Month: June 2014

Rocking the Pulpit (or not)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 33 Comments
Georgia Gould on a fast section of multipurpose path on the north side of Pulpit Rock.
Georgia Gould attacks a fast section of multipurpose path on the north side of Pulpit Rock.

During a break in my paying chores yesterday I rolled over to Pulpit Rock to watch a bit of the women’s cross-country race at the US Cup. Man, was that ever one thin crowd, and I ain’t talking body weight here. I have more voices in my own head, f’chrissakes.

The men’s race I watched via streaming video, and while there seemed to be a few more spectators for that contest, the crowd was still pretty sparse, about what one might expect for a Marilyn Manson concert in St. Peter’s Square or a meeting of the Louie Gohmert Fan Club.

Not being a big mountain-bike guy — I quit racing in the mid-1990s after a guy deliberately crashed me at Rage in the Sage, and haven’t covered a race since the final Cactus Cup in Arizona — I have no idea whether this is SOP for the discipline these days or some class of an aberration specific to Bibleburg, which has been hosting the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb all week long.

Any mountain bikers out there in the audience? Is this the way things are now? Or are we here in Bibleburg just “special,” as we are in so many other regrettable ways?

Rocking out

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Pulpit Rock is one of the lesser-known venues for riding the old bikey bike in Bibleburg. That will change, starting tomorrow.
Pulpit Rock is one of the lesser-known venues for riding the old bikey bike in Bibleburg. That will change, starting tomorrow.

I almost forgot — we actually have us a spot of bicycle racing taking place in scenic metropolitan Bibleburg this weekend.

Round four of the US Cup Pro Series presented by the Sho-Air Cycling Group takes place Saturday and Sunday at Pulpit Rock Park, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from Chez Dog.

I popped round today to say howdy to my man Andy Bohlmann, who is lending a hand with the heavy lifting as the circus comes to town, and I’m going to strive mightily to spectate a bit between chores (yes, I have deadlines and Herself is road-tripping again, leaving me in charge of quarters).

If you’re in town, swing on by. And if you’re not, you can watch via streaming video.

 

Bar tender

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

Ride To Work Day is to the serious cyclist as St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve is to the serious drinker — amateur hour, a grim reminder that bars aren’t for everyone.

I generally pick an obscure route and an off-peak time for my cycling on this particular day, but I was both lazy and pressed for time yesterday, and used part of a heavily used bike path to get from point A to B and back again.

As I was on my way home from a pleasant outing in the hills I nearly centerpunched a noob riding on the wrong side of the path in a blind corner just past a clusterfuck of an intersection that’s already plenty dangerous for anyone who’s actually paying attention.

No harm, no foul, but still, damn. It’s nice to see new folks on bikes, but it sure would be nice if they saw us grizzled old veterans, too.

 

Creative class warfare

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
The Turk' enjoyed some backyard time while I cleaned a bike in honor of the summer solstice.
The Turk’ enjoyed some backyard time while I cleaned a bike in honor of the summer solstice.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Just ask the Turk’, who enjoyed a little outside time in the Mad Dog Media Botanical Gardens, a.k.a. “Weedpatch,” as I washed a bike in honor of the solstice.

Shortly thereafter it began raining off and on, with thunder for flavor, and the feline outings, bicycle riding and Old North End Garage Sale took back seats to working and earning.

Speaking of which, I can see I’ve been going about the latter activities all wrong. Clarity is so 15 minutes ago. If a guy could only learn to deploy with a straight face semantically null phrases such as “further leverage,” “cultural and creative assets,” “place of choice,” “launching new ideas” and “preserving our rich cultural heritage,” why, People of Money would write us fat checks for doing absolutely nothing beyond talking authoritatively and incomprehensibly out of our asses.

Toward that end I’m pleased to announce the formation of the Caramillo Street Collective for Creative Obfuscation, whose sole purpose it shall be to talk shit for money. I know, that sounds an awful lot like what I already do, but trust me, this is a radical departure from business as usual at Chez Dog. It’s a means of further leveraging my cultural and creative assets from my place of choice to launch new ideas that preserve my rich cultural heritage.

Somebody owes me $20K now.

• Speaking of talking shit: Here’s Timothy Noah on the ethics of dog-crap disposal.

I got your ‘partial zero emission’ right here

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

A Subaru Impreza that’s belching cigarette smoke from the driver’s window is hardly a “Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle,” which is marketing bullshit anyway. It’s either a zero-emissions vehicle or it isn’t.

PZEV sounds like the sort of stealth fart we used to call a “one-cheek sneak.” Elevate half the butt slightly above the plastic chair and let fly as the teacher pauses in mid-lecture to take a breath.

Pppppppzeeeeeeeevvvvv.

I found myself stuck behind this PZEV shit (that’s an audio pun, son!) while riding my Vespa over to the scooter shop for its annual maintenance and a minor repair. Interesting how the de rigueur carry for a lit cig’ these days is out the window. As much as the fuckers cost you’d think the addicts would want to keep all those expensive carcinogens inside the car where they can get full value out of each nicotine stick.

But what do I know? I shed that particular vice three decades ago, when a carton of Marlboros cost less than a Subaru.

Still, if ever there was a bad week to quit smoking, this was it. Smack in the shitter goes Iraq, with all the usual suspects slithering out from under their rocks to flicker their forked tongues for fun and profit — including Dickless Cheney and his carpetbagger kid, who’s so overfed and under-taught that she couldn’t even queer a Wyoming election properly. Some 4,500 Americans dead in her daddy’s imperial fantasies and yet the cyborg sonofabitch walks the earth unfettered.

Plus Herself has been road-tripping again, leaving me in charge of quarters. The Augean Stables is what that is. Bowls to fill, litter boxes to empty, Boos to walk twice daily — did you know you have to pick up the dog shit now?

Well, here, anyway. In DC they put it on the Sunday shows and on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal.

• Extra Credit Bonus Shit That Pisses Me Off: Eagle, another anonymous stop along the Interstate 70 Industrial Tourism Sacrifice Zone, is creating fun stuff for visitors to do. Bibleburg is angling for gilded turds in the old five-ringed toilet, hoping to display same for ham-and-eggers shuttling between Six Flags Over Bethlehem and the American Opinion Bookstore.