His Excellency confers with the underside of his eyelids.
As you can see, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) and his adjutant Miss Mia Sopaipilla can’t wait for The Big Game to get under way.
We don’t follow the feets ball here at El Rancho Pendejo, having gotten our fill of artificially augmented athletes at that Boulder-based journal of competitive cycling.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla stands watch at the rear portcullis.
Indeed, we watch no televised sports of any kind, preferring to participate rather than spectate.
Oh, sometimes I’ll watch the U.S. cyclocross nationals, or ’cross worlds, if I can find a free feed uncontaminated by bots, viruses, Trojan horses, poltergeists, pixies, h’ants, djinni, cooties, boogers, and other agents of Chaos.
But I didn’t even watch worlds this weekend. My gal Katie Compton just missed the podium after a poor start, and Mathieu van der Poel — well, let’s just say that the dude might as well have been racing all by himself.
Anyway, this morning I had other concerns. Ironically, they involved my own doping regimen.
As I stumbled into the kitchen Herself intercepts me and goes all like: “Bad news. The coffee grinder’s broken again.”
Happily, she’d managed to brew just enough joe for me to pour a shot in each eyeball and then get to work rebooting the evil sonofabitch.
Tags: Baratza Encore, cyclo-cross worlds
Mad Blog Media 
February 2, 2020 at 10:15 am |
What, no coffee? Serious business for sure. I always keep a bag of ground Justo arabica in the cabinet just in case the grinder gives up the ghost.
Going to our friend’s house to guitar jam, eat a little junk food, if you call blue corn chips and hummus junk, and start to watch the game. It will be a first for us for televised sports since we quit watching the grand tours. And it will probably be the last since I don’t enjoy watching men trading their brains for some money.
February 2, 2020 at 10:47 am |
I keep the Baratza support site bookmarked. Now I gotta set up a reminder in Calendar to clean the thing out once a week (or once a month). Sumbitch was clogged tighter than a Republican’s bunghole with a vote of conscience and a primary coming up.
February 2, 2020 at 11:55 am |
Wow, I’ve never fooled around with grinding coffee though I know a few who do. These days I just buy the ESE pods and open the packet, stick the thing in, crank down the filter basket and flip the switch. Kimbo espresso comes out good every time with our cheapo machine http://cycleitalia.blogspot.com/2018/01/delonghi-esprsso-maker-review.html
As to the Stupid-Bowl, we have some ‘Murican friends visiting but nobody wants to stay up until the wee hours watching the thing so we’ll avoid reading online who won and watch a replay Monday evening complete with Italian-style snackage.
February 2, 2020 at 12:52 pm |
I’m not a fanatic about it. I just figure that if I’m grinding a locally roasted bean, I’m a couple steps closer to the source of the coffee.
These people who make a religion out of coffee amuse me. I expect they do likewise with cannabis, IPAs, plaid, and mustache wax.
February 2, 2020 at 1:47 pm |
What??? Sputter…you mean you don’t worship the Gospel According to St. Arabica?
February 3, 2020 at 12:30 am |
I know some folks who look at it like a science experiment – grind beans to X factor, weigh out Y grams, tamp into filter with Z pressure, run water at A degrees for B seconds. Geez! Funny thing is, the espresso they make with this NASA-like sequence is simply awful.
I brought some ILLY, Lavazza and a famous Roman local brand to one of them and they managed even to make some sour/acidic swill with those, not to mention the gawdawful, locally-roasted beans they had!!!
It seems they fail to understand espresso was invented in Italy where the mantra for preparing pretty much anything edible is “Start with something of very high quality, then don’t f–k it up!”
February 2, 2020 at 1:59 pm |
The best part of Super Bowl Sunday in Honolulu was cycling, i.e., having the road to myself for about four hours. But get off by the end of the game, ‘cuz that’s when all the drunks went teetering home from the parties in their urban assault vehicles.
February 2, 2020 at 3:13 pm |
I ran today, despite the excellent weather, because I somehow managed to collect a painful saddle sore and thought a few days off the bike might be a good idea. Man, everybody and his grandma was on the trails, working up their pregame sweat, getting the internal furnace cranked up to burn off all that Bud, Fritos and bean dip.
February 3, 2020 at 6:41 am |
Saddle sore? Really? In the age of easily machine-washable bibshorts and every flavor of chamois cream you can think of? But then again…I’ve seen photos of that thing you call a saddle so….
I could barely sit on one of those for a brief test-ride on a customer’s bike back-in-the-day. Only thing worse was anything with a BROOKS badge tacked onto the back….on those bikes it was a stand-up test ride every time! OUCCHHH!!!
February 3, 2020 at 9:09 pm
A friend maintains the Brooks saddle is “… the ideal bike component: heavy, expensive, and uncomfortable.”
He has one on each of the bikes in his considerable fleet.
February 4, 2020 at 12:55 pm
Perhaps a Monty Python-ish video clip would be appropriate regarding a Brooks classic saddle. A video surveillance camera set above the street in a downtown environment looking down upon a single locked bike in a rack. A suspicious character such as O’Grady’s doppelganger, slithers toward the bike rack looking this way, that way, up and for some reason down…. Oh ! His shoelace is untied.. Duh?. Once tied into place said suspicious character eyes the lustrous steed in the rack and grins with anticipation of it’s evident departure. With tachyon speed the thief pounces on the bike, disables and removes the lock in “Portland Oregon bike theft speed”, and begins to roll the bike away from the rack…. But what’s this? A Brooks saddle! A hideous, torturous device garnered to inflict butt sores out the … well, the ass. Disgusted, the bike thief tosses the bike down (gently because as his doppelganger writing brethren does, he appreciates fine velocipedes), and walks off in disgust….
As for grinding coffee, I just toss a bunch of smoked (I get em from my local cannabis shop) beans out on my garage floor, put on my waffle stompers and dance like Lee Marvin drunk as a skunk and dancing with the other crazy miners in Paint Your Wagon….
and As for the Super toilet, I went out for a run as well. Afterward I turned on the last quarter of the game because I enjoy the color presented on a tv screen by American football games and enjoyed the red ones scoring more than the gold and white ones.
I hope everyone is fine. I lurk here in my humble teepee and appreciate all those who imbibe in your column and wisdom of words.
Cheers !
February 2, 2020 at 10:21 am |
Not sure if you consider YouTube the “telly”, but the Womens Elite Cyclocross World Championships is well worth watching, even when you don’t understand a word of what’s said.
It’s how I discovered that watching bike racing is just as good without the commentary.
February 2, 2020 at 10:50 am |
Is the commentary in Phlegmish? I always liked Benelux commentary for the “Oi yoi yoi yi yois” and “Ooo la la la las.”
February 2, 2020 at 11:08 pm |
Not Phlegmish, because that’s similar to Afrikaans & I can understand that, this sounds like Eastern European in that ‘ We vill bomb the shit out of you!’
February 2, 2020 at 11:50 am |
Not sure if this was intentional or not, but Feb is our school district’s family health challenge, so the kids need to check 4 of 6 blocks each day (no sugary drinks, hour of exercise, 5 servings of fruits/veggies, etc), and the family has to do one specified challenge. Today’s challenge on SuperBowl Sunday? “No Screen Sunday.”
It’s damn near 70° here, with snow expected for tomorrow, so we’re rolling out as soon as our breakfast burritos digest (and hopefully before our Bloody Marys wear off).
February 2, 2020 at 12:00 pm |
Only one commercial I care about, and it’s already aired:
February 2, 2020 at 1:43 pm |
Ugh. Coffee grinder broken? That’s a crisis. We ended up with a spare. It broke and we sent it back under warranty. Not wanting to wait weeks for fresh grounds, I bought a replacement and the original, when it got back from the factory, is sitting in its box, sorta like “in an emergency, tear open the box”.
February 2, 2020 at 3:10 pm |
Happily, it was just clogged all to be damn. We favor Aroma Coffee’s darker, oily roasts — Black Lightning and French Roast — and they can gum up the works if you’re not religious about cleaning the machinery.
All I had to do this time was partially dismantle the Baratza, give it a vicious beating with the wire brush, and then futz around with grind settings for a while. Last time it went back to the shop for a rebuild.
We don’t have an extra grinder but we do keep other backup java machinery in-house: an old Krups espresso maker, a spare Mr. Coffee, even a pour-over deal that fits my Thermos for camping.
But they’re all pretty useless without ground coffee. So I guess I’d better invest in a backup grinder too.
February 4, 2020 at 1:39 am |
Same reason we have a spare espresso/cappuccino maker both here in Sicily and up at Piedmont Cycling Resort. But all of ’em work great with the ESE pods one can buy at any supermarket in Italy and in better places in the USA. No grinding, tamping or otherwise futzing around, once I went ESE I’ve never looked back….should have done it long ago:-)
February 2, 2020 at 6:00 pm |
Patrick I invested in a hand powered burr grinder. it works great when the Krups Grinder to Valhalla or where ever kraut crap goes. takes longer and you are not tempted to grind more that you intend to consume just cuz it goes whirr and you can. Next purchase z French Press when the drip coffee maker goes to the local landfill
February 2, 2020 at 7:54 pm |
Which hand grinder did you get? I’ve been thinking about a simple Chemex setup and a hand grinder would go nicely with that. Also, convenient for camping, que no?
February 2, 2020 at 8:56 pm |
I’ve got the Chemex. Can’t get more basic than that. When the electric burr grinder dies, I’ll look for a manual one.that will increase the value of the Morning Ritual.
February 3, 2020 at 10:38 am |
The grinder says presse coffee maker bobble. Ceramic burr grinder. yes it will be good for camping. does take a while to get used to it. different size grind but works well at home.
February 3, 2020 at 6:39 am |
i just replaced my small hario hand grinder with a large hario hand grinder. i had the small one for about 5 years with no issues other than it was getting a little hard to grasp tightly enough for some of the harder beans i’ve been purchasing. i consider it a small upper body workout every morning. i don’t think it’s a quality enough grinder to do proper espresso but for everything else it works fine. i get my coffee from a guy from the bike shop that roasts his own. $10 a pound and it’s quite nice. while i was in there getting a bag of coffee on saturday they sold me a new mountain bike. 2019 specialized chisel.
February 3, 2020 at 5:31 am |
I go easy sleazy. Pre-heat the pot if you want the coffee to stay hot longer.
https://shoponline.melitta.com/collections/pour-over™/products/thermal-pour-over-coffeemaker-stainless-carafe-set
February 3, 2020 at 5:47 am |
Jura Inc Capresso grinder. Onliest one that shows up for reveille every morning, year after year. I recall it wasn’t expensive but it’s been a few years. Now they’ve probably jacked it up with useless programming and all wheel drive. My detailed and exacting service tip; I use my compressor to blow air through whatever hole, gap or slot I can find twice yearly. And a stainless steel French press that cannot shatter when you get a little rough with it. I do make my Joe strong enough that friends will drive miles to avoid my house in the mornings. I’ve also made many a quality single cup with the AeroPress kit I bought for travel. Hotel coffee generally taste like dirty socks so if you have access to a microwave in your room and can rinse the parts in the sink you are golden.
February 3, 2020 at 9:18 pm |
I remember coffee. Nice stuff, but I gave it up decades ago when I had the ulcer. That was before anyone realized they could just give you antibiotics to cure the damn ulcer. It was such a victory, I couldn’t see starting up again. It’s only bad for the first 7 or 8 years.
February 4, 2020 at 5:22 am |
Well, it seems we have something else to wake us up this morning. The Dems have screwed the pooch right out of the gate in Iowa. And, I would bet we will see some dainty digit tweets about rigged elections. What a joke. National same day primary elections, not run by the parties, would solve this shit once and for all.