Outrage repeated ad infinitum is like an overlong intervals session. At some point you come up off the saddle and then sit right back down.
I’m not even in the saddle for the news about Stuart O’Grady and the rest of them from 1998. I’m back at the house, with the bike on its hook, and looking longingly at that unopened bottle of Bushmills in the kitchen. My performance-enhancer of choice for longer than I care to remember, even if I could.
So, instead of me struggling to gin up an anemic burstlet of apoplexy, how ’bout we take a trip down memory lane to August 2007, when “Friday’s Foaming Rant” still bestrode the narrow cycling world like a Colossus?
Tattoo shops? Sure. Massage parlors? No prob’. Adult bookstores? You betcha. Predatory lenders, pawn shops and payday-loan outfits? Why not? Grog shops, alehouses and “smoker friendly” death merchants? Damn’ straight.
But retail marijuana sales?Hell, no. Are you nuts? That’s a jobs-killer, man!
No, sir. What we need here is a downtown baseball stadium, an Olympic museum, a new Air Force Academy visitors center, a shitload more Kum & Gos and. …
Uh, Mr. Mayor? Can we have a hit off whatever it is that you’re smoking? We’re gonna need an appetite to choke down all this pie in the sky you and your developer pals are pushing on us.
It’s Monday. Know how I can tell? There’s a plumber in the driveway and my Visa card just spontaneously combusted.
One of the few downsides to living in an old neighborhood like ours is that the plumbing is even older than the residents. I think Hammurabi laid the original pipe, and the Romans handled most of the maintenance (But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?) until the Vandals came along and ensured that the pumps would no longer work by appropriating the handles.
Anyway, the lone bathtub at The House Back East™ has become something of a wading pond, and a plumber is over there panning for gold as we speak. I expect he’ll find some.
Sunset outside Weirdcliffe. Photo: Hal Walter | Hardscrabble Times
Judas Priest. More fires. Not in the immediate vicinity this time, but we’re sure as shit getting the smoke.
This is worse than anything the Black Forest fire threw at us (well, down here by Chez Dog, anyway). The Gazette says this cloud is either from a fire near Wolf Creek Pass or another going on in Jefferson County. Others are burning in Huerfano County near the Spanish Peaks, Cañon City, up by Rangely … gonna be a long, hot summer, folks.
The prevailing wisdom at the moment is that these are lightning-caused. So I’d like to know whether the NSA has been monitoring God’s communications, and when we can expect an arrest.
It was chores, chores, chores today — a full shift’s worth of my usual stock in trade, which is to say bicycles and bullshit — and I didn’t pay much attention to the Black Forest fire until it was about time for Herself to motor on home from her gig in Denver.
And then, holy shit! The friggin’ thing is spreading like a head cold at Interbike and more evacuations are ordered, this time in Bibleburg proper.
“Traffic nightmare in northern Colorado Springs,” quoth the Gazette.
“I-25 is completely congested. Avoid traveling if not necessary,” added the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.
El clusterfucko, bucko, as we say south of the border (Monument Hill). I’m thinking she’s gonna be idling at Baptist Road for the better part of quite some time. And you know how those Baptists are.
So I propose going long — E-470 to Interstate 70 to Highway 24 and home. Or maybe C-470 to Highway 285, then jink down through Pine and Deckers to Woodland Park and thence back to the ranch.
Nope. She blazes right on down the Big I to home and hearth — and with hardly a bobble, too. Go figure.
Ride the Rockies is not so fortunate. Thanks to the Royal Gorge fire, they’re getting rerouted through our old stomping grounds of Weirdcliffe, which adds some 33 miles to their ride from Salida to Cañon City, many of them uphill.
I know all of them well, having ridden them as a Crusty County resident and as an entrant in several editions of the late, lamented Hardscrabble Century, which tackled Weirdcliffe from the other direction, from Florence through Wetmore and up Hardscrabble Cañon.
The riding is easier the way the Rockies types are doing it, once they’re past Bear Basin Ranch. From there, it’s mostly downhill to Graybar City. Whip a power salute on H. Rap Brown as you roll past Supermax Florence, kiddos.
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