Month: August 2024

Definitely challenged, but no record

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
The clouds conceal us from the sun god.

With any luck at all the unseemly heat has broken. For the moment, anyway.

Come morning we don’t have to worry that the air conditioning will click on if we throw the doors and windows open to admit a listless 80° breeze that frankly falls miles short of refreshing. But 68°? That’s more like it.

Now and then we’ve gotten a soupçon of rain overnight. Better and better.

As a consequence the cycling has been excellent. It’ll be a while before we have to start thinking about arm and knee warmers, but the other day I packed a jacket and rode a bike with fenders just to ensure that there would be no rain while I was out and about.

Your Humble Narrator, failing to distinguish himself in a time trial at Alamosa sometime in the Nineties. Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Despite the heat I’ve been logging 100-120 miles a week since mid-June, plus occasional short trail runs and even some light weightlifting. Exactly why remains a mystery. The only possible justification is the faint hope that all this sweaty nonsense will help me continue smiling down at the daisies instead of scowling up at the roots.

The other day I found myself afflicted with the impulse to resurrect my old Steelman time-trial bike. Must’ve been some distant, pain-wracked memory of the Record Challenge Time Trial at Moriarty trying to crawl out of its coffin.

The best ride I ever had there was in 1991, when I turned a 56:43 for 40km despite being mired in the move from Fanta Se to Bibleburg. I was logging most of my mileage in the ’83 Toyota longbed but still managed a PR that was only about 10 minutes slower than Kent Bostick’s best time on the course (he didn’t even race that year and still beat me).

Imagine my surprise when a casual check of the Innertubes found that the Paula Higgins Memorial Record Challenge Time Trial is on for the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

Hmm. Now that I’m a geezer I’d be racing the 20km. The way I’ve been training, who knows? I might even be able to break the hour.

Stand and deliver

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
“I thought it would never end.”

We’re all three of us pooped here at El Rancho Pendejo.

Up too late and too early; chores neglected or mishandled; dinners largely inadequate, poorly timed, and eaten in front of the TV; all so we could hear what the Democrats had to say for themselves.

Two things, basically: First, “We’re not crazy.” And second, “Let’s kick that guy’s ass.”

Most of the speakers said it with more grace, wit, and style, of course. But that was the long and the short of it.

And that’s really all I care about at the moment. It’s a big country in a bigger world, with a metric shit-ton of things that need doing, at home and abroad.

But none of them will get done if we don’t kick that guy’s ass. Wear out a six-pack of kneecaps each if we have to. Leave him and his bootlickers tasting our shoe leather until 2028.

And have a few laughs while we’re doing it.

This guy and his punks and their paymasters can’t stand it when we laugh at them. It makes ’em crazy. Well, OK, crazier.

Maybe that’s why Glen Bateman’s speech to Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s “The Stand” sprang to mind after the DNC finally wrapped up this week.

Once again the dark man was making promises he had no intention of keeping, and Bateman couldn’t help himself — he started laughing at him.

“Stop laughing.”

Glen laughed harder.

“Stop laughing at me!”

“You’re nothing!” Glen said, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. “Oh pardon me … it’s just that we were all so frightened … we made such a business out of you … I’m laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance. …”

It was Bateman’s last laugh. Flagg still had followers eager to do his bidding. But Bateman knew Flagg’s dark magic was on the ebb and said so, loud and clear. Heckled the evil sonofabitch, and not from the safety of the cheap seats, either.

If that ain’t a kick in the ass, I don’t know what is.

Now, as you all know, I’m a reasonable fellow. I’ll be happy to hear what an actual Republican candidate has to say, if what remains of the GOP ever manages to resurrect one. Project 2025? Sheeyit. How about some ideas that should’ve been dead and buried years ago, not a lightly reworked Project 1934 from Nuremberg? Or Project 1478 from Spain?

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, f’chrissakes.

Our lot doesn’t have all the answers, Dog knows. It’s a bigger tent, occasionally with an embarrassment of clowns and more tabbies than lions.

But I like to think our clowns are mostly marching forward, honking and h’yuking and tripping over their own oversized shoes. And who doesn’t like kitty-cats? Either you already know the answer to that one or I’m preaching to the wrong choir.

So how about we live in the future? It’s just starting now.

The big O

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
You get a sky shot! And you get a sky shot! And you get a sky shot. …

I have never paid the least bit of attention to Oprah Winfrey, not even when she sat down with Ol’ Whatsisface to chat about how it really wasn’t about the bike.

But after last night I can see why so many other people have.

Holy hell. There must be a metric shit-ton of folks who wish she’d run for office, and even more who pray she never does.

I have paid some attention to Bill Clinton, and often wish I hadn’t, especially after doing it again last night. (See Hunter S. Thompson on Mister Bill in “Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie.”)

After watching Mister Bill polish his own idol for the better part of quite some time it was a positive relief to hear Coach Walz singing Americana a cappella. I am not and never will be a football fan, but I’m finding the Democrats’ sense of play in this go-round as refreshing as a cold beer in the cheap seats.

Jason Isbell and The Honorables

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

I wonder whether Jason Isbell ever envisioned himself wearing a tux and singing this song to a bunch of Democrats at their national convention in Chicago.

We didn’t get to hear James Taylor perform — Sweet Baby James got the hook as various The Honorables ran long — but I think Jason pretty much got ’er done.

If I were to give anybody the hook so James could slip in a pertinent lyric or two it would’ve been Dick Durbin, who really phoned it in. Meanwhile, the Hilldebeast reminded us all that she will always be The Smartest Person in the Room, which for my money is one of the reasons why she topped out as secretary of state. But she had the room from jump, so what the hell do I know?

I certainly wouldn’t have cut Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Baptist pastor and reliable Bringer of the Fire. Not even for Sweet Baby James:

“We must choose between the promise of January 5th and the peril of January 6th, a nation that embraces all of us or just some of us.”

And speaking of fire-bringing, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett dropped a few well-placed rounds in you-know-how’s AO while discussing the differences between the two major-party candidates:

“One candidate worked at McDonald’s, while she was in college at an HBCU. The other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and helped his daddy in the family business: housing discrimination. She became a career prosecutor, while he became a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments, and one porn star to prove it.”

“Kamala Harris has a résumé. Donald Trump has a rap sheet.”

We were up way past our bedtime watching night one of the DNC and we will not be doing that again. I figure to start paying attention again when Kamala Harris and Tim Walz take the stage as the real, sure-’nough nominees.

Joe Biden was up past his bedtime, too. Swear to Dog, at one point I thought he was talking like the top of the ticket again. But then the boisterous crowd knocked him off track a bit, he started to ramble, and we closed the iPad and called it a night.