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.

The bee’s knees

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Somebody tell the bees and the trees that it ain’t spring yet.

Actually, you can’t see their little knees — do bees even have knees? — but the little bastards sure are buzzing away up there in our backyard maple, which is already budding out.

So is the ornamental pear by the master bedroom window.

The pear thinks it’s spring too.

I haven’t budded out, but I have bugged out, for a pleasant two-hour loop that took in some of the bike paths I avoided in Year One of the Pale Horseman. The forecast called for a high in the low 60’s, so I figured why not?

For openers I rolled down Paseo de las Montañas to Indian School and thence to the I-40 Trail, which took me to the North Diversion Channel Trail. This trail has been blocked for a while north of Comanche as the Water Authority engaged in a bit of valve rehabilitation, whatever the hell that means.

Heading north on the NDCT I passed through Balloon Fiesta Park and worked my way over to Interstate 25 and Tramway for the half-hour climb to County Line Barbecue. Tailwind, mostly, so yay. Nevertheless, records failed to crumble beneath my thundering wheels. No prizes were awarded.

I stayed on Tramway for the trip home. Usually I dick around a little bit on the side streets to the east but I felt like scaring the shit out of myself for no good reason.

I’m going to insist that the State install a flyover exit for bicycles only at Comanche so I can make the left turn without (a) getting stuck for three-four rotations in the turn lane (the arrow refuses to appear for bicyclists), or (2) getting run over and killed to death.

There’s a pedestrian bridge just south of the intersection, but getting to it almost certainly would involve (2) because nobody ever even slows down for a right turn at Comanche and Tramway, much less stops to gauge the oncoming traffic. When the YMCA goes belly up I expect it to be replaced by an auto body shop and an EmergiCare.

Spring broken

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 43 Comments
There’s the signpost up ahead … you’re about to enter the McDowell Zone.

Can you be both stuck and unstuck, at the same time?

Dern tootin’, podnah.

Case in point: Last year, I had planned a March trip to McDowell Mountain Regional Park, to (a) get the hell out of here, and (2) get the hell out of here.

Well sir, God, He got wind of those plans and had Himself a good old hee, and also a haw. And the next thing you know I had a broken ankle, a dead cat, and a strongly worded suggestion from the State that I (and everyone else) stay put while the Plague sorted itself out.

So I was what you call stuck.

Now, a year later, we have a vaccine. And by “we,” I mean … well, what I mean is that there is a vaccine, and some other people have gotten it. But I haven’t. And I don’t know when I will get it.

Thus I am, you might say, unstuck. Which means I’m stuck.

Which in turn means that you get the needle. Because yes, yes, yes, it’s time for another medicinal episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: Once again we go to the Comedy Closet for this one, using a Shure MV7 mic and Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects courtesy of Zapsplat with an Apple loop or two from iMovie and GarageBand. House call by kindly old Doc Firesign. Now just turn your head and cough.

Empowering the nomads

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments
Ryan Pohl building batteries in the boonies.
Photo: Nina Riggio | The Washington Post

Here’s an interesting story: We’ve wondered from time to time about what we’re going to do with all the batteries from these cool new toys everyone thinks will save us from ourselves. Ryan Pohl has a few ideas on that subject.

Pohl is repurposing depleted electric-car batteries to power the off-the grid wanderers who winter at Quartzsite, billed as “the RV boondocking capital of the world.”

There are no plug-ins out there, so the nomads mostly power their rigs using fossil-fueled generators. What there is is plenty of sun. And with solar panels, some used Nissan Leaf batteries, plus an assist from Pohl and his mobile workshop, these wanderers can get a little greener.

It’s been a quiet week at El Rancho Pendejo. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 35 Comments
The wind sketches clouds across the skies west of the Sandias.

It’s been a quiet week, as Garrison Keillor used to say of Lake Woebegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

Pink skies to the west.

The weather has returned to something a little more favorable for hiking and biking, and the National Weather Service forecasts a spring that should be drier and warmer than normal.

In fact, we’re already into allergy season here. Junipers and elms. Honk, snurk, hawwwwk, ptui, etc.

Two of the four people we know who have been looking for work have found it, so, yay. The jobs may not be ideal, but neither are the times. So it goes.

I am not looking for work, but it seems to have been looking for me. Adventure Cyclist asked if I wanted to dash off a little sumpin’-sumpin’ that is not a bicycle review, and we’ll see how that goes. Having been without a column for a while now, I’m kind of out of practice as regards busking for bucks.

It’s much easier to do that here, where I’m both organ grinder and monkey, all at once. Out there in the workaday world they expect you to dance to their tune, when they’re hiring at all.

The Free New Mexican Air Force?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

From the Albuquerque Journal:

“Do you have any targets up here?” the pilot of American Airlines Flight 2292 asks Federal Aviation Administration traffic controllers. “We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing moving really fast right over the top of us.”

Was it Mescalito riding his white horse? Or The Free New Mexican Air Force?

¿Quien sabe, ese? Rolllllllllllllllllllllllll another one … just like the other one. …