

I like a time trial for a finale, especially if it’s going to decide the race, so let’s hope for a nail-biter, if only to distract ourselves from the Never-Ending Story that is the Big Tex investigation. I won’t even link to that endless game of One-Handed Spit-In-the-Carpet At $300 Per Hour, having had my fill of the cop shop in my brief tour of duty as a police reporter back in the late Seventies.

Honky if you love Romney

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Jockeying for position in the presidential contest.

The RomneyBot v2.012 mistook President Obama for one of its gardeners and tried to fire him yesterday.

“Take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America,” it hummed.

The only word missing from that sentence was “boy.”

“Campaign of division and anger and hate?” Romney and the Rethugs have called Obama everything save a bone-nosed, watermelon-eatin’ lawn jockey and yet the prez manages to refrain from calling his opponent a lying sack of runny chickenshit whose tongue has more plastic forks than a Salt Lake City Chick-fil-A.

I still have no idea why this slimy prick wants the job he seems to need so desperately. And I’ll never find out by listening to him, because the truth is simply not in him and the media seem unwilling or unable to squeeze it out of him. Doesn’t he already own a couple of white houses?

Jesus wept. The squawk of a Jersey Giant and the balls of a parakeet. Are there any men left in the Republican Party? Besides Ann Coulter, that is?

The Shit Monsoon: Repairs revisited

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
At left, fresh vinyl in the laundry room; at right, new tile in the crapper (though still no crapper).

Yesterday was a perfect day for a bike ride. The temperatures peaked somewhere in the upper 70s, I had a tailwind for most of the uphill bits, and it even rained a bit during the homebound stretch. I didn’t have a rain jacket, but I didn’t care, because it felt great. Plus the bike had fenders.

Good thing I made time for cycling, too. Because today, after nearly three months of not much happening as regards restoration of the basement following The Shit Monsoon of Memorial Day Weekend, not one but two crews showed up to lay tile and vinyl. Tomorrow comes the carpet, and later this week, the toilet and vanity. Good times.

The downside — and there always is one — is that it is another beautiful day for cycling, yet here I sit, enjoying a symphony of jackhammers and saws, because Herself has pissed off to Denver for a meeting and there is no one else to mind the store. The cats are notoriously unreliable in such matters, and Mister Boo would be down there happily eating adhesive and grout because he thinks everything is food. Swear to God. He’d scarf down a bowl of cat piss and sawdust as though it were steak tartare.

Speaking of folks who will swallow anything, David Stockman isn’t one of them — not when it comes to Paul Ryan and his alleged budget “plan.” Ronnie Raygun’s OMB chief ripped Ryan a new one in The New York Times, and Ed Kilgore of Political Animal adds his personal touch to the bits and pieces he quotes.

Over at The Nation, meanwhile. John Nichols takes the opportunity to contrast Ryan’s Randite vision with Wisconsin’s progressive tradition.

And at The Maddow Blog, Steve Benen calls out Ryan for hypocrisy, noting that while he was raising against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Ryan was right there with his hand out like everyone else.