Category: Bad news

Fire and flood

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

Manitou Springs got the mortal shit pounded out of it last night. The Colorado Springs Independent has pix and a short report; The Gazette has the same plus video.

It’s just the latest in a series of beatings the town has had to take over the past couple of years, beginning with the Waldo Canyon fire, which scoured the surrounding area of vegetation, turned Williams Canyon and Highway 24 into a freeway for water and ash-laden mud, and made an open sewer of Manitou, particularly Canon Avenue.

The storm was bad enough here, with 25-mph winds lashing heavy rain at us sidearm style. The good news is, I caught a trout in the front yard. Didn’t even need to unlimber the old rod and reel. I threw him a Bible, and when he turned to Genesis to see when Noah was due, I shot him with the Mini-Thirty.

HTFU?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 42 Comments
uisce beatha
There stands the glass. …

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?

Roll another one

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments

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.

Welcome to the working week

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

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.

Smoke gets in your eyes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Weirdcliffe sunset
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.