I stumbled across Alison Dunlap while riding in Palmer Park today. She was conducting a clinic for another rider, but graciously took a minute to stop and shoot the breeze.

She and husband Greg Frozley have an 8-month-old squirt, Emmett, and haven’t been getting much sleep, but nonetheless Alison looks fit and ready to kick ass (Greg was at home riding herd on Emmett while Mama took care of business). I should’ve taken a pic. Bad cycling journalist.

Alison took some amusement from my drop-bar 29er, the Voodoo Nakisi, which — being a cyclo-crosser of some small experience herself — she initially mistook for an actual ’cross bike. Nope, it’s a weirdo, just like the guy riding it.

But with a pair of 700×38 WTB Allterrainasauruses and a low end of 22×28 the Nakisi is an ideal bike for about 75 percent of the trails in the park. The others I can’t ride on a 26-inch hardtail, and I’m not inclined to buy a double-boinger just to test-drive our UnitedHealthcare insurance policy.

As it is, I have regained just enough fitness, strength and technique to do something appallingly stupid on two wheels, one of those “hold my beer and watch this” moments that winds up on YouTube. You know the feeling? “Well, I just rode that so surely I can ride this. …” It always ends badly.

The inquiry into whether Texus Maximus is a lying, dope-swilling criminal seems to be devolving into some sort of reality-TV show. Call it “Leaks & Shrieks.” Some anonymous source leaks a news nugget to the press — this time, to The Associated Press — and whoever has the duty in Tex’s battalion of lawyers starts shrieking like a teen-age girl who just got a Weiner pic on her cellphone.

This stagecraft annoys the mortal piss out of me. It’s like watching a couple of beered-up palookas talking shit and shoving each other prefatory to throwing hands. After a certain amount of this macho posturing, one wonders whether either party has the stomach for an actual brawl. All it’s amounted to so far is billable hours, which is great if you’re one of the shysters doing the billing. For the rest of us? Bor-ing.

If Stretch Novitsky and the grand jury have an actual case, I sure wish they’d make it before Tex needs a pair of orthopedic shoes and an aluminum walker to totter into court, helped along by the grandsons of his original attorneys.

With the Memorial Day weekend safely behind me and no chores, obligations or other distractions on the schedule, I got out for a nice two-and-a-half-hour ride today.

Well, “nice” is a bit of an exaggeration. The skin-blistering headwind on the outbound leg, down the trail to Fountain, took some of the joy out of the experience. Nothing quite like being hunkered down in the drops, blazing along at 13 mph on a downhill while the prairie dogs titter at you.

But that tailwind on the way home — fat city. I felt 20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter.

Plus I got to see a couple Canada geese and their goslings in a pond down by the soccer fields east of Harrison High School. That sort of thing is always good for an “Awwww. …” moment.

Tomorrow it’s June already, and time to carpe that old diem, because Le Tour starts on July 2, and it looks like Super Spaniard will be cleared for takeoff. Talk about your speed bumps along the bike path.

In a triumph for geezers everywhere, 55-year-old Ned Overend won his fifth Iron Horse Bicycle Classic today in Durango. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Chapeau to The Lung.

Where the hell did the week go? Seems like just a couple minutes ago I was wrapping up the weekend’s work when all of a sudden holy fuckin’ shit it’s weekend-work time again.

“There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” That’s there’s Scripture, fella.

And yea, there will be much wickedness this weekend, sayeth the Dog — much of it spewing from his mouth as he works on a holiday weekend — and thus no peace, for him or for anyone else within earshot.

There’s the Giro d’Italia, the USA Cycling National Championships, the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, the Killington Stage Race, all bearing their dark gifts of stories and sidebars, PDF’d results and photo galleries, rider diaries and technical jabber, plus video — did I mention video? And almost none of it featuring podium girls gone wild.

And they call this a holiday weekend.

But there are steaks, chicken and beer in the ’fridge, wine bottles in their racks and bicycles in the garage. And God willing, I will sample each of these between bouts of velo-reportage. You’re welcome.

And should you be reading this from one of America’s various military garrisons throughout the world, please be advised that I’m only bitching for practice in case I should ever have something to bitch about — like serving tour after tour after tour in some overheated nightmare wherein the locals smile at you during the day and prep roadside bombs for you at night.

If you think we’re in the shit now, just wait until they start drafting 57-year-old fat white guys. I can’t think of anything that would bring troops home sooner.

Unless we were to be drafting the 57-year-old white guys’ children.

Peace.