New year, same old dog

January 3, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Today I managed a third consecutive day of outdoor cycling and field-tested my ability to fix a flat with a damaged digit. All is well. I froze my nuts off, true, but that’s nobody’s fault but my own for underestimating how much heat a fat bastard can generate riding a flat-bar cyclo-cross bike in subfreezing temperatures with a brisk north wind.

A windproof jacket would’ve been smart. Ditto full booties instead of toe covers. Hell, how ’bout staying indoors and drinking whisky out of the bottle? How many 55-year-old fat bastards do you know who are layering on the Lycra for a 90-minute ’cross-bike ride on a football Sunday when they could be in some warm pub drinking Clydesdale piss and sneaking peeks down the waitress’s blouse?

Yeah, I know. Plenty. And I was one of them. Because I am a dog with a mission — get fit enough to do the Adventure Cycling Association’s Southern Arizona Road Adventure in mid-March without embarrassing and/or killing myself.

Then I will write about it for Adventure Cyclist magazine, cash the check, and use the proceeds to buy warm clothing. Or whisky. Or both.

Blue bird

November 18, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 35 Comments

I really stuck the dismount this time. Even the East German judge gave me a 10.

Hm. Been a little quiet around here lately, no? A couple shifts in the old VeloBarrel, some snow-shoveling, a bit of trying to learn my way around the new WordPress-based beta site, and a crash on the ’cross bike, and all of a sudden it’s five days later. How time does fly when you’re having fun.

For some reason yesterday I thought it would be smart to go for a short ride in the icy goo. Not so much, as it turns out, especially with a deadline looming. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it can be to dispense the wit and wisdom with only one functional hand. The other, as you can see, is sporting a splint to support its dislocated birdie finger, which I popped back into place as I was lying there in the puddle, the one masking the sheet of ice.

Road-raging motorists will get little in the way of obscene gestures from me over the next month, unless they park curbside to peek in through a living-room window and shout at me for riding an exercise bike.

Boulder Cup relocated

October 28, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Harlow Platts Park circa 2005, when it wasn't buried under a ton of snow. — Harlow Platts Park circa 2006, when it wasn't buried under a ton of snow.

Bummer — Brook Watts advises that this Sunday’s Boulder Cup cyclo-cross will be relocated to the Boulder Reservoir after heavy snow that made it impossible to use Harlow Platts Park.

Says race director Chris Grealish: “The racers love Harlow Platts because of the challenging nature of the grassy terrain, but we have an agreement with the city of Boulder to make a move if conditions there risk long-term damage to the park.”

Too bad. Harlow Platts is a fun venue, but there’s no point in chewing it the hell up. And I wasn’t going to be able to go anyway, as Sunday is one of my days in the Velo-barrel.

Here’s a bit I wrote about the last race I saw there. Well, as usual, there’s not much in there about the actual race, but what the hell, it’s either read this or get back to work, right?

Altitude sickness

October 25, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Well, that’s officially it for summer — I pulled the cover off the pergola and stashed it in the garage. No chance of cranial sunburn on the back deck for now, the skies being gray, the temps in the mid-30s and some nasty-looking weather to the south.

Still, it could be worse. My man Hal up in Crusty County reports thusly: “It’s snowing again. I’m moving to Pewblow.”

He’s kidding, of course. We have both lived in Pewblow, and the best that can be said for the place is that it’s 10 degrees warmer than where Hal is right now, which would be stuck in a steadily swelling snowbank at 8,800 feet just east of Weirdcliffe.

Pewblow makes Bibleburg look like San Francisco on a sunny day. My hometown has its faults — many, many of them — but at least here the cops don’t tase you before they shoot you just to see that look on your face. They just ask if you’ve found Jesus and then blow a great big .40-caliber hole in your heart so they can see if he’s really in there.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to work up the ‘nads to go out for a short bike ride, maybe a little cyclo-cross over in Monument Valley Park. Try that in Pewblo sometime. The cops will see you running with the bike and figure you stole it. Then it’s zap, bang, and hasta la vista muchachos.

• Late update: OK, I did it — sucked it up, pulled on the winter kit and went out for an hour of solo ’cross. Lord, did I suck, particularly on the running bits, which used to be my strength. But about 40 minutes in, it finally started getting good to me, and for a lap or two I felt marginally competent, if awfully slow. And now my back hurts. Mine will not be a pretty old age.

October surprises

October 2, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

It got good and chilly here last night — when I arose, it was exactly freezing outside. Now it’s 50-something, like me, and like me it took a long time to get there.

Last night I made another Martha Rose Shulman recipe, pasta with walnut sauce and broccoli raab, except I used broccoli florets. I had planned to do her stir-fried pork and greens, but Herself intervened on behalf of broccoli, and while I was surprised at her choice we were both pleased with the results. Plus there were enough leftovers for today’s lunch.

Tonight it’s back to caveman chow — a grilled flatiron steak from Ranch Foods Direct, some spuds and a vegetable to be determined by Herself, who is on a rare grocery-shopping excursion as part of a series of errands. I generally fetch the grub, since I do all the cooking around the DogHaus, but lacking any sort of work ethic I’m easily persuaded to sit on my ass and let someone else do the heavy lifting.

Outside the kitchen, meanwhile, Repuglican asshats and their enablers in the MSM are spastically jacking off over Barack Adolf Hitler Saddam Hussein Pol Pot “Uncle Joe” Stalin Mao Zedong Obama’s failure to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago and Steve Benen at Political Animal is predictably snarky.

I don’t know what all the fuss is about, frankly — Colorado voters told the International Olympic Committee to go fuck itself back in 1972, when a Denver group wanted to bring the Winter Olympics here, and we’re still on the map, albeit for all of the wrong reasons (Focus on the Family, Doug Bruce, Doug Lamborn — the list goes on and on). But at least we didn’t piss away 13 times the original estimate to host that frozen clusterfuck, the way California did in 1960.

Why, the Winter Games don’t even include cyclo-cross. That right there’s a deal-breaker as far as I’m concerned.