Category: Fall

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.

At ’cross purposes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Oh, yeah: It’s fall.

When the temps dip I head straight for the chile — green, red, or green-and-red — and the cyclocross bikes.

The eats lately have included turkey tacos with red Mexican rice; a red-chile posole; and a green-chile stew heavy on diced chicken thighs and spuds.

This bike will even work in California, because you don’t have to plug it in.

And the cycling? Lately it involves singletrack and my second-best Steelman, a red Eurocross that Brent built as part of an arrangement with the Clif Bar team back in the late Nineties or early 2000s.

It’s a snappy climber in the 34 x 28, but a little harsh on the bumpy stuff coming down, possibly because of the oversized, shaped True Temper top and down tubes, which have an aluminum vibe to them.

Yesterday, while climbing a trail that sensible people ride downhill, and certainly not on a ’cross bike, I successfully dodged a perambulating tarantula only to screw the pooch on a recently rearranged rocky bit (the trail fairies have been shifting the furniture around again). Caught between a rock and a hard place it was either plant a foot or take a dive. Bah, etc.

I need to reassess the cockpit configuration on this beastie. I half-assed it when I swapped stems a while back, grabbing an old Giant from the treasure chest; what I need is an entirely new stem and handlebar, the latter with a shorter reach and drop.

Plus I’ve always disliked this bike’s chunky aftermarket Shimano STI levers, which seem designed for the jumbo mitts of lesser primates. Oook ook ook.

Now that I think of it, what I really need is for Brent Steelman to come out of retirement and make me one of his old CCs, slightly updated for our modern world, such as it is. Now that was a go-anywhere, do-anything bike, back before any marketing smarties spitballed a few pitchable monikers for the category.