Well, well, well. …

May 27, 2016May 27, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

"There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day." — “There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day.”

Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey and I were discussing anniversaries the other day, and I was reminded that I’ve been working in my chosen profession for nearly 39 years now; 40, if you count the time I spent as a copy boy at the Colorado Springs Sun back in 1974.

No wonder I fail to amuse myself now and then.

This week was one of those times. Mornings spent working the Giro at Live Update Guy. Back-to-back ship dates at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, which meant I had to crank out two “Mad Dog Unleashed” columns and two “Shop Talk” cartoons in two weeks. And two bike reviews ongoing for Adventure Cyclist. Thousands and thousands of words.

There are harder ways to earn your biscuits and beans — for example, maglia rosa Steven Kruijswijk went ass over teakettle into a snowbank coming off the Cima Coppi in today’s Giro stage — but nevertheless, now and then it feels very much like work.

Other things take a back seat. Cooking (lots of cold suppers lately). Chores (you should see the laundry pile). Cycling (I went for a 45-minute run yesterday because I was sick of bicycles).

And this blog, of course.

In “A Moveable Feast,” Ernest Hemingway wrote of a line he refused to cross:

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

I’m no Hemingway. I don’t write novels, or short stories; I don’t even do journalism anymore, not really. More of a rumormonger, actually.

But still, damn. I look in the bottom of the well lately and all I see are rusty pesos, a couple of dead silverfish, and … and. …

Say, is that the bullet that killed Vince Foster down there?

José, can you see?

April 15, 2016April 16, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

José Appaloosa enjoying the view from the upper end of Tramway.

Busy, busy, busy: And just think, I’m not even at Aqua Rat in Monterey, where all the action is.

For instance, scope out Richard Masoner’s shots of the 2017 Masi Speciale Randonneur, one of them with down-tube shifters. Verrry nice, except for those death-dealing disc brakes, which even St. Eddy and the UCI have deemed a tool of Satan.

Me, I’ve been fooling around with a Rivendell Joe Appaloosa, and a very nice machine it is, too. No down-tube shifters, but thumbshifters, and a handlebar so upright and swept back that you can see yourself coming from miles away.

None of them devilish discs, neither. Tektro V-brakes, thank you very much. In point of fact, the José is so retro I had to buy myself a hipsterish red-plaid shirt to ride around in (the baggy shorts I already own). When aboard the USS José Appaloosa the uniform of the day is very much not the skintight Lycra.

Riding a bike with nice grippy V-brakes reminded me of how much I still dislike the Shimano cantilevers on my Soma Double Cross, and in a fit of pique I pulled them off, planning to replace them with the Paul’s Neo-Retro and Touring cantis on a Steelman Eurocross that I haven’t been riding much.

I forget how old these Spookys are ... probably nearly as old as the bike they now adorn. — I forget how old these Spookys are … probably nearly as old as the bike they now adorn.

Alas, it turned out that the Paul’s are in need of maintenance … a missing O-ring here, a scored brake pivot there, and some really old pads — and thus I found myself staring at two brakeless bikes to no particular purpose.

Then, eureka! I remembered having an old set of barely used Spooky cantis with Kool-Stop pads squirreled away in a box somewhere in the garage. And soon, hey presto! They were on the Steelman, because black and red are the key components of the Mad Dog livery. And off I went for another installment of Ride Your Own Damn Bike Day.

Tell me, who are you?

February 22, 2016February 22, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

I took the Tube back out of town

Back to the Rollin’ Pin

I felt a little like a dying clown

With a streak of Rin Tin Tin.

—”Who Are You,” by The Who

When the machinery starts acting up, what’s the first thing the IT guy asks?

“Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on?”

Well, I turned it off last Monday, but I didn’t get around to turning it back on until today. Sorry ’bout that.

I hadn’t had a good old road trip in far too long, so I took one. And I mean a road trip for me, one in which it was not necessary for me to be me for a few days. One must shut the fuck up from time to time, give the old pie-hole (and everyone else’s ears) a little R&R. Turn it off.

I suppose I could have taken a napping tour of Soho doorways, but that sounded a bit extreme, so instead I pissed off to McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Ariz.

The park is a bolt hole I used for years, but hadn’t visited in a while, and it was a pleasure to return. The weather was stellar, neither too hot nor too cold; there were some brand-new trails to explore; and while plugging into the Innertubes is possible out there among the cacti and coyotes, it remains something of a pain in the arse, so I didn’t bother trying. I did check mail once, using my phone, to see if anything demanded my immediate attention. It didn’t.

Nobody gave me an Airstream Interstate Grand Tour EXT for solstice, so I used my old North Face Expedition-25 tent and a new REI sunshade for shelter. And as regards cooking mostly I did not, as like the daily parade of conspiracies on the Innertubes it had become something of a nuisance.

Instead, I noshed on bits of this and that — baby greens with avocado and tomato slathered in olive oil, Creminelli salami and Barber’s cheddar on crackers, fruit, yogurt, granola, LaraBars, rice and whatnot.

I did, however, brew the obligatory pot of powerful black coffee first thing every morning. After a cuppa and a LaraBar I went for a run, and after that it was another cuppa, some yogurt and granola, and a ride on one of the two bikes I’d fetched along. Lunch was either out of the cooler or at DJ’s Bagel Cafe, which to my surprise was still open — and still good — after all these years. For dinner it was back to the cooler.

Come evening I enjoyed the sunset, the moonrise and a brief coyote concert, then turned in, listened to a little Mozart from the Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, read a bit of poetry, and nodded off. Next day I did it all again, but on different trails.

It wasn’t all fun and games. There were notes and pictures taken, and video shot. But I did not publish, until today. And as you see, I have not perished.

marin-bags-granite — The Marin Four Corners Elite, tricked out with Revelate bikepacking bags.

Bare trees

February 9, 2016February 9, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

The Marin Four Corners Elite (dog not pictured).

Back to work, and what a hideous chore it was, too — riding the Marin Four Corners Elite on a new-to-me trail south of Embudo Canyon.

Lots of dog-walkers out in the late afternoon; too many, actually. But who could blame them? It was fiddy-sumpin’, if windy, and a fine day to step away from the desk for a while.

Today should be equally pleasant, unless you live in New Hampshire, where evil weather and presidential aspirants abound. Marco 3P0 is still jammed on repeat (his programmers insist this is a feature, not a bug); Jeb (!) asked his mommy to fetch his testicles (apparently he’s discovered some use for them); and Trump, The Great and Powerful, is expected to dispute their very existence while simultaneously squeezing them (and everyone else’s) with his very small hands.

On the Donk side in today’s primary, Comrade Sanders is expected to deep-fry The Hilldebeast, who has let the Big Dog off the leash, which may raise as many questions as it lays to rest. As celebrity tag-team pairings go, this may not exactly be The High Flyers.

Whatever. As the elite political press corps says, after tonight we can all go back to not giving a shit about New Hampshire. There are bikes to ride, after all.

Chile, hold the snow

January 22, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

You can still find some snow around here, but nobody is duking it out at the grocery over the last can of Spaghetti-Os.

I bitch a fair amount (OK, so I bitch a lot, maybe even a whole shitload), but I’m having a hard time complaining about my lot in life today.

For starters, I am not in Maryland, where Herself is going toe to toe with Snowmageddon, various blood relatives and in-laws, and a vile case of gastroenteritis that has already felled 50 percent of her party.

The Four Corners Elite isn't your grandpappy's steel touring bike, nosirree. Now get off my lawn. — The Four Corners Elite isn’t your grandpappy’s steel touring bike, nosirree. Now get off my lawn.

No, I am right here in the Duke City, where today it was a balmy fiddy-sumpin’ and strictly blue skies as I rode the Marin Four Corners Elite around and about for a blissful 90 minutes, inspecting a bit of bike path with which I was unfamiliar.

The sonofabitch takes more inexplicable twists and turns than a Caribou Barbie speech, but the Domingo Baca eventually gets you there, “there” being the North Diversion Channel Trail, a major north-south backbone of the local trail network.

Once safely on the main stem I took my usual route back to El Rancho Pendejo, heading over I-25 and along Osuna to the John Roberts Dam, where Walter White caught his getaway ride in the extractor’s red Toyota Previa, and then riding the dirt trails behind the dam to the Tramway bike path and home.

I arrived back at the ranch just in time to receive a generous compliment on one of my videos for Adventure Cyclist — just call me Quentin Ferrentino — and now I’m cooking up a green chile stew by way of refreshment and celebration.

Tomorrow looks even better. And I won’t even have to cook the stew when I get home.