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.
Looks like it uses some of the old Sangre de Cristo Cycling Club Championship course in addition to the Santa Fe Hill Climb course.
And it sure should be interesting, given the amount of climbing, the quality of the air this weekend, and the temperament of the local motorists more or less year-round.
I’ll take a page from “The Milagro Beanfield War” on this one: “I’m not saying it’s good, I’m not saying it’s bad. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
Just ’cause it’s Sunday doesn’t mean drivers will have Jesus in their hearts.
A waste executive from Republic Services, one of the country’s largest garbage haulers, which serves more than 2,800 communities and has 91 recycling centers, said that one-third of everything collected by recycling trucks went to disposal because it was either contaminated, too small to be sorted or not actually recyclable.
“We’re right now landfilling it [plastic],” adds one Arizona operator. And Sierra Vista gets a shout-out, too.
The Woodbury Fire in Arizona is sharing its smoke, a little treat we asthmatics can do without. I took a couple peeks out various windows, and cracked the front door for a nanosecond, and that was that. None of the old bikey ridey for Your Humble Narrator, not today.
Yesterday I shipped the latest “Quick Spin” video to Adventure Cyclist. It features the Masi Speciale Randonneur (pictured above). Masi is deep into the bike-travel thing and has been for a while now. I think I first saw their Giramondo at Interbike 2015, and as touring bikes go, it still seems like a hell of a bargain to me — chromoly frame and fork, 10-speed Deore drivetrain (with a low end of 24×36), TRP Spyre brakes, and Tubus racks (Tara front, Cargo rear), all for the low low price of $1,399.
Masi offers a 650b version of the Giramondo, too. No racks, but more adventurous.
The Speciale, as you might guess from its name, has roots in randonneuring, so it’s more of a road bike, happiest with a front load and maybe some other light bits scattered around and about in frame and saddle bags.
It will be staying indoors this morning, however. As will I. So don’t go looking for me at Stonehenge.
Meanwhile, when you see a flat-footed statement this thick — “Road bikes average 10-15 pounds.” — you have to question the rest of the story.
No follow-up from the local media, but the fire near the Elena Gallegos area was reported to have covered more than 50 acres before it was contained.
Some douche(s) burned up one of my trails last week. You can’t take your eyes off these people for a minute.
Meanwhile, it’s 91 at 4:15 p.m., we’re enjoying a hazardous-weather outlook, a fire-weather watch, and an air-quality alert,and it’s not even summer yet.
Officials with the Bernalillo County Fire Department recommend designating “a sober person” to be in charge of lighting fireworks, and keeping a bucket of water nearby. A word to the wise.
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