Category: Bad luck

Tempting fate

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Uh oh. …

To a journalist, one day looks pretty much the same as any other.

There’s someone getting knifed, and someone doing the knifing, and someone writing up a short for the Metro page off the police report. Possibly you.

You work odd hours — say, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., or maybe 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., or even 4 p.m. to whenever the press runs if you’ve gotten tired of writing up shorts for the Metro page and moved over to the copy desk, where almost nobody wears a tie and everybody drinks lunch. Your days off will be something like Tuesday and Wednesday, and odds are that you will clock in for at least 60 percent of the major holidays.

“So, it’s Friday, huh? Who gives a shit? I need art for the Metro page. Did the cops give up a mugshot of our slasher?”

Oh, wait: It’s not just Friday. It’s Friday the 13th.

Nobody really knows how Friday the 13th came to give everyone the willies bad enough to justify a dozen slasher flicks that grossed $908.4 mil’ at the box office. Wikipedia says maybe Loki being the 13th guest at a gods’ dinner party that went sideways had something to do with it, but that sounds like Martha Stewart pitching a project to Marvel Studios, and what great good fortune for the cinematic arts it would be if all the superhero franchises went to hell with Jason and stayed there.

Anyway, I decided to try my luck today and went for a trail run (13-minute miles), followed that up with three sets of 13 reps of each of the inconsequential resistance exercises I perform irregularly, and finally took a 13-minute shower. And what happened?

Herself and a visiting pal came back from a day of estate sales and lunch with three fat slices of cake — carrot, coffee, and chocolate cherry — to chase the remains of the pozole verde I made yesterday.

Looks like I’m forked.

The dog days of summer, part 2

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Doggone it. …

From Wikipedia:

The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the “Dog Star”), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. (emphasis mine)

So, there I was, JRA, when I heard the squelchy sound of my Nobilette’s front tire going flat despite its sealant-filled inner tube.

I was en route to the meetup for the twice-weekly Geezer Ride, so I pulled over, drew my phone, and texted my fellow graybeards to advise that I had had a mechanical and was returning to base. I had only the one spare tube, Herself was at work, and it had been too hot for one of those long walks home in Sidis from a previous millennium.

When I got back to El Rancho Pendejo and opened the garage door I was reminded that I had all these other bikes hanging around. Thinking I could still catch up with the lads if I took a quick, dirty shortcut over to High Desert via the Embudito trailhead, I grabbed a Steelman Eurocross and did exactly that.

We rode around and about for a while, solving the knotty problems of the world, and as I had been denied some of the early miles I decided to tack on a few at the end, riding two of the brothers home and then picking up Trail 365 at Rebonito Road for a little more dirty fun.

Hanging a 90-degree left onto the bridge at the Piedra Lisa Canyon trailhead south of Candelaria I felt the front tire try to squirm out from under its rim. Judas Priest! Another front flat? Indeed.

Happily, I had thought to reload the saddlebag with a fresh spare tube, so I quickly returned the Steelman to working order and rode home.

Back at the ranch, I took the opportunity to give the Nobilette a fresh goopy tube, which went smoove like butta. But when I tried to do likewise with the Steelman the freshly installed tube refused to inflate for some reason.

Defective tube, maybe? Or pump head clogged with old sealant? I disassembled that, gave it a cursory cleaning (which means cursing while cleaning it), put it back together, and had another go. Still bupkis.

“I should ring up the Fed, tell them I’ve found a solution to their inflation problem,” I muttered. Then I grabbed another tube, one not installed in a tire, and tried pumping it up to see if anything happened.

And something did. The fucking thing exploded, launching huge gobs of yellowish sealant throughout the living room. Because of course I work on my bikes in the living room. That’s where the air conditioning is.

You will recall “The Exorcist?” This made Regan’s eruptions look like a sneeze that missed the Kleenex.

I gave the living room a very cursory cleaning, replaced the Steelman on its hook sans a reloaded front wheel (the pump head apparently perished in the explosion), and — not for the first time — considered taking up bowling.