Category: allergies

Another Saga in the books

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments
Take it to the bridge.

The Ride Your Own Damn Bike Festival® continues. The Soma Saga (disc-brake model) has been added to the tally, which to date includes the Jones, Sam Hillborne, Voodoo Nakisi, Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, Nobilette, Bianchi Zurigo and Soma Double Cross.

Yesterday we rolled down to the bosque and back via the usual off-street paths — Paseo del Norte, North Diversion Channel, and Paseo de las Montañas, with a stretch of Indian School Road for the fear factor.

It was a gorgeous day, with little wind, and I was able to peel off the arm and knee warmers when I got down to the bosque (it’s about a thousand-foot drop from El Rancho Pendejo). Gotta get that geek-tan going, don’t you know.

For symmetry’s sake I should ride the Soma Saga canti’ bike next. But it has a squeal in the front pads that I need to address, and I feel like riding a bit of actual trail, so it’s Steelman Eurocross No. 1 today.

Meanwhile, props to the guv for vetoing HB 192, a safe-passing measure altered at the final hour by a poison-pill amendment that would have forced cyclists “to the extent practicable” to leave New Mexico’s roads when separate bike lanes/paths are available.

Sayeth the guv: “Although it is vital that we make our roads safer for cyclists, the ambiguous provision added to HB 192 does not give sufficiently clear guidance to cyclists and law enforcement with respect to what conduct by cyclists is or is not permitted.” She urges the Roundhouse to have another go at it. So do I.

Props to Khal for passing the word along.

Cool cats

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Mister Jones and me, stumbling through the barrio.

Oof. The allergies are fierce. I slept OK last night, thanks to a hit of Benadryl, but the previous night I woke up at midnight with my nose running like a Democrat after the White House.

Snorting and snuffling like a hog hunting truffles, I had to relocate to the spare bedroom so that Herself could bag the Z’s she needs to help Darth Goodhair run the Energy Department.

And I felt like hammered shit most of yesterday, so none of the ol’ bikey ridey for Your Humble Narrator. In fact, I suspect that a two-hour trail ride through the junipers may have triggered the late-night snotlocker meltdown.

But we were talking about cool cats, and so here’s the tale of a Scottish cycle tourist who made a new friend on his two-wheeled trip around the world.

I suggested a global bicycle tour to Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) and his adjutant, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and they told me I could fuck right off with that shit and bring them something to delicious to eat at once, if not sooner.

Also, here’s Marc Maron’s interview with T Bone Burnett, a very cool cat indeed who’s taking a hiatus from production to release his first album in 11 years, “The Invisible Light.”

Burnett’s chat with Maron covers a lot of waterfront, from the Beat Generation to Jackson Pollock, Jimmie Rodgers to “True Detective.” Did you know that Robert Johnson’s real name was Dusty Spencer? Or that the blues came from Texas? That mariachi music comes from the French?

Me neither. Maybe it’s the Benadryl talking. Just what I need, another voice in my head.

April drool

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments
Yesterday’s air-quality report from the City of Albuquerque.

I lay low for April Fool’s Day. It’s gotten to be kind of like the St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve of comedy — not for serious funnymen. Funnypersons? Persons of funny?

My favorite April Fool’s gag may be the time the Gazette caught the Greeley Tribune napping. It was in the late Seventies, and some wisenheimers on staff faked up a photo of an El Paso County pickle farmer inspecting a bumper crop (reporter Don Branning in a planter’s hat, examining a plump dill tied to a tree across the street from the newspaper).

We ran it on the Metro front, then put it on The Associated Press wire just for giggles. To our astonishment, the Tribune picked it up and ran the shot on its Farm page despite the photo credit, which read something like, “GT photo by Aprylle Foole.”

The desk jockey who made that call clearly was not a local boy with shitcaked bootheels. The Tribune is in Weld County, one of the richest agricultural counties east of the Rockies, the state’s top producer of grain, sugar beets and cattle.

Not pickles, though. El Paso County had all the pickle farms in Colorado.

Here in New Mexico the ash and juniper are providing all the comedy, if your idea of a good laugh involves watching some poor sod’s nose run like an irrigation ditch with a busted headgate.

I pretended to be a runner yesterday afternoon and came home with an enraged snotlocker, a condition that persists this morning. Snot funny, man.

Rohloff! Gesundheit!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, off the hook and back on the trail.

I peeled my snout from the grindstone in order to take a short ride yesterday, and I’m glad I did, because the wind cranked up to 11 last night and it’s still there today.

Also, and too, rain. Which is nice. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go ride in it.

Unzip over to Voler to join the team! Use the Secret Code (OLDGUYS15) to get 15% off your purchase. And no, goddamnit, for the last time, it does not come with fries!

Especially since I finally succumbed to the siren song of Non-Drowsy Claritin-D 12 Hour. God damn. I think I lost five pounds blowing my nose this morning. Must be all that grindstone dust.

Anyway, I’d hauled the Co-Motion Divide down to Two Wheel Drive a while back over a leaky Rohloff hub and thought I’d give ’er a whirl now that alles ist besser. It’s far too nice a bike for me but I rode it anyway. You can’t stop me!

It needs some more love — better tires, and a little hammer time for the rear Avid BB7 caliper, which insists on dragging its fixed pad.

A smart fella would go to TRP Spyres. But as you know, I will never be smart.

Bricks and blankets

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla performs her cover of “All Along the Watchtower.”

My supervisors noted in a recent performance review that I hadn’t posted any cat pix since January 31.

The Turk has blue eyes, but you hardly ever get to see ’em.

This obviously could not stand, man. So I got busy with the Sony RX100 III.

I think that pay raise I’d been counting on is right out, though.

However, the temps are coming up right smart, and if that continues, I’m out of here for a ride of some sort.

I know that this is a finger in the eye for those of you sentenced to the upper deck of the Benighted States, but at least all that cold and snow is probably tamping down the pollen.

Not so much here, especially with the wind stirring things up. Sunscreen on the outside, Claritin-D on the inside.

Phaw. Schtonk. Hyeeeenk. Snurk. Ptui.