Up in the air, Senior Birdmen

January 30, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Big Bill McBeef swept me up once again this morning and dragged me out to the Air Force Academy for a chilly group ride, and this time I remembered to bring some ID, more’s the pity. The AFA is a hilly place that once hosted the world road championships, and as a consequence I spent more time dangling off the back than a dingleberry on a fat dog’s ass.

Oh, the shame. I had a 39×25 … and I used it. Me, the guy who climbed everything in the 19 back in the day, a day that like me is very far back indeed in 2010.

Happily, I was able to catch my breath at the periodic ID checks. There were three of them — one at the south gate, another just short of the B-52, and a third on the backstretch by the visitors’ center — so I had a couple moments to suck it up and pretend that I wasn’t really about to blow partially digested oatmeal all over my new Ritchey stem and fork.

And despite my suffering, it really was a good thing that I’d remembered my driver’s license. Several of our number had not, and one of them was caught between checkpoints, with no way to get past the guards to his car.

For all I know Bob may still be there, oscillating back and forth between coppers like a tennis ball between the Williams sisters. No wonder the guy climbs like a meth-addled monkey.

Wake me when it’s over

January 4, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady

Miss Mia Sopaipilla employs a comforter against the cold.

We’ve barely dipped a toe into winter and already I’m sniveling about the cold. It’s gonna be a long January for you people if this keeps up.

We have one semi-pleasant day coming up tomorrow, according to the fine folks at NOAA, and then boom! Back in the deep freeze. Meanwhile, McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills should be looking at temps in the mid-60s for the next few days. I am not there for some reason. I will never be smart.

I should’ve ridden today, but I couldn’t face another day of fenders and neoprene so early in the new year, so I went for a run in Palmer Park instead. Tights, two long-sleeved shirts, tuque, gloves and a sharp eye peeled for icy bits, of which there were many. Tire tracks, too, some imprinted deeply in the damp clay. Bad mountain bikers. Bad, bad, bad.

The rest of my day was devoted to keeping an eye on the VeloNews.com beta site, which remains very much a work in progress. Without warning, the old site vanished overnight like the proverbial Cheshire cat, taking the readers’ forums along with it and leaving no grins behind.

Meanwhile, as the mag’ staff cranks on the March edition, our lone wire service, Agence France Presse, sent us fuck-all between 10:16 a.m. local time on New Year’s Day and 7:46 a.m. this morning, when we got two stories, both on the same topic — the Team Sky launch in London — one in French and the other in English. No pictures. Zut alors.

Happily, our Euro’ whiz Andrew Hood was on the job, providing wisdom in U-nited States American, and ace shooter Casey B. Gibson came through with some pics courtesy of a colleague who was at the Sky shindig while the Frogs were busy letting the saucers stack up at some café or surrendering to someone. Welcome to the New Wheeled Ordure, January Edition.

No wonder Miss Mia Sopaipilla feels like staying in bed all day. Sometimes I do, too.

Cold comfort indeed

December 9, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Turkenstein the Large is all puffed up with noplace to go (because I won't let him out). — Turkenstein the Large is all puffed up with nowhere to go (because I won't release him into the frigid wasteland that is Bibleburg).

Eleven below zero. Jesus H. Christ. I just saw an entire squadron of witches’ tits flying south for the winter with ground support from a battalion of nutless brass monkeys.

Posting has been spotty around here lately ’cause it’s the monthly deadline crunch — cartoon for VeloNews on Friday, double-posting on the old and new VeloNews.com sites on Sunday and Monday, ’toon, column and the Grapevine roundup for Bicycle Retailer due by close of business today. Why, it’s almost like having a real job, except for the lack of health insurance, paid vacation, 401(k), and employer-supplied office, phone, Internet service, computer, software and technical support.

At least I don’t have to drive anywhere, wear a tie, piss away the day in pointless meetings. I’m parked at the keyboard in sweatpants and a Mount Taylor Winter Quadrathlon T-shirt from 1990, when I was young and fit and had hair in places other than my shoulders, ears and nose.

I had a real job then, too. My last one, I hope. Boy, did that ever suck. If I were still doing that bullshit I’d have had to edit something about Caribou Barbie instead of drawing a Mud Stud cartoon.

SRAMta Claus comes early to Bibleburg

December 5, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

SRAM's Randy Neufeld (right) brought an early Christmas present to Bibleburg's bicycle advocates.

Bibleburg’s bicycle advocacy got a much-needed assist on Friday as SRAM Cycling Fund director Randy Neufeld presented a $10,000 grant to Bicycle Colorado Springs at the Experience Colorado Springs offices.

The grip-and-grin drew a full house, with representatives from Medicine Wheel, Criterium Bicycles, Left Side Spin, Ground Up Designs, Bicycle Village, Angletech, Colorado Springs Cycling Club, the Trails and Open Space Program and the Bibleburg Metro Rides program. No representatives of the local media were on hand, alas, barring Your Humble Narrator.

Also in the house was Jim Sayer, executive director of the 45,000-member Adventure Cycling Association, who gave a brief rundown on his organization and its mission — “to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle.” Jim made a similar presentation later in the evening at Old Town Bike Shop, a show I had to skip as Herself required care and feeding.

Chapeau to longtime local velo-advocate Al Brody, Chamber of Commerce chief Terry Sullivan and everyone else who made this happen.

Down and all the way out

December 1, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

A Farm Service Administration photo of families camped roadside during the Great Depression, taken from the Library of Congress\' American Memory collection. — A Farm Service Administration photo of families camped roadside during the Great Depression, from the Library of Congress' American Memory collection.

Here’s a sad story for you, straight out of “The Grapes of Wrath”: A homeless bricklayer profiled in the Bibleburg Gaslight on Monday was found dead outside his tipi on Thanksgiving morning — four days before the story ran.

Ray Medina, 53, told reporter Carlyn Ray Mitchell that he came to Bibleburg three years ago from Function Junction, hunting construction work at Fort Cartoon. Four months ago he moved to the banks of Fountain Creek, living first in a tent, then in the tipi. He gave the tent to a camp mate once the tipi was finished.

“None of us really want to be here,” Medina told the G. “I’m hoping (construction) will pick back up, hopefully in the spring.”

Added officer Dan McCormack with the Bibleburg Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team: “He was convinced he was going to get a job and get off the street. Obviously his plans weren’t working out for him.”

Lots of plans are failing to reach fruition these days. Paul Krugman writes that there are six times as many of us looking for work as there are job openings, “and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s.”

Here in Bibleburg, the unemployment rate is hovering at 7.5 percent, a slight improvement over the first half of the year attributed not to an improving economic climate, but to discouraged job-seekers dropping out of the labor market because there is no work.

So many tipis; so little hope.