OK, so it’s not exactly a Monty Python reunion, but Charles Pelkey and I are getting the band back together to provide live updates of the Tour de France starting Saturday.
Yes, that’s right, Live Update Guy rides again! There will be snark, limericks, cheap shots, haiku, bad manners, references to obscure skits from The Firesign Theatre and the aforementioned Pythons, ad hominem attacks that fall just millimeters short of actual libel, cameo appearances by The Fat Guy singing his hit single “It’s Over,” heavily moderated comments from our heavily medicated audience, and occasional bits about the actual bike race.
Counselor Pelkey will get the ball rolling at stupid-thirty every morning, and I’ll pop around 7-ish to get things wrong, make fart noises and otherwise contribute to lowering his intellectual property values.
If they allow you computer access in your particular state-run institution of license-plate manufacture and/or Edison-medicine application, surf on by and say howdy. How bad could it be?
Georgia Gould attacks a fast section of multipurpose path on the north side of Pulpit Rock.
During a break in my paying chores yesterday I rolled over to Pulpit Rock to watch a bit of the women’s cross-country race at the US Cup. Man, was that ever one thin crowd, and I ain’t talking body weight here. I have more voices in my own head, f’chrissakes.
The men’s race I watched via streaming video, and while there seemed to be a few more spectators for that contest, the crowd was still pretty sparse, about what one might expect for a Marilyn Manson concert in St. Peter’s Square or a meeting of the Louie Gohmert Fan Club.
Not being a big mountain-bike guy — I quit racing in the mid-1990s after a guy deliberately crashed me at Rage in the Sage, and haven’t covered a race since the final Cactus Cup in Arizona — I have no idea whether this is SOP for the discipline these days or some class of an aberration specific to Bibleburg, which has been hosting the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb all week long.
Any mountain bikers out there in the audience? Is this the way things are now? Or are we here in Bibleburg just “special,” as we are in so many other regrettable ways?
Pulpit Rock is one of the lesser-known venues for riding the old bikey bike in Bibleburg. That will change, starting tomorrow.
I almost forgot — we actually have us a spot of bicycle racing taking place in scenic metropolitan Bibleburg this weekend.
Round four of the US Cup Pro Series presented by the Sho-Air Cycling Group takes place Saturday and Sunday at Pulpit Rock Park, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from Chez Dog.
I popped round today to say howdy to my man Andy Bohlmann, who is lending a hand with the heavy lifting as the circus comes to town, and I’m going to strive mightily to spectate a bit between chores (yes, I have deadlines and Herself is road-tripping again, leaving me in charge of quarters).
If you’re in town, swing on by. And if you’re not, you can watch via streaming video.
The Old Guy got a radical kit makeover for the Giro.
You ever get the feeling someone hit the fast-forward button on your own personal reality? Lately it seems as though I’m stuck in a high-speed loop — wake up, snag a cup of mud, plunk down before the iMac, and then suddenly it’s bedtime. Repeat ad infinitum.
For instance, how the hell did it get to be June already? The Giro just wrapped, and the Dauphiné starts next Sunday? What is it, racing season or something? Next you’ll be telling me the Tour’s just around the corner.
Consigliere Pelkey and I had a high ol’ time calling the Giro over at Live Update Guy. He solved the never-ending software problem by getting a colleague to build him some, and it worked just swell. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but you don’t need many of those for the sort of one-ring circus we run.
That tent folded this morning. Tomorrow I have an Adventure Cyclist deadline, and Thursday my Bicycle Retailer contributions are due. In between we have Herself’s mother and sisters in residence at The House Back East™, so, yes, my dance card is all filled up for a while yet, thanks for asking.
I’m hoping the elves of Cupertino have been busy stomping bugs in Mavericks, because the old iBeast has been acting out now and then since I pulled the trigger on the OS upgrade (our fourth, after Herself’s MacBook Pro, the Mac Mini we use to stream video, and my MacBook Air). Those newish machines are all ticking along without incident, but with the 2009 iToad I’ve seen hard crashes that can’t be force-quit away; mystery reboots not ordered by Your Humble Narrator; and other oddball ailments that have me spending way too much off-the-clock time discussing diagnoses with kindly old Doc Google.
Right this moment all is well, but boy, does Mavericks ever use a metric shit-ton of whatever memory you have installed. I have 12 GB in the iThing, and more than once over the weekend Activity Monitor reported that 11 of it was in use.
Meanwhile, the 2006 MacBook limps along just fine with Snow Leopard and 2 GB of memory. Go figure.
The Bianchi Zurigo Disc, coming soon to a Pikes Peak Greenway Trail near you.
Colorado being Colorado, we’re cycling through a wide range of weather possibilities this week — cloudy, sunny, chance of thunderstorms, plague of toads; you get the idea.
Speaking of cycling, there’s a new bike in the garage. It’s a Bianchi Zurigo Disc, and it’s slotted in right behind the Salsa Vaya for review in Adventure Cyclist.
This is not your granddaddy’s touring bike. In fact, if you were to mistake it for a cyclo-cross bike, you’d be forgiven, in part because it’s named in honor of the 1967 ‘cross worlds in Zurich (won by Renato Longo of Italy) and in part because, well … because it’s a bloody cyclo-cross bike.
The $1,799 Zurigo has an aluminum frame and carbon fork, knobby Kenda Kwicker 700×32 tires, and a SRAM Apex 10-speed drivetrain (48/34 up front, 11-32 in back). But it also has eyelets for mounting fenders and a rear rack, so a quick-and-dirty, lightly loaded tour is not out of the question.
I hope to get one of those in here directly, if weather and work permit. We have something of a full plate here in Dog Country from May through July, and a little road trip would do wonders to flush out the headgear.
