Salty dog

January 18, 2024January 18, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

The Soma Double Cross wearing its winter kit.

Seasonable weather may have returned for the moment, but The Duck! City remains a sandy, salty, gooey mess, and thus the Soma Double Cross now sports mudguards because hey: Sometimes a fella doesn’t feel like taking his exercise on a 32-pound touring bike just because it has fenders.

The DC is another of those absurdly versatile sport-utility bikes, suitable for cyclocross, light touring, or simply trying to keep the muscle memory alive in January, when its lesser poundage — just under 26 elbees with a saddlebag and handlebar bell — makes a real difference on the hills.

I used it for a three-day credit-card tour of central Colorado in 2012, and it’s logged plenty of hours on roads and trails in New Mexico, too.

The DC is just a little small for me, which is fine, especially if you suddenly happen to straddle it on some sketchy stretch of singletrack. When I first got back into cycling in the mid-Eighties I started with a 60cm bike, then downsized to 58, and again to 56, before finally inching back up to 58 for pretty much everything save the cyclocross bikes.

The Steelman Eurocrosses, Bianchi Zurigo Disc, and Soma DC are all 55cm, while the Voodoo Wazoo is a 56cm. I should turn the Wazoo back into a drop-bar bike one of these days, but I kind of like it as a flat-bar, single-ring deal. It’s also less welcoming to fenders and a rear rack, should I want them.

Ordinarily when the weather goes sideways I turn to trail running. But we’ve had enough moisture lately to turn crucial segments of the foothills trails into skating rinks, peat bogs, and tar pits, which makes running nearly as much of an exercise in staying upright as cycling.

“Well, at least the motorists can’t nail you on the trail,” you quip. Ho ho, etc. Wrong-o, sport. Lately they’ve been hitting everything from traffic-light stanchions to tattoo parlors, restaurants, and private homes. Stationary objects, easy to avoid, unless you’re ripped to the tits on your reality-management substance of choice.

The wiseguys used to say that you’re taking your life in your hands just by getting out of bed in the morning. Now you can wake up to find yourself sharing the old king-size with a Ford Expedition.

Not even fenders will keep the road grime off your ass then.

Nothing to fear but fear itself

November 25, 2023November 25, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments

The reports of a squadron of heavily armed Bentley Flying Spur medium-heavy bombers targeting the United States from a top-secret Canadian base seem to have been slightly exaggerated, if by “slightly exaggerated” we mean “fabricated out of whole cloth.”

“This confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack.” — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Insult My Wife, Please)

“Today’s apparent terrorist attack must be a wake-up call to all Americans.” — Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Finance, Insurance & Banking)

“So it begins. We need to lock down the borders immediately. Full deportation efforts need to begin. The U.S. does not need to be the world’s hospitality suite any longer.” — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Ashkenazi Catholicism)

Yes, a 2022 Bentley Flying Spur exploded at the Rainbow Bridge connecting the United States and Canada. Yes, two people died. And yes, many more people freaked the fuck out, thanks in large measure to (wait for it) the 101st Half Cocked Rapid Response Team at Faux News (h/t Charles P. Pierce at Esquire).

And then, the other combat boot dropped:

“But the FBI and other assisting agencies concluded within hours that the explosion was not a terrorist act and rather a terrible accident – possibly caused by a medical incident or a vehicle malfunction,” reported The Buffalo News, adding, “In 2021, the Australian government issued a limited recall of Bentleys over problems with the accelerator getting stuck.”

A medical incident. The accelerator getting stuck. The case handed over to local police as a traffic investigation.

Well. That’s entirely different, as Emily Litella might say.

Down here in our little corner of The Duck! City we have some small experience with airborne motor vehicles.

At least thrice in nine years some leadfooted yahoo who failed to grasp the concept that all roads eventually must end has rocketed up Comanche and through the stop sign at Camino de la Sierra only to find the pavement replaced with what appears to be, and in fact is, a short dirt ramp that launches them and their cobbled-together street-racing shitbox through a wire fence and into the cacti-and-rock-studded base of the Sandia Mountains after a brief flight of, oh, I don’t know, three to six feet.

The Wright Brothers did better than that in 1903, and they were just a couple of bike jockeys who took the scenic route to what their descendants would call “hucking,” “getting big air,” or “shredding the gnar.”

So we have never considered going to DEFCON 3 over it. Of course, none of our local test pilots has ever been incinerated. That we know of, anyway. Also, our little wire fence isn’t at an international border, and we don’t dream of it becoming a Wall.

Blank Friday

November 24, 2023November 24, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Another Thanksgiving feast has come and gone (though leftovers aplenty remain) and here it is Blank Friday already and I haven’t snapped up a single solitary bargain, not one.

Herself had requested Emeril Lagasse’s chicken cacciatore for dinner, and I decided to add the traditional accompaniment, Martha Rose Shulman’s stir-fried succotash.

Somewhere along The Path for reasons unknown we got detoured into butter-cookie construction, and as a consequence I was a wee bit tardy getting started on my own preparations, which are extensive.

These dishes are not complex — the succotash needs just four minutes in the wok — but they involve more than a few ingredients, among them Emeril’s Essence, a spice mix with eight components.

The cacciatore itself has 20 more. The succotash? Eleven. Many cups and bowls for the mise en place, many, many of them.

For the cookery I needed a large Dutch oven, a pasta pot, and a wok. Knives, spatulas, spoons, graters, cutting boards, colander, oven mitts, rubber gloves, yadda yadda yadda. Clean as you go, etc. Stand back, gimme room, and so on.

A memory with fewer holes in it would have been nice, too. For some reason I had it in my head that the simmering phase of the cacciatore would last only 20 minutes, which was 40 minutes short of actuality. This put a slight hitch in my culinary gitalong and thus we were late sitting down to the actual eating, which annoyed Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who is a stickler for schedules (her own).

Didn’t matter. We’d lunched on eggs over medium and pan-fried potatoes, so we weren’t drooling and ravenous. We didn’t have two-legged guests waiting, growing surly with drink, reawakened memories of past slights, and plans for vengeance. And we didn’t have to drive home afterward.

During the final cleanup, which was extensive, we sang along with Arlo, singing loud to end war and stuff. We hope yous all did likewise. There’s a lot of it about.

Footnote

October 27, 2023October 28, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Living two blocks from singletrack has its advantages,
as long as you watch your step.

Man, am I ever glad I’m not an influencer.

If I were, I’d feel obligated to opine on Hamas v. Israel; the Rt. Rev. Dr. Mike Johnson (R-Pecksniff), our latest Shaker of the Hose; psycho killers who use gunfire to drown out the voices in their heads; and various Trumps getting hauled, with eyes a-rolling at the sheer injustice of it all, into various courts of law.

But I ain’t. So I won’t.

Besides, my back hurts, because I somehow managed to banjax the bugger on Monday while shoveling out Miss Mia’s litter box and ever since have been lurching around the vicinity like an angry Ent with one root in a cast.

I haven’t even considered riding or running. But I have shuffled out for a few short hikes with my trusty staff and to date have not rendered dysfunctional any other aspects of the organism.

Also, I have not been compelled to endure bombardment, conversion, gunfire, or jurisprudence. Thus, winning, etc.

In other news, we’ve been watching a graphic-novel adaptation on Netflix, the limited series “Bodies,” and I can’t recommend it as a muscle relaxant. More of an irritant, really. But we’re six episodes into the sonofabitch and I want to find out how it ends so I can hate it properly.

Ordinarily I love almost any tale involving time travel. But at the moment all I can think of is going back to 1976 and telling the 22-year-old me not to work the top end of a hand truck while delivering a large refrigerator into an upstairs apartment.

“Dude,” I’d say, “just look at me. I’m all that remains of you. There are ways to get beer money that are easier on the lower back. For starters, weed is gonna be legal here in 2012. You heard it here first. Get busy.”

Friday the 13th

October 13, 2023October 13, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Is today the day we get Gym Jordan (R-Locker Rumba) as Squeaker of the House of Reprehensibles?

That would be bad luck indeed, on a par with naming Koba chairman of the Flying Monkey Caucus.

Of course, one wonders whether this conclave of lesser primates could agree to hand the gavel to anyone, even a troika comprising Taylor Swift, Jesus Christ and Zombie Ronald Reagan.

Still, dumber things have happened, or are being contemplated, and here are a few of them:

• Streets on the moon (The Guardian). Scientists have devised a method to transform that pesky moon dust into solid landing pads and roads. “You might think: ‘Streets on the moon, who needs that?’” said professor Jens Günster of the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing in Berlin and co-author of a report on the technique. Right you are, prof. How about repairing a few of the roads we have down here on Terra, where the people are? We can’t even reliably land and maintain a construction crew alongside Interstate 40 west of Albuquerque, much less at Faustini Rim A.

• Throw up, pay up (The Washington Post). Restaurants whose bottomless-mimosa brunches have encouraged bargain boozers to do what drunks do — hurl, blow chunks, call Ralph on the big white phone — are starting to charge for the privilege of engaging in the Technicolor Yawn on their premises. “Welcome to the Vomitorium (a small handling charge will be added to your check).” The Romans got here first, of course, but you know how empires are; always declining, and not just to learn from history, either.

• Go ruck yourself (The New York Times). I’m not quite certain how we transitioned from upchucking to rucking up, but here we are. Wipe your lips, buff the barf off your boots, and shoulder that pack, soldier! It’s great fun! As long as no angry foreigners are shooting at you. If marching around and about with a heavy pack catches on, I wouldn’t expect a spike in enlistments, but we might see a few new magazines in the Inside Outside Sideways Down portfolio, like Rucking, Rucksacker, and Rucksack Retailer and Industry News. Hey, vulture capitalists gotta eat, and not just at bottomless-mimosa brunches, either.