Category: Boredom

Ditch that rut

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
The Tunnel of Thorns.

Ruts. I’ve been stuck in a couple lately.

Take the 20-mile ride around the foothills. Please. Sure, you do enough of them, they add up to a nice pile of miles at week’s end. But still, damn.

Also, the not running. I never have been and never will be a “runner.” But as Richard Pryor has taught us, running is a useful skill to have at one’s disposal in case of emergency.

But you got to stay in shape and shit, ’cause you never can tell when in real life you will have to … run! That’s right, run. Goddamnit, run. Why get killed when you can … run! That’s right, a lot of people get a ass-whipping, and you could run. You’ll be in the hospital, your ego will heal a lot faster than a broken jaw. ’Cause you’ll still be in the hospital talking about “Shit, I should have run.” Run! That’s right! If somebody pull a knife on you, and you can’t pull out nothing but a hand with some skin on it, your intelligence ought to tell you to … run! 

So I’m slowly easing back into running — nothing outlandish, just a 5K, one per week — just in case anybody gets the idea that I’d be a whole lot quieter in a hospital with my piehole wired shut.

The bosque (coyote not included).

And I’m trying to break my oh-so-convenient 20-miles-in-the-foothills habit. Today I logged a 33-miler, descending to the bosque for a looksee — some dipshit(s) have been setting fires down there — and then climbing back to El Rancho Pendejo.

This three-hour ride weaves together several of the local off-street bike paths, which is a pleasant change of pace from, say, Tramway, which always makes me feel like a cottontail on a rifle range. That itch between the shoulder blades, etc.

And at the bosque I was rewarded with my first coyote sighting of 2025. Right troublesome little bastards they can be, but I still like seeing them. I’ll take an honest coyote over the devious dawgs of DeeCee any old day.

Spring broken

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 43 Comments

There’s the signpost up ahead … you’re about to enter the McDowell Zone.

Can you be both stuck and unstuck, at the same time?

Dern tootin’, podnah.

Case in point: Last year, I had planned a March trip to McDowell Mountain Regional Park, to (a) get the hell out of here, and (2) get the hell out of here.

Well sir, God, He got wind of those plans and had Himself a good old hee, and also a haw. And the next thing you know I had a broken ankle, a dead cat, and a strongly worded suggestion from the State that I (and everyone else) stay put while the Plague sorted itself out.

So I was what you call stuck.

Now, a year later, we have a vaccine. And by “we,” I mean … well, what I mean is that there is a vaccine, and some other people have gotten it. But I haven’t. And I don’t know when I will get it.

Thus I am, you might say, unstuck. Which means I’m stuck.

Which in turn means that you get the needle. Because yes, yes, yes, it’s time for another medicinal episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: Once again we go to the Comedy Closet for this one, using a Shure MV7 mic and Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects courtesy of Zapsplat with an Apple loop or two from iMovie and GarageBand. House call by kindly old Doc Firesign. Now just turn your head and cough.