Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), rousted me out of a warm bed at dark-thirty this morning, thinking I needed to be earning my keep by following Milan-San Remo.
I explained that I no longer work for a racing magazine, but he simply yawned and replied: “It was time you got up anyway. Wake me when lunch is ready.”
Nose, meet grindstone.
I pretty much plugged right back in after my little sojourn in the desert. Cranked out a column and cartoon for Bicycle Retailer, edited pix and video for Adventure Cyclist, bashed out a post and gallery for all y’all, delivered myself of a few quips on social media, replenished the larder, and got the Subie serviced.
The old rice rocket is still ticking along nicely after 11 years and 117,000 miles, and a few inexpensive repairs — replacing the cracked moon roof, reupholstering the driver’s seat and buffing the haze out of the headlights — should keep me off the car lots for a while yet.
The critters’ separation anxieties have all been soothed (I haven’t told them Herself will be pissing off to Hawaii here directly). And if I haven’t had a lick of exercise in three days, well, at least I’ve gotten a few things done.
After a heavenly week of shunning radio, TV and the Innertubez, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed catching up on the news, save for a bit of heehawing at Jeb (!) finally noticing all those loafer prints in his ass. How pleasurable it was to finally see a head roll in that dime-store dynasty, even with The Donald serving as executioner.
And speaking of The Mouth That Roared, that tale has pretty much stopped being funny. Over at MoJo, David Corn reminds us that the Rethugs have no one to blame but themselves for this billionaire buccaneer who sailed right into the middle of their tony fleet and let fly with broadsides to port and starboard.
At The Guardian, Jeb Lund distributes the credit a little more widely, observing that the courtier press is a bit too comfy in its own box seat at the opera to notice that the peasants outside are revolting (oy, are they ever).
Me, I think we all had a hand in the phenomenon that Charlie Pierce calls “He, Trump.” Or off it, as in abandoning control of our electoral processes to the pros, fixers and wizards.
This is one of the reasons I’m not sanguine about the idea of self-driving cars. If you’re not in the driver’s seat, you can be certain that someone else is. And they may be taking you somewhere you’d rather not go.
Thirty-six inches: That’s the final tally from Maryland, where the digging out has commenced.
Adding insult to inundation, the gut rumble that started working its way through the kinfolk beginning with the brother-in-law has so far claimed 75 percent of the clan, with only Herself spared (so far).
Meanwhile, the mom-in-law’s flight back to Tennessee got croaked by the storm, so Herself the Elder is enjoying a little extra recovery time before clambering into an aluminum tube full of fresh viruses for the trip home.
This whole clusterfuck was intended to give her the chance to inspect a couple of properties with an eye toward relocating somewhere down the road.
I bet the trip made Albuquerque look like the Garden of Eden. The place has its warts like any other, but the snow rarely arrives three feet at a time and the only time anyone ever shits themselves is at the thought of living in Maryland.
Yesterday was one of those insanely busy days that should never afflict the underemployed. We’re not equipped for it.
With deadlines flitting around my scalp like Hunter S. Thompson’s Barstow bats I committed a few crimes against cycling, emailing back and forth with product managers, marketing wizards and editors; swapping bits of this and that from one bike to another; and bending fender stays around disc calipers, cutting all corners that looked even remotely cuttable, and beating on anything that wouldn’t cut with my favorite tool, the Bravo Foxtrot Hotel (look it up).
Then, before blasting off to the Whole Paycheck for supplies and liberating the Turk from the Nazi war dentist, I managed a brisk, 45-minute ride on the Salsa Marrakesh with full panniers.
It wasn’t actually snowing, which was nice —the temps were in the lower 40s, and I will even go so far as to say that this did not suck, not for January. You may quote me if you like.
This morning it was precipitating again, and Your Humble Narrator was all about writing bikes rather than riding them. Also, furthermore, moreover and too, there was the doctoring of the Turk, the roasting of the poblanos outdoors in a light snowfall, and the cooking of a medium-sized pot of lamb and white bean chili.
Speaking of cooking, now I seem to be slightly baked for some reason.
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment).
We have been to the dentist. We are not amused. We wish we were a bear like the one on the Apple TV screensaver. Then when someone thought we needed to go to the dentist we could slap all the ass off of them and eat a salmon with our funky teefers.
Mad Blog Media 