Bringing the crazy

June 26, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Since the Communists are mostly historical curiosities, maybe it's time to register The Crazy. Especially if they own firearms.

As a resident of Bibleburg, I am most definitely living in a glass house when it comes to throwing my little stones. We are zoned for dingbattery here on a commercial scale, welcoming the likes of Industrial Christianity, Doug Bruce and Michelle Malkin with open arms, both of them on the right side of our sociopolitical body.

But no matter how powerful is the champ, there will always be contenders. Like Rutherford County, Tenn., where District 6 House candidate Lou Ann Zelenik (The Crazy) cites Martin Luther King in her opposition to a Muslim community center. (Full disclosure: I am related by marriage to more than a few residents of Tennessee, and while they are all batshit crazy, at least the majority of them are Democrats.)

Then there’s North Carolina, where Rep. Sue Myrick (The Crazy) says Hezbollah is partnering with Mexican drug cartels and may be planning “Israel-like car bombings of Mexican/USA border personnel or National Guard units.”

Leave us not forget Texas, where The Crazies want to reinstate sodomy laws, end the state lottery and federal sponsorship of pre-kindergarten schools, require that evolution and global warming “be taught as challengeable scientific theory,” and demand that Congress get US out of the UN — an old John Birch Society maxim once seen on billboards in these parts — and evict the global body from our shores.

The Birchers once opposed the fluoridation of the nation’s water supplies as a Communist plot to poison America. Maybe it’s time to start spiking the fluoride with a little lithium.

Earth, wind and fire

June 18, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

You can plant these on my grave if Palmer Park ever succeeds in killing me.

Another scorcher today, with plenty of wind and a big-ass fire to the southwest of us (my man Hal Walter at Hardscrabble Times has a pic).

With 90s in the forecast and a long shift in the Velo-barrel tomorrow I decided to get out early for another of my patented weirdo cyclo-cross rides, a two-hour blend of asphalt, concrete, pulverized-granite paths and moderately technical, powdery single-track that took me into Palmer Park, where the cacti and Indian paintbrush are in bloom.

I love riding a ’cross bike in this park, especially when it’s windy, because you can hide from the breeze in its miniature canyons, where the trails are well screened with foliage this time of year. This is both a blessing and a curse, as it dramatically shortens your line of sight, and the park is popular with a wide variety of outdoorsy types — runners, joggers, dog-walkers, equestrians, bird-watchers, stoners, boners and mountain bikers.

So I’m not exactly rippin’ the trails on my Nobilette, is what I’m saying. Life is already plenty short enough, and if I merely get laid up instead of laid out, well, free-lancers don’t get sick days. “A day of no work is a day of no eating,” said Huai-hai. And as you know, I dearly love to eat.

Still, I did manage to clean one section of trail that has had stymied me for the better part of quite some time. And I almost got a second bit, a rock garden that has defied me for as long as I can remember. I had it dicked but spazzed out just at the end, nearly T-boning a trailside tree.

“Damn it!” I barked, just as a couple grinning mountain bikers appeared, headed in the opposite direction. “Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to kill myself here,” I explained, and off they went, effortlessly navigating the rockpile that tried to feed me to a tree.

Alberi rosa

May 14, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

I managed to find a little pink on my ride yesterday, in the late Ed Burke’s old neighborhood next to Palmer Park.

It was a typical May day in Bibleburg — start the ride wearing two long-sleeve jerseys, leg warmers, wool socks, long-fingered gloves and a tuque, finish wishing you’d left all that winter crap at home. And this was a 90-minute ride, mind you. More of the same today, with temps in the mid-40s, 76 percent humidity and more rain in the forecast.

Meanwhile, big props to Aussie Matt Lloyd (Omega Pharma-Lotto), who soloed to victory in today’s Giro stage after shelling break-mate Rubens Bertogliati (Androni). And chapeau to Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Transitions), who scored the red jersey.

I lent a hand to the live coverage over at VeloNews.com today, but the real heavy lifting commences tomorrow. After a full shift in the VeloBarrel on Saturday it’s full-tilt boogie starting Sunday, when we have the Amgen Tour of California and the Giro running concurrently. I won’t have a day off until a week from Tuesday. Good times.

It was 20 years ago today

May 12, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

Sgt. Pepper and Lovely Rita on May 12, 1990.

How time flies — Herself and I submitted to the bondage of holy macaroni on May 12, 1990, in Hyde State Park just outside Santa Fe.

As you can see, unlike a certain baldheaded fat bastard of your acquaintance, the former Shannon B Gentry has changed not a whit in the intervening two decades. She remains as beautiful as the day we met, and her relentlessly sunny disposition continues to shine straight through the foul thunderheads of my perpetual pissiness. God help me if she ever gets her eyesight back. I had a bad moment there when she underwent Lasix, but it must not have taken, ’cause she’s still hanging around. Maybe it’s the life insurance she’s after.

Anyway, we’re going to treat ourselves to a nice feed and a little of the Frog bubbly, shop for a little jewelry (she says I need a new nose ring) and hope it doesn’t snow. Come to think of it, the weather went south at the wedding, too — we nearly got blown right the hell out of Hyde State Park, wedding party, sky pilot, harpist and all.

Y’think God was/is trying to tell her something?

Meanwhile, Count Vino’ got staked in today’s team time trial. His fifth man croaked big time in the finale and Cap’n Blood had to keep turning around to check on his whereabouts, gesticulating and banging on his bars in frustration. Liquigas won the stage, putting Vincenzo Nibali into the maglia rosa, and Vino’ slipped to sixth at 33 seconds. The count will be muttering to himself in Kazakh this night as he sleeps in a footlocker lined with a bit of the auld home sod.

Inherit the wind

April 24, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Looks like the lads at La Vuelta de Bisbee enjoyed some of the same gentle spring weather that afflicted me and my fellow cyclo-tourists during the Tombstone-to-Bisbee leg of the Adventure Cycling Association’s Southern Arizona Road Adventure last month (read all about it in the July issue of Adventure Cycling, assuming management does not regain its collective mental health).

We’ve been dealing with similar weather here in Bibleburg. It’s playing hell with my sinuses, and it doesn’t take an attractive photo, so you’ll just have to settle for an old-fashioned, text-based, filth-laden, standard-issue O’Grady description, which is to say that it mostly blows, and not in a good way, either.

Happily, Saturday is one of my days in the VeloNews.com barrel, so I didn’t feel obligated to force myself out for a few hours of sandblasted cycling. Tomorrow is another — Liège-Bastogne-Liège is on deck, and so am I — but it’s only a half day of work, the weather is supposed to improve and I’m going to get out for some exercise if it harelips ever’body on Bear Creek.