Category: Bike stuff

Pizza, love and understanding

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

It’s been heavy lifting over at VeloNews.com this weekend. You know you’re in for it when the memo describing the tasks to be performed bears the subject line, “Glad I’m not you. …”

Cactus flowers
I slipped out for a quick ride and saw that the recent light rain had lit up the Palmer Park cacti.

Tour de Suisse, Route du Sud, Ster ZLM Toer, Giro del Trentino, Giro della Toscana, Nature Valley Grand Prix, Harlem Skyscraper Cycling Classic, Nevada City Bicycle Classic, Tour of America’s Dairyland, Tour de Grafton, Tour de Beauce, the Race Across America — I’m telling you, the party never stopped. I’m still waiting on stuff and here it is wine-thirty already.

Speaking of parties, I had to quick whip up another tub of pico de gallo for a friend’s 60th birthday yesterday, between bouts of frenzied pixel-pushing, and naturally I was missing a few key ingredients and had no time to leg it to the store. So I subbed a couple jalapeños for the missing serranos and some Deschutes Twilight Summer Ale for the traditional Mexican beer and you know what? It didn’t suck.

But I could do with a break from the kitchen tonight, and thus Herself will be fetching a Luigi’s pizza home after her stint at the local Humane Society, where she spends a couple days each week helping lonesome critters find happy homes.

Me, I’m still helping Mr. Microsoft find a few typos that spell-check can’t handle.

The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

We’ve been enjoying the kind of weather former Bibleburger Robert A. Heinlein described in “Glory Road” as “the sort that Florida and California claim (and neither has).” If it weren’t for wind bringing us secondhand smoke from the jillion or so massive fires to the south and west of us, I wouldn’t have anything to bitch about.

But I can always find something. I’m funny that way. Maybe not.

Chairman Meow and Mia
Miss Mia Sopaipilla and the headstone on Chairman Meow's grave prepare for a two-cat team time trial.

Today I rode the Voodoo Nakisi south and west, climbing along the trails of Bear Creek Regional Park to Gold Camp Road, where shortly I was passed by a trio of roadies who spoke not a word as they rolled by on their plastic fantastics just past the Section 16 trailhead. They must have been fresh from the 26th Street/Gold Camp ascent, a popular and unofficial time trial in these parts, and I with my dusty steel MonsterCrosser®, burly tires and hairy legs no doubt offended their delicate sensibilities somehow. Maybe it was the VeloNews bibs. Who could know?

What I do know is that they weren’t nearly as nifty as they thought they were, because I was able to hold their wheels on the swift descent along 26th Street to Highway 24, and anyone who knows me will confirm that I do not exactly descend like Lucifer, “hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky.” This assholy trinity may be better than me on the uphills, but then that’s not a very high bar to hop, either.

I didn’t recognize any of them, but then I don’t ride the road much, because it is mostly curb to curb with dickheads, some on four wheels, and others on two. On the trails folks say “Howdy!” to each other.

Welcome to the West, buckaroos.

The Bike Clinic Too needs our help

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Two local programs that help put needy Bibleburgers astride free bicycles are struggling after one full-time mechanic sliced off a big chunk of one thumb and a part-timer found himself overwhelmed by the subsequent referral work and woefully short of funds, tools and parts.

Peter Sprunger-Froese and Brian Gravestock founded the Bike Clinic nearly two decades ago, making it work through a combination of cash support, donated machinery and low-cost and/or volunteer labor. Brian opened a sister shop in 2010, the Bike Clinic Too, and the two locations did a land-office business refurb’ing beaters for the beat.

Then Peter injured that thumb, and Brian abruptly found himself with a backlog of 80 bike orders.

I talked with Brian yesterday at Old Town Bike Shop, where he earns his living (owner John Crandall is also a supporter of Bike Clinic Too), and asked what he needed most to get the clinic back up to speed. He immediately replied, “Money.” He could do with some shop tools, too, and promised to get me a list of the most desperately needed items if I can pop round to an open house at Bike Clinic Too this Sunday (1-4 p.m. at 737 W. Monument, if you’re in the area).

If you can spare a buck or two or three, checks can be written to Pikes Peak Community Foundation — put “Bike Clinic Too” in the memo line — and mail them to PPCF at 730 N. Nevada, Colorado Springs, CO 80903. There’s probably a way to donate online but I don’t see it in a casual search of the PPCF site. If you have any tools you can do without, give me a shout and I’ll put you in touch with Brian and his colleagues at Bike Clinic Too, Eileen Brodie and Jon Hurly. I should be better informed and in possession of a photograph or two after the open house on Sunday.

Meanwhile, you can read more about the op’ here. A tip of the Mad Dog Campy cap to reporter Angie Jackson at my old employer, the Gazette.

Prologue of the gods? Not hardly

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
The start
A quarter-mile of up, a few hair-raising seconds of down, and then it's tedium all the way to downtown.

The folks behind the USA Pro Cycling Challenge formally unveiled their routes for the Aug. 22-28 stage race today, and the prologue — slated for right here in scenic metropolitan Bibleburg — should please the Chamber of Commerce, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and any other buck-hunters hoping the area’s scenic beauty outsells its reputation for screaming loonies.

Unfortunately, it’s not much of a race course.

The 5.18-mile route is mostly downhill or flat, barring a short climb from the gun in the Garden of the Gods and another over the railyard approaching the finish at U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in downtown Bibleburg.

The biggest obstacle will be a hard left turn at the bottom of Ridge Road onto Pikes Peak Avenue. Ridge is a steep little mother, ordinarily ridden in the other direction by cyclists seeking healthful exercise, and anybody who fucks it up will slide right through West Colorado Avenue and Highway 24 into the Red Rock Canyon Open Space, there to be eaten by bears.

The U.S. Olympic Committee HQ
The big five-ringed, dope-flushing toilet its own bad self marks the finish line.

From that point on it’s mostly bullshit — one quick right-left at North 29th Street takes the riders onto West Colorado Avenue and then it’s a long road that has no turning through Old Colorado City to the finish. In short, bor-ing.

I’m thinking the place to be is at that left-hander at the base of Ridge Road, with a big sack for carrying off the salvageable high-zoot components of the fallen. It’s an easy half-hour ride from Chez Dog, and I have plenty of messenger bags.

Meanwhile, here’s a short video clip of the interesting bits of the Garden of the Gods section from an unauthorized ride I took on the course this morning. Sorry about the jerky video, especially on the descent, but I had the Flip Ultra HD clamped to the stem instead of my helmet to cut the dork factor. I have to buy my own toys for this kind of playtime, don’t you know, and this thing was already in the quiver.

And slainte to Elvis Costello for letting me liberate one of his tunes for the shoot. He doesn’t exactly know or anything, but we share a name (Declan) so I expect he wouldn’t mind. Much.