Roll on buddy

January 31, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

The back deck this evening around dark-thirty.

Jeebus. One of those days, to be sure.

I got up this morning, went straight to work, and with time outs to prepare two meals I’ve pretty much been at it ever since. If I’m so busy, how come I ain’t rich?

We got a nice little snowfall today. I moved some of it around this morning and should’ve moved some more this afternoon. What the hell, it will still be there tomorrow, and it will have company. Good for the lawn, what there is of it, and good for the trees. Good for me, too, as we have no gym membership and pushing the mouse around hardly qualifies as strength conditioning.

Speaking of wintertime activities, remember: Cyclo-cross worlds kick off tomorrow with the junior men and elite women. If you’re so inclined (and so equipped), you can stream the action at Universal Sports. Other possibilities include the various feeds at Cyclingfans.com and the UCI. Geo-restricted options may be workable using Hola — I downloaded a Firefox extension for same to the old MacBook and it seems to pull in the UCI feed just fine.

And don’t let me catch any of yis rooting for Marianne Vos. Lovely person, tremendous athlete, stout competitor, and to hell with all that. It’s time to be a shameless homer, goddamnit. Katie Compton über alles!

The mark of Z … denek?

January 30, 2014January 30, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

My idea of a really good time at the UCI Cyclo-Cross World Championships would not involve having Zdenek Stybar, tanned, rested and ready, lining up next to me.

If I’m racing, that is. If I’m watching, I’m all for it.

“I’m in good condition,” Stybar said via a press release from his Omega Pharma-Quick Step team. “I came from important training sessions in Mallorca and I’m ready to compete. I’m really looking forward to the race.”

The two-time champ is a road toad these days, but Stybar has turned up at a couple ’crosses this year, and between him and the youngster Lars van der Haar (Rabobank) they do keep the old guys huffin’ and puffin’.

My man Dan Seaton has a preview of this weekend’s big doin’s in Hoogerheide over to the VeloPlace. Expect “heavy” conditions, which is Belgian for “lovely day.” I wouldn’t bet the ranch against Sven Nys in the men’s race, and I’m rooting for homegirl Katie Compton in the women’s. Fuck a bunch of journalistic objectivity anyway.

If you have Universal Sports as part of your cable package, you can catch the races live online — juniors, women, under-23s and men. Otherwise you’ll have to fly the Jolly Roger like me, arrr.

Time Machine Tuesday

January 21, 2014January 21, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 35 Comments

Over at Teh Twitters yesterday a gent praised a non-rant I’d written way back in 2002, saying it was one of his “all-time favorites.”

I had forgotten about it — these things vanish from my consciousness about a nanosecond after I hit the “Send” button — so I looked it up, and y’know, I kinda liked it myself. Even an old blind dog finds a tasty Milk-Bone now and then, it seems.

Written when we still lived in Weirdcliffe, it was prompted by a reader’s complaint (one of many, actually) that my stuff was too negative, which it can be. That my VeloNews.com column was christened “Friday’s Foaming Rant” didn’t help. A label like that tends to set a certain tone, and when I wandered off the Rantinista reservation other critics would jeer, “Call that a rant?” You can’t win.

But if two of us liked it, it must not be entirely lame, so here it is, reprinted in all its faded glory for your entertainment.

Continue reading “Time Machine Tuesday” →

A great day to be a Hobo

January 19, 2014January 19, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

The Bootleg Hobo and I visited one of my former neighborhoods south of downtown today. Turns out my former $75-per-month squat on Mill Street is for sale.

It’s easy to forget how many people ride bikes in this town until we get a sunny, 60-something day in January.

I slipped out for a 90-minute ride at midday and Holy Mary, Mother of God, you’d have thought we’d hit Peak Oil and left it bleeding out at roadside. Everybody and his grandma, from itty-bitty kids to grizzled graybeards, was gaily flogging a two-wheeler from Hither to Yon, no doubt hoping to burn a few calories before ingesting many, many more during the Broncos-Patriots feetsball game.

Despite a short stint as an assistant sports editor at The New Mexican in Santa Fe, I am not a fan of the feetsball, which is the polite way of saying that I don’t give two runny shits about a multibillion-dollar industry that temporarily shifts Americans’ homicidal instincts away from actual warfare and toward commerce by encouraging young gladiators to mutate their bodies with drugs and scramble their brains with high-speed collisions.

Cycling has its own issues in that regard, of course. But not the way I do it.

And at least you can watch televised pro cycling for more than 15 commercial-free seconds at a stretch (on a pirated Belgian feed, anyway). That’s how I spent my morning before throwing a leg over the Bootleg Hobo’s top tube. Plus you can be pretty certain the Organization is selling (and the spectators drinking) a higher-quality beer.

Park place

January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

From the annuals of VeloNews, circa 1998.

Chapeau to all the folks who are taking stars-and-stripes jerseys home from Boulder, especially Bibleburg’s very own Katie Compton, who racked up title No. 10 at Valmont Bike Park on Sunday.

Our politically and spiritually unhinged community is home to some top ’cross talent, for reasons that elude me. There’s six-time U.S. ’cross champ Alison Dunlap, who used to live right here in the Patty Jewett Wild Democrat Preserve and can often be seen towing a trailer full of offspring at a pace that makes grown men weep.

And of course there’s Ms. Compton, who seems so genteel and mild-mannered when buying a bottle of wine at Coaltrain, yet come race day can be seen methodically ripping off people’s legs, eating them, and then using the bloody bones to club lesser riders out of her path.

With two such exemplars of the discipline in residence, you’d think some bright person would have had the idea to duplicate Boulder’s Valmont Bike Park down here in God’s Country™, where men are men and so are the women, only more so.

Alas, the Free Hand of the Market is too busy jerking off to fantasies of an Olympic museum, a “multipurpose” stadium and a visitors center for the U.S. Air Force Academy, which already has one.

You know — places for looking at things, instead of actually doing them.

As one-half of the executive team that operates The House Back East™ Bide-a-Wee Vacation Home & Money Laundry, I have yet to encounter a guest who longs to visit museums, stadia and visitors centers.

What they want to do is tackle the Incline, Pikes Peak, the Garden of the Gods, and Manitou Springs. They want to do stuff, not just look at it. And some of them want to do it while blazing a fatty.

But don’t tell that to the local leadership. They turned this place into Six Flags Over Bethlehem and now it’s all about The Five Rings To Rule Them All, the feddle gummint’s saggy ol’ sugar tit and state-supported fantasies about what a bunch of old white guys think will get the money train chugging through town again.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines “spectator” as “a person who sees or watches something without taking an active part; onlooker.”

Yeah, that’s just what we need.