Month: September 2013

Interbike 2013: Welcome to Watsonville

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Sunflowers just off a bike path in south Flagstaff.
Sunflowers just off a bike path in south Flagstaff.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (MDM) — OK, so it’s Flagstaff. But whenever I see sunflowers, I think Graham Watson. So sue me.

I’m at the Hampton Inn & Suites this year. It’s a nice upgrade from the nearby Motel 6, which last year had devolved into some class of a Superfund site for the storage of toxic humans. I have a small kitchen, a living room and two TVs that I have yet to turn on. Fat city.

Still, there are downsides. At breakfast this morning my fellow travelers were all performing sun salutations over their smartphones with their third eyes glued to Al Roker. How fortunate for us all that I no longer travel armed, as I was sorely tempted to chlorinate the gene pool until I got a couple cups of java down me.

Now, the good news: En route I saw a touring cyclist just east of San Fidel on Interstate 40. He was enjoying a brisk tailwind and 75-degree temps as he rolled along this giant ATM for the highway-construction industry. Like the Golden Gate Bridge, I-40 is always being worked on, and the work will never be finished.

And over dinner at Beaver Street Brewery, I read in The Lumberjack, the newspaper of Northern Arizona University, about a student who rode his bike from Canada to Mexico this summer. Sophomore forestry major Matthew Riggens had never cycled more than a couple dozen miles in a day, but he made it all the way to Mexico, and plans to tackle a trip from Washingon state to Maine next year.

So don’t give up hope. Not everyone is trading their eyesight for a giant pair of thumbs. Still, you should probably leave the guns at home when you travel.

Interbike 2013: Swimming to Santa Fe

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
The scene outside the passenger window near Wagon Mound, N.M.
The scene outside the passenger window near Wagon Mound, N.M.

SANTA FE, N.M. (MDM) — I arose this morning to partly cloudy skies and images of my old friend Jennifer Buntz on the TV, discussing some bikey issue on KOB-TV out of Albuquerque.

I chose to regard both of these developments as good omens, having left Bibleburg under threatening skies and surfed a couple of gully-washers en route to The City Different, the traditional first stop on the Road To Mandalay (Bay). It’s still raining back home, Herself confirmed this morning.

I expected more of the same in Santa Fe, but managed to sneak in a quick soak and steam under the clouds at Ten Thousand Waves, poaching the editorial kinks out of my moth-eaten carcass.

All my usual dinner haunts are closed on Sundays, so I grabbed some disgustingly healthy grub from Whole Paycheck and took a brief assay of what was on the electrical babble box. Not much. I can’t believe people pay American money to watch this shit. I likewise gave myself a day away from the Innertubes, being weary of that particular monsoon, too.

This morning it’s an overdue dose of green chile at Tia Sophia’s and then off to Flagstaff. See you along the road.

How long can you tread water?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

It’s been a while since I last cracked my Bible, but I seem to recall the Big Fella promising He wouldn’t destroy the Earth by water again. Got the impression it was sort of a “been there, done that” kind of deal.

Well, He may not be destroying the entire joint this time around, but He’s certainly lowering the property values hereabouts. Boulder now has a moat, and I just saw Noah go arking by the DogHaus with an AR-15 slung over one shoulder. Said he was taking two of everything except homos and Democrats, then added with a genial chuckle, “But I repeat myself.”

Herself just stepped into the deluge to walk Mister Boo, who refuses to shit indoors like everyone else around here. I declined to enable this charade, citing the potential for rust on the steel plate, cranial leakage and the shorting out of wires crucial to the composition of lame gags for fun and profit.

Then I scuttled downstairs to shit in a box. I figure that if the cats and I do it often enough, Mister Boo will eventually get the idea.

Countdown to Interbike

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
On the Road to Mandalay (Bay).
On the Road to Mandalay (Bay).

It’s rare that an upcoming trip to Sin City feels like a vacation in the making, but sheeeeeeeeyit, will I ever be glad to get the hell away from business as usual for a week.

You read the news this morning? Having shit the bed on Syria, the White House has turned to a Russian laundry to clean up the mess. An anonymous dossier makes Pat McQuaid look like Leo O’Bannion from “Miller’s Crossing.” Turnout is expected to be heavy as Bibleburg decides whether to recall Sen. John Morse for offending the penis-extension segment of the electorate, whose idea of a full magazine is decidedly not The New Yorker.

So, yeah. A nice long drive through the desert to clear the head (with the radio off); a few days of wandering about unfettered in Santa’s Workshop; eating meals I don’t have to cook — it all sounds like a little slice of heaven to me.

I’ll be providing daily updates from the show — or that’s the plan, anyway — so keep the dial tuned to WDOG for the latest and greatest from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center once the doors open a week from tomorrow.

Don’t expect me to come home with any $519 bibs, though. If that’s not an invitation to stack it on a rocky trail I never saw one.

Fryday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
A section of the Edna Mae Bennet Trail, which leads to the Templeton Trail.
A section of the Edna Mae Bennet Trail, which leads to the Templeton Trail.

Man, it got hot again all of a sudden.

We went from a pleasantly damp monsoon season straight back into summer, no matter what the calendar says.

This is good news for Manitou Springs, whose residents get a chance to chisel all the dried mud out of their basements, autos, and nostrils, but it makes for some steamy afternoons here in the office, which sits on the hot end of the house.

A little rain might help keep me in that office, which is where I need to be, having a few deadlines to beat before toddling off to Interbike. But the rule is that when the sun shines, vigorous exercise shall be taken, and outdoors, too.

By the time that’s over and done with, I feel a tad fatigued for some reason and crave a frosty beverage, a nosh and perhaps a nap. Thus work suffers. No wonder the economy is in such a parlous state.

Looking upward from the Templeton Trail, just east of Union and Austin Bluffs.
Looking upward from the Templeton Trail, just east of Union and Austin Bluffs.

Lately I’ve been alternating rides with hikes, generally in Palmer Park. I used to run the trails there quite a bit, but the knees don’t seem interested in that sort of thing anymore. So I hike instead, which is an acceptable substitute. I seem to trip and fall down a good deal less, anyway.

And if you pick the right trail, you can get plenty of vertical gain, as you can see from the pix. I can’t believe we used to ride these things back in the day.

And when I say “we,” I mean, “somebody else.” I was walking them even then.

• Late update: Herself and I did our part to rein in the idiots this afternoon by voting not to recall state Sen. John Morse, who fell afoul of the gun nuts. Lord, single-issue fuckwits give me a brain cramp with their political temper tantrums. You don’t like the way the man works, vote him out in the next regularly scheduled election — that’s why we have ’em. These pissants remind me of a toddler screwing up his chubby little mug right before spitting out the creamed spinach.