Category: Good news

Dry rivers and damp bibs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
It’s all shallow end at the Rio still.

Another day, another record.

The Duck! City reached a high of 95° last Friday, and boy, did I feel every degree of it heading back to the rancho from the Rio.

The climbing is no big deal, about a thousand feet of vertical from the Paseo del Bosque’s intersection with Mountain Road NE. But most of it gets served up in the last 12 or so miles, with a side of stop-and-go on the mean streets and the Paseo de las Montañas bike path.

It should go without saying that a fella feels considerably warmer on the uphill leg of this 37-miler, even with steam escaping from the helmet vents.

A spot of damp.

We’ve either been breaking high-temp marks or missing them by a single degree lately. So it has been a delight to suddenly enjoy a little rain, straight out of the blue — 0.28 inch in the past 48 hours, which Noah might snort at but no New Mexican would sneeze at. Not here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where we have been drier than the proverbial popcorn fart.

The Monday-Wednesday Geezer Rides have been on hiatus, so when the rain started pelting down early yesterday morning I thought, “OK, fine, good excuse to go for a run.”

But I wasn’t really feeling it. I’ll be doing plenty of running if we ever get anything like winter around here. So when the rain abruptly shut off, I pulled a fendered bike from its hook in the garage — the rim-brake Soma Saga, which is wearing a rear Tubus rack with a strap suitable for packing a rain jacket — and off we went.

Why a fendered bike, when the rain had stopped? Simple. There may be puddles, and I don’t like collecting that famous damp brown stripe up the backside. It’s undignified for a man of my years and may lead to ill-informed gossip and speculation.

“Ah, look at the poor ould fella, would you now? Your man has gone and shite himself midride. Must be all alone in the world. No one to wipe ’is hole for ’im.”

“That’s a pretty nice bike, though. Someone must love him. Or at least tolerate him, manky arse and all.”

I am blessed in that regard, and also when it comes to bikes sporting fenders. I have three such at the moment and have had them all out in the past week to see if I could tempt the rain gods into having a wee. No joy. Rain before and rain after, but never during.

Maybe fenders don’t work that way. Maybe the rain gods see them and say: “Stand down, lads. We’ll never give the manky arse to that ould gobshite whilst he’s rocking the mudguards. Leave us wait until he takes that custom Nobilette for a long go into the East Mountains.”

Happy 100th birthday, Mel Brooks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
1974 was a very good year.

A very happy 100th birthday to Mel Brooks, who was making me laugh my ass off decades before I knew who the hell he was.

I think I first laid eyes on him when Mel and his old buddy Carl Reiner introduced “The 2000 Year Old Man” to the world (they’d been doing bits at parties, George Burns threatened to steal the material if they didn’t do something with it, and finally Steve Allen persuaded them to record the act for an album).

But he wasn’t a rookie. Mel had been doing standup in the Borscht Belt; went on to write for Sid Caesar with the likes of Woody Allen and Neil Simon; and created “Get Smart!” with Buck Henry.

And then, the movies. Holy underwear! In 1974 Mel released “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein.” In the same year. I was pretending to study journalism at the University of Northern Colorado that year, and my bros and I lost what remained of our minds watching those flicks.

Mine never returned. But Mel’s just keeps hopping along like some furshlugginer Energizer Bunny. I’m retired, but he’s still working.

And The New York Times has 100 reasons why this should excite you. There are more, I’m certain. Give us yours in comments.

36 and counting

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
“Is there a bus ticket and some fake I.D. in here somewhere? Goddamnit!”

On this date in 1990 Herself and I embarked on the perilous journey of discovery that puts divorce lawyers in next year’s Maseratis.

They said it would never last, and after she got the LASIK surgery I was certain they’d be proven right.

Nevertheless, here we are, 36 years down that rocky ol’ road of marital blisters and with hardly any scars at all. Visible to the casual observer, that is.

Only half of the happy couple is showing the years and mileage, which is odd, because he’s the one who spent all that time palling around with the Devil. But the dumb sonofabitch was never worth a damn at wealth management — the kind of chump who thought a CD was something by Tom Waits that you slipped into the player of an ’83 Toyota longbed between bumps off the back of one hand and stealthy nips from the bottle in the other while steering with the knees and one bloodshot eye on the rear-view mirror — so whatever he got for that beat-to-shit 1954 soul has long since been pissed away.

And knowing him, chances are it wasn’t eternal youth and beauty anyway. More like another 8-ball and a case of Pacifico. Talk about your cheap dates.

Ol’ Nick probably doesn’t even want to take possession at this point.

“Holy hell, clock the state of Himself, would ye? Looks like the south end of a northbound ghoul. Make a freight train take a dirt road, that would. Shit, he even scares me. Maybe I’ll delay collection on this one, take Stephen Miller for practice.”

So, sorry, Toots. Looks like you’re stuck with me for a while yet. Next time you’re playing blackjack with the gang down at the animal shelter, maybe check your cards before yelping, “Aw, what the hell! Hit me!”

And a Merry Sale it is, too

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Soma Fabrications (a.k.a. the Merry Sales Co.) is at it again.

I meant to add this over the weekend but got distracted by feline maintenance, grocery shopping, cooking, bicycle riding, and what appears to be a remake of “Lawrence of Arabia” taking place on the property.

Still, better late than never, as the fella says. You can save big on Soma and New Albion frames and forks, but you gotta move fast — the sale ends today.