Swear to God: I’d turn Roman Catholic in a hot Noo Yawk minute if Pope Frankie could get Dorothy Day to roust this capitalist cold the hell out of my atheist carcass.
The bug has been having a high old time with me, plugging my nose-holes with colorful sludge, like a box of Crayolas left in the sun. Too, there is a cough that must have the neighbors wondering if a pride of lions has begun hunting deer in the ‘hood. Sleep is measured in minutes rather than hours, and snark, bark and spark all are at perilously low levels.
Come midmorning, after watching the pope squander his Jesuitical subtlety on our elected representatives, I dragged what remains of Your Humble Narrator out for a Frankensteinian walk along the trails I should be running or riding, this being the second day of fall, and a beauty, too. Just check out the blue in that sky. It’s one of the few colors that hasn’t come out of my nose.
The affordable made-in-America Co-Motion Bluebird starts at $2,995.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (MDM) — We took one more spin around the show floor on Friday, the Adventure Cyclist folks and I, and then I got the hell out of Dodge — but not before I collected a nasty case of Snotlocker Surprise®, which didn’t fully manifest itself until I got home Saturday afternoon.
I hadn’t been sick in a good long while, and I was taking the usual sanitary precautions during the show, but there were plenty of sneezers and wheezers in attendance and one of them must have drilled me with a booger-bomb.
A sore throat, plugged sinuses and the general feeling of having been et by a coyote and shit off a cliff is what I get for making jokey videos about drugs. Now I’m actually taking some, and they are far from mind-expanding, though one may hope that Claritin-D 12-Hour is at least nostril-expanding.
Before the cooties took root in my snoot we checked out the new Bluebird tandem from the fine folks at Co-Motion as well as a Traitor Wander, which sounds like a command but is actually a bicycle. The Ortlieb guys had one at the booth, wearing their bags, and after some brisk negotiations with the Traitors I wound up taking one home with me. No doubt there was a certain segment of the Bicycle Retailer readership that, upon seeing me in the company of a Traitor, muttered, “I knew it!”
An Arizona parfait, as shot through the passenger window.
With a bike in hand, I abruptly decided it was time to go. I’d had all the secondhand smoke I could bear, the omnipresent background music was starting to sound like the Prince song “Nothing Compares 2 U” as interpreted by Don Vito Corleone, and I was sick of watching people play with their phones. When the alien archaeologists root through our leavings they will posit that we were a feeble race of eejits with detachable rectangular genitalia that we were always stroking.
I beat it for Flagstaff and more or less went straight to bed, then spent Saturday morning lazing around the Hampton, grazing on the free breakfast, and failing to upload that White Walkers video (the Hampton’s upload speeds are even worse than mine).
Then it was the old zoom-zoom to Duke City, where the traditional multicar pileup at I-40 and San Mateo added an extra 20 minutes in first gear to the last miles of my pilgrimage. I had camping gear with me and was tempted to pitch my tent in the fast lane but then the traffic started moving again and I was homeward bound at last, mumbling along with Tom Waits’ “Swordfishtrombone”:
Well, he came home from the war
with a party in his head
and a modified Brougham DeVille
and a pair of legs that opened up
like butterfly wings
and a mad dog that wouldn’t
sit still
he went and took up with a Salvation Army
Band girl
who played dirty water
on a swordfishtrombone
he went to sleep at the bottom of
Tenkiller Lake
and he said “Gee, but it’s
great to be home.”
I dreamed the other night that I was racing cyclo-cross, and doing pretty well at it, too, which was how I could tell it was a dream.
Sleep has been in short supply lately, with Herself off visiting friends in England. The menagerie is used to her schedule, not mine, and if you can sleep through reveille as sounded by Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), I regret to inform you that you died during the night.
Thus, instead of dozing until 6 a.m. I’ve been up and at ’em around 4:30, not least because Mister Boo has been suffering the usual separation anxiety, which manifests itself in peeing in the house and bouts of diarrhea alternating with constipation.
Also, and too, sniveling. Nobody snivels like The Boo. He wants that lady who gives him things, and I’m sure he suspects that I have finally driven her away for good, perhaps to some other, younger Chin with two good eyes and no incontinence issues.
Once everyone’s gotten fed and watered, I’ve been logging in at Live Update Guy with about half the voices in my head still clearing their respective throats. This annoys my colleague Charles Pelkey, who like me enjoys a quiet hour to himself in the morning and has come to expect me and my diagnoses to arrive 7-ish.
After a few hours of Vuelta bloggery I’ve lost interest in other blood sports, like politics, though it’s impossible not to notice that Hillary seems hellbent on topping Fritz Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry in the Worst Democratic Candidate for President In My Lifetime Sweepstakes. I’ve rarely seen a coronation go so horribly sideways, and I’ve watched all five seasons of “Game of Thrones.”
Speaking of the White Walkers, Interbike starts next week, which probably explains why I woke up no fewer than three times last night, the final time with the Son House version of “John the Revelator” playing in my head, which, surprisingly, remained attached to my neck.
I should be in tip-top shape by the time I hit the show floor in King’s Landing with the Adventure Cyclist mob. Hey, those aren’t bags under my eyes, pal. Those are panniers.
The boys were climbing today in the Vuelta — oy, were they ever — so I felt obliged to do a little vertical my own bad self once we wrapped the coverage at Live Update Guy.
Looking southeast toward Tramway.
There’s a nice, steep grind not far from El Rancho Pendejo, the 2-mile climb to the La Luz trailhead, but after running for an hour on Tuesday I thought that might be asking a bit much of the old legs. So instead I hung a right and did the 1-mile climb to the La Cueva campground.
The surface is what we Phlegmish types call “heavy,” the chips in the chipseal being slightly boulderish, so I was glad to be riding the Soma Double Cross with its Little Big Bens. Quite a view from up there, but the helicopters were something of a nuisance, harshing my mellow and distracting me from the view.
Turns out it wasn’t just flyboys logging flight time. Some poor dude turned up dead in the Sandias, and I’m guessing they were part of the search. Me, I got to come down the easy way.
I attacked myself without mercy in today’s stage of the Vuelta del Viejo and rode into the red leader’s jersey.
In an astounding bit of treachery intended to bamboozle my enemies, I actually wore the jersey throughout the stage, but as chief commissaire I chose to look the other way, as did nearly everyone else who saw me.
Naturally, both A and B samples came back positive for bacon, which is good for 10 bonus seconds, eggs over easy and a side of home fries.
Mad Blog Media 