Tell me, who are you?

February 22, 2016February 22, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

I took the Tube back out of town

Back to the Rollin’ Pin

I felt a little like a dying clown

With a streak of Rin Tin Tin.

—”Who Are You,” by The Who

When the machinery starts acting up, what’s the first thing the IT guy asks?

“Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on?”

Well, I turned it off last Monday, but I didn’t get around to turning it back on until today. Sorry ’bout that.

I hadn’t had a good old road trip in far too long, so I took one. And I mean a road trip for me, one in which it was not necessary for me to be me for a few days. One must shut the fuck up from time to time, give the old pie-hole (and everyone else’s ears) a little R&R. Turn it off.

I suppose I could have taken a napping tour of Soho doorways, but that sounded a bit extreme, so instead I pissed off to McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Ariz.

The park is a bolt hole I used for years, but hadn’t visited in a while, and it was a pleasure to return. The weather was stellar, neither too hot nor too cold; there were some brand-new trails to explore; and while plugging into the Innertubes is possible out there among the cacti and coyotes, it remains something of a pain in the arse, so I didn’t bother trying. I did check mail once, using my phone, to see if anything demanded my immediate attention. It didn’t.

Nobody gave me an Airstream Interstate Grand Tour EXT for solstice, so I used my old North Face Expedition-25 tent and a new REI sunshade for shelter. And as regards cooking mostly I did not, as like the daily parade of conspiracies on the Innertubes it had become something of a nuisance.

Instead, I noshed on bits of this and that — baby greens with avocado and tomato slathered in olive oil, Creminelli salami and Barber’s cheddar on crackers, fruit, yogurt, granola, LaraBars, rice and whatnot.

I did, however, brew the obligatory pot of powerful black coffee first thing every morning. After a cuppa and a LaraBar I went for a run, and after that it was another cuppa, some yogurt and granola, and a ride on one of the two bikes I’d fetched along. Lunch was either out of the cooler or at DJ’s Bagel Cafe, which to my surprise was still open — and still good — after all these years. For dinner it was back to the cooler.

Come evening I enjoyed the sunset, the moonrise and a brief coyote concert, then turned in, listened to a little Mozart from the Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, read a bit of poetry, and nodded off. Next day I did it all again, but on different trails.

It wasn’t all fun and games. There were notes and pictures taken, and video shot. But I did not publish, until today. And as you see, I have not perished.

marin-bags-granite — The Marin Four Corners Elite, tricked out with Revelate bikepacking bags.

The path is the way

January 30, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

The bike paths in these parts are better than the roads in some of the towns I've lived in. — The bike paths in these parts are better than the roads in some of the towns I’ve lived in.

Yesterday I decreed it would be Ride Your Own Damn Bike Day, and so I dug out the Nobilette, which has been neglected lately, aired it up, and took it out for two and a half hours of delightful sunny goodness.

No biggie — easy pace, just 32.5 miles on rolling terrain — but still, it’s refreshing to ride one of my own damn bikes* for a change, and for more than 90 minutes at a stretch, too.

There was only a little bit of old snow and ice hiding in the shady bits, mostly toward the end of the ride on the Paseo de las Montañas trail.

I’m guessing that’s where I picked up whatever flattened the front tire, probably a goathead thorn, though the culprit could have been some errant glass from earlier in the ride. Swear to God, it looked like someone chucked an entire case of Heineken out the car window on Tramway between Manitoba and Spain. There was so much green glass scattered around I wondered whether Ted Cruz had been practicing his carpet-bombing techniques in the Duke City.

It's a beautiful morning. — It’s a beautiful morning.

Today the weatherpersons are predicting a high of 62 (!) so I decided to power up the sprinkler system for the first time in quite a spell. Nothing exploded. This is what we sprinkler-system owner-operators call “a good thing.” Because nothing makes so much sense as a nice green lawn in the Southwestern desert.

Indeed, the forecast proved so enticing that Herself declared herself ready for her first bike ride of 2016. And just in time, too. There’s rain and gloom predicted for Monday and Tuesday.

* Incidentally, in case you’re wondering, it’s still possible to ride a steel bike with cantilever brakes and come to a stop without Flintstoning or caroming off cars, trees and light stanchions. I know, it’s against the conventional wisdom, but you can rely upon me. I’m in the media.

Chile, hold the snow

January 22, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

You can still find some snow around here, but nobody is duking it out at the grocery over the last can of Spaghetti-Os.

I bitch a fair amount (OK, so I bitch a lot, maybe even a whole shitload), but I’m having a hard time complaining about my lot in life today.

For starters, I am not in Maryland, where Herself is going toe to toe with Snowmageddon, various blood relatives and in-laws, and a vile case of gastroenteritis that has already felled 50 percent of her party.

The Four Corners Elite isn't your grandpappy's steel touring bike, nosirree. Now get off my lawn. — The Four Corners Elite isn’t your grandpappy’s steel touring bike, nosirree. Now get off my lawn.

No, I am right here in the Duke City, where today it was a balmy fiddy-sumpin’ and strictly blue skies as I rode the Marin Four Corners Elite around and about for a blissful 90 minutes, inspecting a bit of bike path with which I was unfamiliar.

The sonofabitch takes more inexplicable twists and turns than a Caribou Barbie speech, but the Domingo Baca eventually gets you there, “there” being the North Diversion Channel Trail, a major north-south backbone of the local trail network.

Once safely on the main stem I took my usual route back to El Rancho Pendejo, heading over I-25 and along Osuna to the John Roberts Dam, where Walter White caught his getaway ride in the extractor’s red Toyota Previa, and then riding the dirt trails behind the dam to the Tramway bike path and home.

I arrived back at the ranch just in time to receive a generous compliment on one of my videos for Adventure Cyclist — just call me Quentin Ferrentino — and now I’m cooking up a green chile stew by way of refreshment and celebration.

Tomorrow looks even better. And I won’t even have to cook the stew when I get home.

A saga of two Sagas

January 14, 2016January 16, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

It’s been Ride Your Own Damn Bike Week here at Mad Dog Media, and a refreshing change of pace it’s been, too.

Playing with other people’s toys is a privilege, and a hell of a lot of fun, but it’s always nice to lay hands on your own again. Consider it the bike reviewer’s version of a palate-cleanser between courses. It also gives you the chance to re-evaluate your own bikes, see whether you need to shed a few long-held biases.

Yesterday and the day before I rode the Soma Saga Disc, and I felt a little too upright, so I dropped the bars 10mm and instantly felt better.

I thought I might need to shorten the stem by an equivalent amount, too. Three consecutive review bikes have arrived sporting 80mm stems, and while those felt a tad stubby to me, a 90mm would be just about right, was my reasoning.

Then today I rode the cantilever Saga home after dropping the Subaru at an auto upholsterer and felt just fine using what I thought was an identical cockpit.

And so it was. Same amount of spacers under the stem, same extension, same 17-degree rise.

Turns out it wasn’t the cockpit. The canti’ Saga sports a straight Thomson post. The disc Saga’s Soma post has a wee bit of setback. Duh.

Meanwhile, I ain’t superstitious, but a black cat crossed my trail as I rode home. A little further along, some bozo in a big ol’ pick-’em-up truck blew through the red light at Manitoba and Tramway a full three seconds late, doing at least the posted speed limit of 50-per.

As it happens I’m one of those cyclists who doesn’t even clip in until he’s seen that everyone else has come to a full stop, so no harm, no foul.

Big ups to the fellow traveler who gave the asshole a long blast on the horn as he shot past, though.

Abbey Road, or Downton Funk

January 13, 2016 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

You can have any color you like as long as it's red. — You can have any color you like as long as it’s red.

Herself and I settled down before the Eye last night with plates of salad and chicken quesadillas to enjoy the president’s final State of the Union address, only to find that the local PBS affiliate was airing “Masterpiece.”

Commies.

And worse, Limey commies, as the show was “Downton Abbey.”

So we switched to the White House website and caught most of Obama’s act, though the Mini spazzed out at the end, pre-empting him with The Spinning Beach Ball of Doom just as he cranked up the volume, and thus we missed the big denouement.

I enjoyed the departure from traditional practice, which has come to elevate ritual over substance. As the prez took the long view, it was particularly amusing to note the discomfiture of the clappers, who were mostly denied easy applause lines.

But I was surprised that he still seems surprised that the other team won’t play ball with him simply because he’s a Kenyan Mooslim National Socialist sissypants.

Still, I felt his pain. I’ve been preaching a gospel of equal parts socialism and substance abuse for years and not one of yis has opened a free-booze-and-bike-parts outlet.