We’re all about the sweetness and light here at Mad Blog Media, as you know. In that spirit, it being Memorial Day, we present “Other than Honorable,” a special report from Dave Philipps and photographer Michael Ciaglo of The Gazette.
I’d not read the series until I heard a report on it from Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! But I have now, and you should, too.
The view from the DogDeck during a respite from cycling rumormongery.
The 2013 Giro has been fun to watch, but I won’t weep when it comes to an end this morning in Brescia.
Working each stage with Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey sort of fills up the morning, which is a time of day I normally reserve for trying to get the old motor started — stomping on the pedal with the key twisted in the ignition and the hood up, occasionally slouching forward to spray some ether into the carb’ and kick the sumbitch smack in the grille until black smoke farts out the rusty tailpipe.
This takes time. There must be at least two cups of strong coffee, followed by a leisurely breakfast taken while scanning the headlines to see what the gummint stole from us during the night and sold to the Kochs for pennies on the dollar. Fuckers are worse than crackheads. Steal the pennies off your dead granny’s eyes and the copper bottom right off your skillet, they will.
There’s none of this gradual easing into one’s morning during a grand tour. It’s up and at ’em, right from the gun, trying to entertain people who’ve already been up for hours, some of them in other countries where they actually know stuff and aren’t shy about correcting you a nanosecond after you sleep-type something exceptionally boneheaded.
And holy shit! Just about the time the peloton scrapes the Giro’s ice off its Oakleys it’ll be time for the Tour. It’s the 100th edition this time around, so there will be extra cluster in the fuck, and I can already hear my last few brain cells sputtering like a candle whose wick needs trimming.
Mister P and I are still on the fence as regards LUGging the Tour. ScribbleLive finally figured out how many viewer minutes we were doing and they’ve started to wonder how we’d feel about being bent over a desk with our trousers puddled around our ankles and some banjo music playing. There are other options, of course, but most are equally pricey or woefully inadequate.
And then there are the ruined breakfasts to consider. Twenty-one of them, to be precise.
So, yeah. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, we have one more Giro stage to get through. Swing on by Live Update Guy to say arrivederci.
Well, this more or less explains everything. Danilo Di Luca was taking so much shit he actually affected the weather in Italy. Talk about being all et up by the dumbass.
A bit of Doors trivia for you: The band did not include a bass player — onstage, Ray Manzarek provided bass lines via his left hand, using a Fender Rhodes piano bass. Bon voyage, Ray.
What with helping Consigliere Pelkey live-blog the Giro, cranking out the comedy for Bicycle Retailer, logging saddle time on the Jones Steel Diamond and the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff in preparation for reviews thereof, and assisting Herself with a new project — turning our House Back East™ into a vacation rental via airbnb.com — I haven’t had much time to follow the doings in DeeCee.
But now that I’ve had a minute to cast an inquisitive eye about the Innertubes, I have a question for those of you who have been paying closer attention.
Is it time we abandoned our flirtation with representative democracy and begged the Queen to take us back? God save the Queen!
Speaking of limeys, back at the bike racing, Brave, Brave Sir Wiggo’ went from descending like a girl to descending the Giro’s overall standings like a sick girl in a Radio Flyer full of anvils on Mount Doom. Defending champion Ryder Hesjedal has had even worse luck; they’re timing that poor sod with a calendar. I have no idea who’s gonna win the goddamn thing, but it sure is fun to watch. Join Mr. P and me at Live Update Guy for tomorrow’s stage, the Giro’s longest.
In California, meanwhile, it’s Jens Voigt making everyone look sick. The 110-year-old father of 16 crushed Tyler Farrar and Thor Hushovd under his chariot wheels en route to victory in stage 5 of the Amgen Tour. He told VeloNews reporter Matthew Beaudin that when he finally retires, if ever, it will take two people to replace him — “one to do the funny part, and one to be the bike rider.”
And me? I didn’t ride a meter today, in victory or defeat. Work, work, work, that’s all we have around these parts. That, and dinner with friends at Springs Orleans. Somebody had managed to FUBAR the house lights but we couldn’t have cared less, because the food was top notch. We just let our forks follow our noses.
We’re all about the sweetness and light here at Mad Blog Media, as you know. In that spirit, it being Memorial Day, we present “Other than Honorable,” a special report from Dave Philipps and photographer Michael Ciaglo of The Gazette.
Mad Blog Media 