Category: Fall

Awk!tober

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Cloud cover, Duck! City style.

Ninety-three yesterday as the last day of September dragged its sweaty arse into the National Weather Service record books.

Anyone who got out early yesterday had nothing to complain about. Come to think of it, anyone who got out late, well, likewise.

The Rio wasn’t snaking its way up the drainage channels to snatch up our kinfolk, pets, and proud-ofs. We are light on natural disasters here at the moment, barring the odd pedestrian getting run over by three (!) vehicles, one woman going after another with an ax, and the city council considering guidelines for artificial intelligence, when the real thing seems to be in such short supply.

We may have a spot of wind that will set us to dashing around the foothills chasing our lawn furniture, which we have not been using because mosquitos, which will be chasing us around the foothills, and so on and so on and scooby-dooby-doo-bee.

At least it gets you out in the open air. Like crucifixion.

Meanwhile, a former colleague at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News reports that he and the fam’ are OK in Black Mountain, N.C., save for the lack of “water, internet, cell coverage or landline.” They have a propane generator that supplies electricity — as long as the propane lasts — and while driving is impossible due to downed trees and flooded roads, cycling is not. Stay high and dry, Dean.

Another former bike-industry bro in South Carolina says via text that he too is rocking a generator for power. The water is on, and he has plenty of grub, but the gas “is a bit tricky” and “cold showers suxxxx.” Word, TC.

The Shit Monsoon. They say the job isn’t over until the paperwork is done, and this one took more than the one roll.

I’ve only ever been a spectator at this sort of thing. Back in the late Seventies I got yanked off the Gazette copy desk to help cover the aftermath of a freak tornado that walloped Manitou Springs. And in Colorado we had to keep an eye peeled for fires.

One within eyesight of our shack in CrustyTucky had me scouting a back way off our one-road hillside. Another in Bibleburg had us taking in refugees.

Lucky for us, the worst we ever had to deal with was the occasional four-foot snowfall, power outages, and the fabled Shit Monsoon of song and story.

That was pretty crappy (rimshot). About like having a circus elephant with a crook gut let fly in the basement. But at least we still had power, water, and food … though our appetites were not up to snuff for a while.

I mean, c’mon. The place smelled like canned farts.

• Meanwhile, speaking of shitstorms, it’s been a while since I thumbed through the Book of Revelation, but it seems The New York Times is reprinting it in modern lingo.

March in October

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

“Hup, hoop, hreep, horp … hey, where’d that senile old fool get off to now?”

I’ve been neglecting my footwork lately, so I left the bikes on their hooks yesterday and took a hike.

Herself thought this a fine idea and joined me, setting a brutal pace as per usual. I had to take a picture just so I could remember what she looked like in case some good Samaritan happened upon me as I lay collapsed in a weepy heap at trailside.

“Have you wandered away from the Home, old timer? Mind if I rummage through your pockets? You won’t need the wallet; the coyotes don’t take Visa, and they sure as shit won’t honor this UnitedHealthcare card. Say, you don’t have a keeper somewhere nearby, do you?”

“Yes (sob) … she looks like this.”

“Oooh, iPhone, cool, I’ll take that too.”

Hot and cold

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

The backyard maple is giving up the ghost, just in time for Halloween.

Elections should not be held as the days grow shorter, darker and colder.

One is not inclined toward optimism or fellowship as the furnace begins clicking, on and off, on and off. Our better selves are very much not in evidence. What we’re thinking about is not how we might strive together to build a brighter future, but rather which of our neighbors we would kill and eat first when the power goes out, the grocery stores have been stripped of toothsome tidbits, and the backyard gardens have been grazed down to the bedrock.

Which is the scenic route toward saying, yeah, I punched the buttons that activate the Compound’s heating systems last night. Also, and moreover, I am wearing pants this morning. The horror … the horror.

But at least I am in my own house, unlike at least one of my people out in Santa Rosa. My man Merrill has fled south to his brother’s pad in Hell A, which may be called an improvement only because Hell A is not currently on the barbie. Yet.

When last heard from, Mayor Chris was sheltering in place and continuing his bid to become Commissioner Chris. More from that smoke-filled room as I hear it.

One wonders about the mood of the electorate in Sonoma County. If PG&E were a candidate for anything other than a vigorous tarring and feathering I would predict a massive beating that would make Nixon-McGovern look like a friendly rub-and-tug in a Healdsburg hot tub.

But who knows? The People are a fickle bunch, and winter is coming. They might just elect PG&E president.

Rough commute

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

That’s one way to beat the traffic at the Big I.

I mostly get to ride mostly whenever I please, so it’s always something of a shock to ride when circumstances dictate I do so.

Like, say, Tuesday, when it was pretty much the coldest morning we’ve had so far this fall.

How’s this for your basic socialist-realism selfie? “Forward, comrades!”

Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster needed her 30,000-mile checkup, so off we went to Reincarnation, down off 1st and Mountain.

And since I had things to do while the rig was on the lift, this meant (a) fetching a bike along for the 15-mile trip home and (2) digging out the winter kit to go with it — tuque, tights, long-sleeve jerseys, jacket, wool socks, long-fingered gloves, in short, everything save the shoe covers.

It was worth it, though. I got two rides in, the last considerably warmer than the first. And I saw a balloon sailing low along the North Diversion Channel Trail just south of I-40.

I wonder how often the pilot has to have his rig serviced. Makes me glad all my mechanicals occur at ground level. I bet AAA won’t tow a broken-down balloon.

Blind

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Where’s the Turk? He was here just a minute ago, I’d swear it.

After a brief encounter with actual fall weather we’re back to what passes for normal here in the Duke City — heat and homicide.

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) returned to his favored observation post upon the battlements, to wit, the ledge of our bedroom window.

His adjutant, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, has been shifting among various cozy spots — atop one of the Twin Towers, across a sun-splashed stretch of carpet next to the living-room coffee table, near the foot of the bed  — and sometimes burrows under the covers, where she adopts her alter ego of Lumpy the Bedbug.

There are worse places to be than astride the saddle of a Vespa on a sunny day.

A fella has to be careful where he sits on the bed when Lumpy’s in residence.

I was able to run in shorts and a T-shirt by 9:30 or thereabouts, chatted productively with a local bicycle retailer (road bikes are out, mountain bikes are in), and late in the day decided to take the Vespa for a spin to charge the battery and keep its vital fluids circulating.

The highlight of the day may have been this little news nugget, from my old hometown of Greality, Colorado. As I sez to one of my old UNC bros, I sez, ’tis often that we were crazed on the auld L-S-Dizzy Back in the Day®, but ne’er e’er did we try to bite a constable in the cojones. We were hopin’ for a nip at the coeds so.