“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot. The quote arises unbidden as I watch the weather change from sunny to snowy to sunny again, and finally to a chilly shvitz of fog — all in less than a week.
Appropriately, April also brings the cruelest race, Paris-Roubaix. And while I no longer help cover such sport for vampire capitalists, I plan to get up way too early on Sunday and lend a paw to my friend and colleague Charles Pelkey over at Live Update Guy.
Charles will be on deck at dark-thirty, as usual, but I won’t plug in until the race is well under way. In the meantime, give us your picks for the V in comments. Tom Boonen is obviously a fave, but with filthy weather in the forecast and no Fabian Cancellara it could be anyone’s race. T.S. Eliot was right.
My friend and colleague Charles Pelkey cranked up the old Live Update Machine today for the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, and a couple other refugees from the other outfit joined in toward the end to provide wit and wisdom, kinda, sorta, as Fabian Cancellara crashed out with a broken collarbone and Tom Boonen took the win ahead of Filippo Pozzato and Alessandro Ballan. You shoulda been there.
But if you weren’t, well, you can catch the act next week during Paris-Roubaix.
No cobbles in these parts, but the riding is pretty damn’ fine regardless. The weather is officially insane for early spring — as in 76 degrees yesterday — and I rode south on the Trail of Many Names to its southern terminus in Fountain, then turned around and headed for home, with a quick detour into Bear Creek Regional Park for extra credit and a deer sighting.
It was headwind out, tailwind back, and good for three hours in the saddle, which should reduce my gravitational potential somewhat if I keep it up. I can manage another such outing today, but tomorrow — not so much. The weather wizards predict a 50 percent chance of showers and a high in the mid-40s. Oh, the humanity.
• Friend and colleague Hal Walter scores a little local ink for the local food movement, to wit, the Arkansas Valley Organic Growers.
• And the RomneyBot 2012 — should it ever wrap up the GOP pestilential nomination — plans to wipe its drives and install a fresh copy of the Etch-A-Sketch OS for the general election. I am not making this up.
Got an old bike cluttering up your shed, garage or basement? Bike Clinic Too can transform that unsightly beater into transportation for one of its needy clients.
I was just at Old Town Bike Shop, getting a new stem for an old bike of my own, and BCT’s Brian Gravestock told me that he’s low on rolling stock and in need of donations to keep the op’ humming along. For a quick rundown on the clinic’s mission, you can listen to a recent report by KRCC-FM’s “Western Skies.”
The clinic’s clientele prefers mountain bikes when they can get ’em, and of course functional bits such as cassettes and chain rings are always welcome. Locks, too, are eagerly received — it seems there’s been a rash of bike thefts lately, and every bike lifted means another bike is needed.
Old Town will accept donations for the clinic. So will Criterium Bicycles. And the clinic is always happy to accept money, as sometimes it has to buy parts to put a beater back in business. Tell ’em the Dog sent you.
The first day of spring and whadda we get? Thirty-friggin’-four with wind from the north at 26 mph, gusting to 41.
As usual, this is my fault. Last week, when we were enjoying an unseasonable stretch of 60- and 70-something temps, I connected hoses to faucets, watered the lawn and — worst of all — put a new battery in the Vespa. Imagine my embarrassment.
Best of all, the wind is peppering us with tree pollen, and allergies have me by the snotlocker with a downhill pull. Snork. Gluck. Hawk. Ptui. Repeat as necessary.
This means that instead of riding my bike in shorts and short sleeves, as I did all last week, I will be slouching here at the computer, searching for things that piss me off to elevate the old heart rate.
Like this item about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Ayn Rand), who claims his “budget” will strengthen the safety net for the poor, disabled and elderly. Uh huh. The “net” to which he refers concerns the fishnet stockings Granny will have to wear while pole-dancing to pay for her blood-pressure meds.
Or this one about employers demanding that prospective employees give them their Facebook user names and passwords so they can go snooping around to see if you enjoy calling their favorite Randite nutsack a zombie-eyed granny-starver. Yo, Mister Human Resources, I got your job right fuckin’ here.
And finally this one, about a self-appointed vigilante who guns down a 17-year-old kid armed with a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona iced tea … and isn’t charged with shit, not even littering. Now and then I think about selling the family arsenal. And then I think again, because guys like this are roaming around, packing. Jesus wept.
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