He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. …
Author: Patrick O'Grady
After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
This year’s Tour may be a little too hot to handle, for a couple of stages at least, thanks to fires in the Pyrénées-Orientales area. And anyway, I quit paying attention once the magazines quit paying me money.
Cycling is like … well, like pretty much anything, really. I’d rather do it than watch it.
So this morning, instead of watching UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Tadej Pogačar stomp all comers into a thin paste, I rolled out for a short ride on my favorite Steelman Eurocross, planning to take in the usual mix of asphalt and dirt.
About six miles in, halfway through a circuit of the Elena Gallegos Open Space, the rear tire started going soft. I stopped to add a few psi with a minipump, but what that tire really wanted was a fresh tube.
Well. Shit. What I’m doing here is cyclocross, kinda, sorta. Fuck a fresh tube, I’ll take a fresh bike. Where’s the pit?
About five miles away. In my garage.
So I swoop gingerly down from the EG, along Simms to the Tramway bike path, Comanche, and home, mindful of a rear tire whose tread is getting a little too chummy with its rim.
And I snatch up my second favorite Steelman Eurocross. Boom! Back in the race! Finished first in a field of one on my pit bike, with no further mechanicals. There was an awards banquet, featuring the remnants of Taco Thursday (h/t to stage winner Isaac del Toro) in a flour tortilla with a scattering of arugula, a spoonful of homemade salsa fresca, and a sprinkling of grated Kerrygold Blarney.
The crowd roared.
OK, so maybe that was the vacuum cleaner. Herself has her own race on Sundays, which is all about making El Rancho Pendejo look less like a race pit and more like a home. It’s a much tougher event.
Betsy Ross would like to know who left the lid up, among other things.
Someone up the road a ways is flying the flag upside down.
It’s fair, I thought. Someone across the street had been doing likewise under the previous administration. What’s good for the goose, etc.
I had been debating whether to fly a flag at all on this Fourth of July, right side up or otherwise. Part of me feels that to fly the flag at all hints of complicity with the brigands, featherbedders and toadies who snuggle up to it as though Old Glory were a young girl on Epstein Island.
It’s one of the reasons I never wear the stars-and-stripes jersey some wiseguy at USA Cycling awarded to me for being a National Champion Pain in the Ass, or something very much like that.
Sure, I earned it. But actually wearing it? I dunno.
“Hey, check out the senior citizen in the national-champ kit. He must’ve been something before electricity. I didn’t know Depends made bib shorts. And what’s that thing he’s riding? Steel? Bar-end shifters? Rim brakes? Yo, Rip Van Weinmann! Wake up and smell the future! Haw haw haw!
• • •
Your Humble Narrator and Herself.
So, yeah. When Herself and I rolled out for this morning’s ride I was not wearing the stars-and-stripes. Yet I was rockin’ the red, white, and blue, as hard as I could, for anyone who cared enough to take notice.
Red Steelman Eurocross (USA) and Giro gloves (Vietnam). White Rudy Project helmet (China), cotton headrag (ditto), Patagonia undershirt (USA), and Gore socks (?). Blue Voler jersey (USA), a match for the decals on the Eurocross and the Cane Creek Crono X Cross wheels (?). The bibs were Voler (USA) — not Depends— in basic black, to match my Sidi shoes (Romania) and my aura.
Quite a few of our fellow Americans were getting their heart rates up despite the smoky haze applying a gray filter to the normally beautiful blue skies. Joggers, dog-walkers, e-bikers, you name it. The quail were mostly under cover, but we saw a few bunnies and one deer curled up in a shady spot against a Sandia Heights house for sale.
And what’s with all the crows lately? Could be ravens, I suppose. Quite a conspiracy of them, too. Someone should write a poem.
• • •
When we got home a few of the Spanish-speakers that so frighten the nation’s mismanagement were prepping a neighbor’s place for stucco in the 94-degree heat. Another will be working a checkout lane at a nearby grocery until 10 p.m. I know this because she told me so.
“Gonna miss the barbecue and everything,” she said, ringing up my purchases, mostly the ingredients for that most American of condiments (salsa).
Our post-ride lunch was some Mexican red rice and savory ground beef left over from last night’s dinner, that most American of dishes (tacos), with a couple of scrambled eggs and a sprinking of Irish cheese. The last of the taco filling will be put to use tonight in that most American of meals (pizza).
• • •
The star-spangled banner yet waves.
But we were talking about flags, yeah? I put ours out, right side up. They’re nothing special, just a couple of cheap promotional items dumped on the property years ago by some long-forgotten real-estate shithead with zero respect for flag etiquette. Nevertheless, Herself and I agreed that we should hew to the gospel preached to us by our late friend and neighbor Marv’ Berkman.
Shortly after we moved in next door to Marv’, once I had gotten the feeling that he wasn’t your standard-brand, hard-right Bibleburger, I asked him why he flew the flag day in and day out.
And the old Chicago saloon picker sez to me he sez (stop me if you’ve heard this one before):
“I just want those guys to know they’re not the only ones who can fly it.”
While a presidential proclamation Is blasting out across the nation And Mad Dog and his band of jerks Are lighting off the fireworks Oh, boy, hey hey, it’s a national holiday It’s a national holiday.—Timbuk 3
The Aspen Acres fire, as seen from my old stomping grounds. Photo: Hal Walter
Long distance runner, what you standin’ there for? Get up, get out, get out of the door. — “Fire On the Mountain,” The Grateful Dead
Caught between a rock and a hard place. Or a hot place.
That’s my man Hal Walter, who is dealing with not one, but two fires up in Colorado.
The big one — the Aspen Acres fire, presently the No. 1 priority blaze in the country — is reportedly at more than 48,000 acres, with zero containment and evacuations ordered in Hal’s old hometown of Wetmore, plus San Isabel, Rye, and Colorado City.
Hal’s rancheroo is miles west of the road closure at Mackenzie Junction atop Hardscrabble Canyon, at highways 96 and 165, but a fire with that much reach and attitude isn’t the sort of beast you want running loose anywhere near your area of operations.
Especially when your wife and son are up in Leadville, where another no-containment blaze— the much-smaller Willow Fire — is giving folks the jitters.
Harrison Walter went to school at Colorado Mountain College, and since graduating has been dividing his time between the family home and an apartment in DisneyLead, where he works a couple-three part-time jobs while Hal and his wife, Mary, tag-team supervisory duties. Harrison is neurodiverse and can be a tad sensitive to stress, though things that would dissolve your average normie into a puddle of pee and tears — such as running the 2026 Leadville Trail Marathon, where he placed third in his age group — don’t seem to bother him much.
Harrison and Mary were supposed to be headed home today, the Fourth of July festivities in DisneyLead having gotten a big thumb’s down, but I haven’t heard from Hal yet this morning.
Here’s hoping he’s not loading up the truck with the devil on his tail. In addition to the usual family heirlooms Hal has a pasture full of burros and a book under construction.
A very happy 100th birthday to Mel Brooks, who was making me laugh my ass off decades before I knew who the hell he was.
I think I first laid eyes on him when Mel and his old buddy Carl Reiner introduced “The 2000 Year Old Man” to the world (they’d been doing bits at parties, George Burns threatened to steal the material if they didn’t do something with it, and finally Steve Allen persuaded them to record the act for an album).
But he wasn’t a rookie. Mel had been doing standup in the Borscht Belt; went on to write for Sid Caesar with the likes of Woody Allen and Neil Simon; and created “Get Smart!” with Buck Henry.
And then, the movies. Holy underwear! In 1974 Mel released “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein.” In the same year. I was pretending to study journalism at the University of Northern Colorado that year, and my bros and I lost what remained of our minds watching those flicks.
Mine never returned. But Mel’s just keeps hopping along like some furshlugginer Energizer Bunny. I’m retired, but he’s still working.
And The New York Times has 100 reasons why this should excite you. There are more, I’m certain. Give us yours in comments.
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