Handy Household Hint: Whenever I run out of black-tar heroin and prescription painkillers I substitute a three-pepper, scrambled-egg quesadilla and a double-shot Americano. If that doesn’t get you moving in the morning, you’ve died during the night.
After Charles Pelkey and I wrapped up Live Update Guy’s coverage of Paris-Roubaix yesterday I pedaled off for my own little adventure.
See the cobbles off to the right there alongside Tramway? Those are the rare Duke City mini-cobbles. Some people might call ’em “gravel,” but they’re really cobbles. Itty bitty cobbles. You can trust me. I’m in the media.
Mat Hayman (Orica-GreenEdge) took the flowers at Paris-Roubaix, and well done indeed.
Dude was in the break, riding his 15th Hell of the North, and just barely got ‘er done in front of four-time winner Tom Boonen (Etixx-QuickStep) and Ian Stannard (Sky).
Charles Pelkey and I called the race at Live Update Guy, and I’ll congratulate myself for mentioning Hayman as a man to watch.
OK, so I also have to take the rap for saying I thought he was doing too much work to win. But still.
Meanwhile, poor ol’ Fabian Cancellara (Trek) intercoursed the penguin on the Roubaix velodrome, dumping it while riding with a Swiss flag. That had to sting.
OK, I’ve been threatening to resurrect the Radio Free Dogpatch podcast for a while now, and the stars finally came into proper alignment this week, so here we go.
For the first time Radio Free Dogpatch is not a solo effort — my friend and colleague Hal Walter joined me for a chat of about 75 minutes that I boiled down in editing to just over an hour.
Call it “Two Dudes Mystery Theatre.” We talked about the passing of poets Jim Harrison and Merle Haggard; Hal’s autistic son, and what it’s like trying to do creative work while raising a child who is not “neuro-typical”; and cooking.
For anyone who’s interested in the nuts and bolts of this Frankensteinian project, we chatted via Skype (Hal lives in Custer County, Colorado, while I’m in Albuquerque). On my end I was using a Samson C01U USB condenser microphone and an old pair of Bose earbuds plugged into an equally old iMac; Hal went even lower-tech, using a $50 Kindle Fire and some Apple earbuds, the kind that include an inline mic’.
I recorded our conversation using Ecamm’s Call Recorder, then split the convo into two tracks and dragged both into Apple’s GarageBand for editing. Once the thing was more or less the way I wanted it, I uploaded it to Libsyn, which hosts RFD and sends an RSS feed to iTunes.
During our ‘cast I promised to provide links with more information about some of the topics we discussed, and here those are:
• Tom McGuane’s “Postscript” in The New Yorker.
• Mario Batali recalls mealtimes with Harrison in Time.
• Jimmy Buffett bids a fond adios to his hermano on Facebook.
• Doug Peacock on Harrison and the art of friendship at The Daily Beast.
• A recollection from Patrick Doyle in Rolling Stone.
• NPR’s “Fresh Air” reprises a 1995 interview with the outlaw country legend.
• The food of Apulia, from Florence Fabricant in The New York Times.
• Her recipe for orecchiette with cherry tomatoes and arugula (being a barbarian, I add hot Italian sausage).
If you find yourself interested in Hal’s writing, you can visit him at Hardscrabble Times (yeah, it’s been a while since he updated the ol’ blog) or order up one or more of his books (check the link in the sidebar).
Meanwhile, let us know in comments what you think. It’s a little rough around the edges, but so are we. Happily, the podcast can be improved.
A workin’ man finally clocks out. During one drink-and-drug-soaked road trip I played one of his “greatest hits” tapes so often that my copilot yanked it out of the deck and threw it out the window.
I let him live. I didn’t want to turn 21 in prison doing life without parole. ‘Cause Mama tried.
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