Donald Rumsfeld will be reunited with his old pal Dick Nixon.
You go to Hell with the Devil you have, not the Devil you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Asked for comment, a spokesdemon for the Prince of Darkness said: “We had hoped to get Dick Cheney first, but as you know, the Lord works in mysterious ways, just like Don.
“Meanwhile, we have an extensive landfill down here — it is Hell, after all — and with a little of his fabled ingenuity I’m sure Don will be able to cobble together some suitable ‘hillbilly armor’ before deploying to the Lake of Fire.”
The gendarmes reportedly have collared the spectator believed to have caused that big pileup on day one of the Tour de France.
The charge — involuntarily causing injury — carries a fine of 1,500 euros. But race organizers and athletes have threatened legal action of their own.
So, yeah, could be an expensive day at the race for this person. Maybe Opi and Omi will chip in so their granddaughter doesn’t have to spend the rest of her life holding a cardboard placard at roadside, and sleeping there, too.
Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, it’s been a week since I’ve seen any followups on the Show Low incident. Has the driver been charged? Not that I can see from my perch high atop the Duke City Innertubes.
I know Arizona has a couple dozen wildfires raging, plus an ongoing “election audit” by Ringling Bros-Barnum & Bailey. And Bike the Bluff isn’t exactly Le Tour.
But still, damn. You’d think this dude would’ve been written up for an illegal lane change or littering by now.
Waiting for rain around here is like waiting for a Republican to grow a pair.
It huffs, and it puffs, aaaaaaaand … that’s about it.
Nevertheless, the clouds have helped keep us delightfully cool. Unlike the Tour de France, which so far seems to be a searing symphony of skidmarks and blood trails, scored for ambulance sirens.
Some pundits have been calling for a return to an “opening prologue” to mellow everyone out in the early going of Le Tour. Which might be smart, if we overlook that “opening” nonsense. A prologue is a preface, an introduction, a preceding event or development.
Have you ever seen a prologue three stages in? You have not.
Anyway, prologues are far from foolproof. Chris Boardman crashed in the 1995 prologue. Stuey O’Grady did likewise in 2007, as did Alejandro Valverde in 2017.
But it’s true that the carnage tends to be retail rather than wholesale in an “opening prologue.” A racer gets taken out by a tight corner, a slick descent, or a roadside eejit, and a writer gets taken out by the copy desk. Le Tour goes on.
Yes, yes, yes, it’s that time of year again, and Charles Pelkey and I are … still not doing our famous Live Update Guy thing.
I always feel a twinge of guilt and sorrow over having turned my back on the one what brung me to the freelancers’ dance — bicycle racing, and specifically Le Tour — but I sure do enjoy having my mornings free for bicycling instead of blathering.
Charles, of course, wouldn’t know what a free morning was if it bit him in his billable hours, which it would. He’s lawyerin’ away like crazy up there in Wyoming, and confesses via email that, like me, he doesn’t have any idea who the top men in the Tour are anymore.
But all that NRRBBB®* sure was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?
* That’s Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah to you, sonny.
Americans are hewing to the Gospel of Willie Nelson:
On the road again
Goin’ places that I’ve never been
Seein’ things that I may never see again
And I can’t wait to get on the road again
The New York Times says tracking indicates that mountain-resort bookings are off the charts, well ahead of even last year’s record-shattering level.
Hotel rooms cost more, and so does go-juice for the family tank. Planning to camp? Do you have a reservation, m’sieur? Non? Please ’ave a seat in your Buick and I’ll see if we can pencil you in for, oh, let’s say … October. October 2022. Your bicycle should be available by then as well.
On the edge, back in the early Oughts. Photo: Merrill Oliver
I’m not immune to this sort of questing, especially since I’ve been up on blocks in Bernalillo County since fall 2019.
A couple old comrades recently invited me to join them for a spot of biking and hiking around Truckee, Calif., as in days of yore, but I couldn’t warm up (ho ho ho) to the idea of driving a thousand miles each way in a 17-year-old Subie through a series of forest fires. Visit colorful Flaming Rock! Retardant drops every hour on the hour!
So I scoped out a few getaways a little closer to home, quiet locales without zip lines, mountain coasters, or via ferratas, and ho-ly shit, no thank you, please.
Your modern highwayman is not an armed robber ahorseback bellowing “Stand and deliver!” but rather an innkeeper telling you your pitiful pile of Hilton points won’t make the nut here, Sonny Jim. You think Arizona was smokin’? Wait ’til you see what we do to your Visa card.
Samey same at campsites at any location with an elevation where daytime highs stall out in the double digits. Wanna pitch a tent? Thumb up some porn on your smartphone, Johnny Muir, our dirt is all spoken for. And you couldn’t afford it anyway.
The amusing part of the NYT piece is about how all these destinations hope to teach tourists how to eschew outlandish dickishness, which is a primary characteristic of the meandering jagoff. Pivoting from tourism promotion to tourism management, as The Colorado Sun puts it.
Hee, and also haw. You won’t have to drive to Tombstone to see the O.K. Corral, podnah. The same salt-of-the-earth types who were doing it hand to hand in the Dollar Store over the last jumbo pack of Charmin will be drawing down on each other — and the hired hands — at overloaded campsite pit toilets, chairlifts, and undistinguished chain eateries from coast to coast.
Being up on blocks in Bernalillo County suddenly doesn’t sound all that bad.
Mad Blog Media 