Month: April 2013
More room for you and more room for me
You just know it’s going to be a good day when you wake up to find that no North Korean nuclear warheads cobbled together from a radium-dial Timex, bits of this and that ordered online from RadioShack, and an old Estes model rocket kit have burrowed into the front lawn, hissing and popping like one of your old Led Zep’ LPs.
Still, it’s early yet. Grampa’s birthday isn’t until Monday.
And you just know that fingers attached to irritated politicos worldwide are tapping nervously near big red buttons. It must be an awful temptation.
“Seriously, will anyone miss the little fucker? Huh? Whaddaya think? Let’s drop the big one and see what happens.”
Another storm a-brewing
Patrick O’Brien notes in comments that Team Sho-Air-Cannondale plans to race Arizona’s Whisky Off-Road despite the threat of fines or suspensions for any UCI-licensed riders who dare take part in events that lack the blessing of that august body and its enforcers at USA Cycling.
Good on Sho-Air president Scott Tedro and his team for having a go here. The issue has been simmering for quite a while now, even getting the attention of the mainstream media, and I’m curious to see whether more licensees will join Sho-Air in taking a stand.
UCI and USAC are spreading the usual fertilizer about growing the sport and professional standards, hinting none too suavely that anyone racing an unsanctioned event is practically begging to get flogged by dopers or hung out to dry by substandard insurance.
But it smells like the same old monopolistic, might-makes-right, fuck-you-we’re-in-charge-here bullshit that led to the American Cycling Association, the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association and other groups going their own way back in the day.
I don’t personally have a dog in this fight. My last race was 10 years ago, when the ACA was still the Rebellion to USA Cycling’s Empire. Today it’s once again a client state of the Empire, reclaiming its old name of the Bicycle Racing Association of Colorado, and I have no interest in repatriating in order to spend my weekends getting shelled at parking-lot crits in Denver while USAC and the UCI pass the time hunting new ways to piss off everyone in the sport.
That said, I’m happy to see someone with skin in the game taking a stand against this ridiculous rule. If unsanctioned events pose any threat at all it’s to the governing bodies’ bottom lines. They claim to be offering a superior product. Fine. Let them prove it in the marketplace instead with the rulebook.
Storm of the century!
Or not.
A meteorologist must feel kinship with the Denver Broncos on a day like today. First, the big buildup — and then, the even bigger letdown.
We’ve not given up hope for a little moisture, mind you. The National Weather Service is still predicting snow showers, but the dumper has been dialed back to a dribble. And if this wind keeps up it will all end up in northeastern New Mexico anyway.
Naturally, the schools are all closed. Small wonder the nation’s supply of idiots is constantly on the rise.
When I was a sprout they wouldn’t close the schools if they were on fire and full of serial killers. And we had to walk to school, uphill both ways, in the snow. Real snow! Not this global-warming shit that looks like a drunk redneck took half a can of white Krylon to his plastic Christmas tree.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
It’s probably a good thing I snapped a pic of our apricot tree this afternoon, when it was still a balmy 60-something and sunny.
Shortly thereafter sprang up from the north a blossom-shredding, sandblasting wind that would have done credit to “Lawrence of Arabia.” I ventured into it, briefly, to take out the trash, and spent the next half hour scouring Wyoming’s topsoil from my nostrils using a melon baller.
Next up is the rain, with snow on deck. Tomorrow should be about 40 degrees less enchanting than today, which is probably just as well, as I have journalism to do and being confined to quarters serves marvelously to sharpen one’s focus on the task at hand.
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