Category: Boozing

Riding the storm out

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Purple Haze, all in my brain … lately things just don’t seem the same. …

Ridin’ the storm out, waitin’ for the thaw-out
On a full-moon night in the Rocky Mountain winter
My wine bottle’s low, watching for the snow
I’ve been thinking lately of what I’m missing in the city — Gary Richrath, REO Speedwagon

Rolling out of bed this morning after dreaming of bicycles I fell right into the old spin cycle, rolling down Memory Lane.

While inhaling my first cuppa I browsed over to Rivendell where Grant Petersen was musing about a well-used Centurion Accordo he saw recently, parked at a BART station. He made it for a 1985 model, priced in the low-$300s, which set me to recalling my own Centurion, the bike that put me back in the game in 1984.

Mine was a $320 Le Mans 12, red and silver, at 60cm just a skosh too tall for me. Didn’t care. I was an old Schwinn guy trying to quit smoking cigarettes and snorting cocaine, dial back my gargling of the tonsil polish, and in the process maybe shed a few elbees. I weighed 184 at the time, and sometimes — depending upon how many bumps and beers I’d had the night(s) before — it felt more like kilos than pounds.

I was already swimming laps in the overwarm pool at the Pueblo YMCA, and lifting weights. But the scenery never changes in the pool or the gym. So getting back on the bike seemed just the ticket.

And it was! It just took more than one bike, and more than a few years.

• • •

Moving on from Centurions (and their resemblance to his own A. Homer Hilsens) Grant went on to extol the virtues of SunTour components, in particular the Cyclone group, which did battle with the more expensive Shimano 600 group. He writes:

Shimano’s derailers were fine, too, but [in terms of] purely beauty and strength and value, nothing could beat SunTour’s Cyclone derailers. SunTour’s Cyclone went head to head against Shimano 600 (later, Ultegra) and I remember Bridgestone engineers explaining to me in great detail how much better it was … metallurgically, polish, design, and value (it sold for about 20 percent less than Shimano 600). That was SunTour’s strategy to fight Shimano’s better indexing, but partly because the Cyclone stuff was cheaper, people thought it was worse. 

Well, wouldn’t you know it? My next bike, a 1985 Trek 560, was equipped with SunTour New Cyclone-S, and I certainly didn’t think it was worse than whatever was on that old Centurion. Sleek and smooth, or so it seemed to me. As for the frameset, its main triangle was double-butted Reynolds 501, the stays True Temper cro-mo, and the fork Tange Mangalloy CCL. This was the bike that got me riding centuries and, eventually, racing.

Racing was good. I wasn’t, but trying to be helped me keep my nose clean (har de har har). And instead of pissing away money on expensive and illegal drugs, I pissed it away on equally expensive but completely legal bicycles and related gear, apparel, and aftermarket “upgrades.”

Like everyone else I left steel, SunTour, and friction shifting behind for aluminum, carbon, and Shimano STI. The old Trek was demoted to a bad-weather/wind-trainer bike, and eventually went away altogether, drifting off the back as technology drove relentlessly forward, Your Humble Narrator clinging to the wheel.

But the Great Wheel also spins, and I eventually found my way back to the idea of that bike.

• • •

We got a bit of winter this week that kept me off the saddle and in something of a mood. Trying to fill the frosty void I spent a little time swapping handlebars on my red Steelman Eurocross. I’d been muttering about getting rid of its deep-drop, long-reach Deda 215 road bar for a while, and with an assist from Old Man Winter I finally got ’er done, swapping it out for a Soma Hwy One bar just like the one on my other Eurocross.

Big Red with its new bar (Cinelli cork bar tape not included).

The red Steelman, like my old Trek, is a blend of Reynolds and True Temper. No classy SunTour jewelry, alas; just clunky, scuffed Shimano ST-R500 Flight Deck brifters running Shimano 600/Ultegra derailleurs and Spooky cantis. I thought, briefly, about going to bar-end shifters, maybe nine-speed; new cassette with more teefers on the fat side, new rear derailleur, new chain, new brake levers and … and maybe not.

Frankly, it felt just a little bit too much like work. Skill set and personal preference dictate that I ride these things rather than wrench on them. Maybe some other time, on some other bleakly cold snow day.

And I couldn’t have gone back to downtube shifters even if I wanted to. There’s a set in the garage, awaiting the callup, but the Eurocross routes its cables along the top tube. No shifter bosses on the downtube. Maybe some bridges are better off burned.

This Bud’s for you

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

We should be so lucky.

Ho hum. I see some deep-pockets blowhard strolled in and out of court again yesterday, without consequences, as per usual. Not even a mug shot.

Shit, I’ve done more time than this blabbering plastic sack of fast-food farts, a serial liar who cheats at golf and would sell his idiot children to the Saudis, if he could find one dumb and mean enough to buy them for sex toys and/or dog food.

And I didn’t have to lip off to the cops, DAs, or judges to get jugged, either.

No, that would’ve been one of my bros, the dude who told the graying Colfax beat cop with the rookie partner: “You can’t arrest us for walking out of a bar with a beer.”

Ho, ho. Wrong again.

This regrettable incident took place in the Glory Days, when my friends and I were basically ambulatory recruiting posters for the War On Drugs. We’d have let the feds put our faces on a “Know Your Enemy” flyer if they paid us in cocaine and Stoli.

None of us was wealthy. We had no well-connected allies. We had dedicated ourselves to scaling new heights of impairment and then tumbling down the other side into a crusty rental house that used to be part of a Glendale nursery. For plants. Not children.

And thus we learned how to talk to cops. Be polite. Rely upon the short, simple words you can still pronounce without drooling. Don’t let the nice flatfoot see the devils raging behind your blood-red eyeballs.

And never, under any circumstances, tell a cop, “You can’t arrest us for [insert your offense here].”

My friend forgot this cardinal rule — only for a moment — but that’s all it takes. Loose lips sink ships, especially when the crew is hammered. And so we all got a fun ride in the drunk wagon and a night to remember in the Denver calaboose, where we met some fascinating people.

One was a duster (crazed on PCP), and he was quickly awarded the entire drunk tank for his earsplitting arguments with people or Things who were not there. We more numerous but much less scary drunks got packed into two-man cells so we could enjoy the floor show from a safe distance.

Another was a glum-looking permed and pastel-leisure-suited gent who had gotten popped for soliciting a hooker who turned out to be a vice cop. He could see his apartment from our cell, but not his wife inside it. He was not looking forward to seeing her in his new digs.

We got sprung in the morning without charges. Go and sin no more, you silly little shits, they told us. But goddamn it, we did our time.

If only we’d been riot-inciting former presidents of the United States whose Florida resort’s crappers were overflowing with national secrets instead of addled stoners getting sideways with a Colfax cop.

We’d have been back in the Satire Lounge before closing time.

We’re open, but Dave’s not here, man

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

Chance of rain, but not much of one.

New Mexico is “open” again, whatever the hell that means.

Also, apparently you no longer have to toss your mota when pulled over by a chota, though the officer may have a few pointed questions regarding the expired plates on your auto, your lack of insurance for same, and the stolen ATM in the back seat.

Of course, you can’t actually buy the mota here legally because, like, nobody can remember where they left the fuckin’ paperwork, man.

Things darkened up a bit on my ride, but I never needed the fenders I didn’t have.

And when I motored down to the grog shop this morning for a selection of bottled alternatives, I observed that most folks in newly “open” New Mexico were keeping their face-holes closed to the general public. So I did likewise.

Outside the boozeatorium, meanwhile, my fellow primates were busy proving Darwin wrong.

On my way there I saw a westbound motorist casually swerve into the eastbound lanes on Comanche to hang a left into a driveway, rather than pull a sloppy U at the next cutout like every other drunkard in Duke City.

On my way back I saw a truck full of Natural Light Seltzer — bearing the legend, “The Seltzer You Never Saw Coming” — blow through the red at Menaul and Louisiana, at least two seconds late.

Ho, ho, etc. I not only saw it coming, I was expecting it. I always look both ways and count at least three Mississippis before I proceed on the green. I am in no hurry to discuss my CV with St. Peter.

Made it home alive, set a loaf of bread to baking, and then pissed off for my first bicycle ride this week. It was pleasant indeed to swap climates with the Pacific Northwest for a short while — neither the A/C nor the sprinkler system has come on for days — but Paddy needs his sunshine.

In other news … oh, hell, there is way too much stupid shit going on in the news for a small-time operator like me to face stone cold sober. Maybe tomorrow I’ll pick a pile and roll in it.

Sometimes I have a great notion

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

No, I’m not snorting a line. Not right at that moment, anyway. …
Photo 1981 by Tom Warren | Corvallis Gazette-Times

Somehow I never thought of Oregon as a place that would burn.

I never thought it could burn.

In my mind Oregon remains a damp, dreary place where I spent a lot of time indoors, either working, hammered, or both. The only place I never owned a bicycle. Occasionally I walked, but only if I was too drunk to drive.

All my people were back in Colorado or in California, where I spent some months trapped in a Simon and Garfunkel song:

Asking only workman’s wages I come looking for a job

But I get no offers

When an offer finally came the job was in Corvallis, in Oregon’s Mid-Willamette Valley. It was good to be working again instead of sponging off friends and family, but the baggage I brought with me held more than T-shirts and jeans.

I made some friends, most of them on the job, your typical newsdog. And we had some laughs, catching Andy Irvine and Paul Brady in concert at a tiny venue downtown, or motoring to Portland to hear Johnny and the Distractions.

Occasionally I’d meet my old buddy Merrill in Seattle, a change of scenery for us both. He was trapped at a newspaper in eastern Washington, which was another sort of hell altogether.

But I spent a lot more time slouched in Squirrel’s Tavern or in my tiny apartment, huddled with my dogs next to the wood stove, or taking aimless solo drives out to the coast, places like Newport or Depoe Bay.

Mostly I remember rain, damp, the kind of cold that a Colorado winter doesn’t prepare you for, the sort that settles right down into your bones and makes itself at home. I got fat in self-defense, trying to make my bones harder to find.

If you’d told me the place would burn I’d have laughed out loud and poured another one. But I don’t drink anymore, and I’m not laughing, either.

• From Oregon Public Broadcasting: How you can help.

Irish, stewed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

The wearin' of the green.
The wearin’ of the green.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to the lot of ye. May yis be in heaven a half hour before the divil knows yeer dead.

This seems as good a time as any to disclose to anyone who hasn’t figured it out that I will not be tipping a pint today because I no longer imbibe.

’Tis so. Quit the drink more than three years ago, and while I occasionally miss the idea of having a drop taken, I can’t say I miss the actuality.

There were no DUIs, no 12-step programs, no health issues. I didn’t wake up underneath my truck in a driveway not my own with a blinding hangover and a cast on one leg (though I have done that).

But while battling a nasty upper-respiratory bug in 2013 I thought it would be a good idea to leave the drink be while the pipes were rattling. Then I recalled that I hadn’t done my once-traditional sober January in a few years, so I thought I’d revive that practice.

We have some (ahem) issues with the uisce beatha in my family. None of us aspired to become drunks, as far as I know, yet more than a few of us have, so since I have some small experience with addiction (to nicotine) I liked to occasionally take stock of myself, see if I simply liked to drink or had to drink. There’s a line there somewhere, but damn few signposts. Mostly we see it in the rear-view mirror, after we’re already upside down in the ditch, wheels spinning in empty air.

So, yeah. January came and went, and I thought, “Hm. Let’s go for February.” And then it was March. And then it was 2014. And 2015. You get the idea. It just sorta grew on me, the way hair doesn’t anymore. Not on the head, anyway.

I didn’t experience any withdrawal symptoms, not the way I did when quitting cigarettes. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, was that ever a trial by fire. So maybe I wasn’t addicted to alcohol the way I was to nicotine, though I was a drinker far longer than I was a smoker.

Whatever. Now I’m just being stubborn about it. I have this streak going, and I’m riding it out.

Sobriety hasn’t made me any smarter, though. All those brain cells I started with are gone for good. Why, I arose this morning without pulling on anything green. ’Tis lucky I am that Herself didn’t pinch me.

• And now, a musical interlude: The Chieftains performing “John O’Connor and the Ode to Whiskey.”

• Editor’s note: The header photo of O’Grady’s Marina Inn in Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, was taken by my sister, Peggy O’Grady, though we are said to have our roots in County Clare. As for the Irish above it, it’s a rough Google translation of “Bigger. Hairier. Closer to the ground.”