Category: Home and hearth

Sometimes a grate notion

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
The bathroom grate
What a grate way to wake up on a September morning.

A scorched, musty smell and a low rumble at 5 a.m. told me that fall was indeed here, as the furnace kicked on for the first time in months.

It was something of a shock to the system, as always. It was only a few short days ago that I was motoring in a fog of my own sweat through 105-degree heat in Bullhead City, Ariz., for the dubious privilege of chasing bike parts and Scotch around Sin City, which was only a half-dozen degrees cooler.

I’m not sorry to bid adieu to a truly awful summer, but I’d sure like to hold onto sunny-and-70 for a stretch. Autumn is my favorite time to ride a bike, and I’m not ready to pull on my big-boy pants quite yet.

Fire on the mountain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Waldo Canyon from Palmer Park
The Waldo Canyon fire as seen earlier today from Palmer Park — which is now closed to keep it from getting lit up, too.

The mercury is knocking on the century mark down here in Bibleburg, but it’s a whole lot hotter in them thar hills.

Manitou Springs got cleared out last night and early this morning, and the Air Force is weighing in with a couple of C-130s that can drop 3,000 gallons of fire retardant in less than five seconds, according to The Denver Post. Two more are inbound from Wyoming.

Down here in the flats it’s oddly quiet. Lots of folks are watching the fire the way a bird eyes a snake, taking cellphone pix and muttering to themselves.

We’ve gotten a few calls from friends and family who wonder if we’ve been forced out onto the open road with only a few simple possessions and the menagerie enjoying a Romney ride atop the Subaru.

Nope. Herself is still at large in Mouse Country, I’m stuck in an un-air-conditioned office wrangling word count and the critters are trying to find cool spots to stretch out. Good luck with that. It’s not exactly fur-coat weather, is what I’m saying.

Still, there are worse things. We know a few folks who’ve been chased out of their homes by this bloody fire, and a few of them are staying next door until things cool off a bit. They may be waiting a while — there’s nothing but sun, heat and wind in the forecast for the next 10 days.  Y’all start doing your rain dances now, please. And thank you.

The stink also rises

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Destruction zone
Yes, those smelly old elves are at it again in the basement.

Tell you what: When it rains, it pours, especially in our basement.

The water heater is on the fritz now, pissing all over the floor like a badly trained dog, and I would shoot the fucker two or three times if I weren’t afraid of inflicting collateral damage upon the humidifier, which in this climate is the only thing keeping me from bleeding to death through the nose.

Speaking of noses, when the temps creep up into the high 80s, low 90s, what a man wants is a basement free of raw sewage. They say that shit rolls downhill, and speaking as a longtime resident of the valley I will say that they do not lie.

But the stink from same, like the sun, also rises. And a man with a litter box in his office upstairs doesn’t need any more of that sort of annoyance than he can achieve through a diet rich in the foodstuffs of Northern New Mexico, which at least smells good going in.

So much for the bad news. The good news is that chats with the insurance company have not led to extended bouts of weeping; an expert is en route today to lay hands upon the water heater (rather than 158-grain, semi-jacketed, .357 Magnum hollow points); and Ted at Old Town Bike Shop resolved an issue with the front disc brake on the latest test bike, for which I owe him some beer and many thanks.

The Return of the Shit Monsoon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
The Shit Monsoon Redux
They say the job ain’t over ’til the paperwork is done, but I think this one’s gonna take more than one roll of toilet paper.

Well, shit. And I do mean shit. As in shit fountaining out of the downstairs toilet for the second time in three years.

Here’s the long and the short of it: Herself and I were enjoying a glass of the finest European sidewalk-softener and a bit of TV last night when she hears a bubbling sound from downstairs. She goes to investigate and I hear another kind of sound altogether, reminiscent of the racket I was making in 2009 when the exact same thing happened to me.

So now it’s wash, rinse and repeat time again. The carpet is coming up, along with the tile, and some drywall is coming out. We’ve already relocated Herself’s office to the kitchen, where the cats may use her keyboard as a springboard to the windowsills for perimeter inspection.

My office, meanwhile, houses the 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment and its equipment, to wit, one (1) sand-filled polyurethane waste receptacle, i.e., the litter box. Not exactly a box of roses, but hey — when the whole house smells like a toilet, what’s another turd or two?

Chirp … chirp … chirp. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Highway 24
Pikes Peak as seen from Highway 24 near the Banning-Lewis Ranch.

Wow — the sound of all those virtual crickets digitally chirping is deafening.

The days have seemed about 90 minutes long lately. Bicycle Retailer and Industry News deadlines have been coming and going like cabs at McCarran International Airport. Likewise bicycle reviews for Adventure Cyclist. I just wrapped up the Cyfac Vintage; next in line is a Moots MXYBB, with a Van Nicholas Amazon Rohloff waiting in the wings.

Too, I’m been chiming in during Charles Pelkey’s live updates from the Giro, for all the good it does him. And Herself and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary on the 12th.

So, yeah. Busy busy busy, especially considering that I remain seriously underemployed — and, as a geezer who earned his chops in a dying profession, am likely to stay that way. Well, that just means more time to ride, no?

So I go out and flog myself around the countryside for a couple of hours, followed by a bite of lunch, and by the time the day’s Amgen Tour of California stage rolls around I could give a shit. I mean, I like Peter Sagan and all, but four stage wins? For reals? And today brings the time trial in Bakersfield. Pass the toothpicks, someone, I need to prop my eyelids open.

Of course, with my eyelids propped open, I can’t not look at stupid shit like this, from Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Fuckwit). Jesus H. Christ on a flatcar. Most states in the Union put their crazy people in mental institutions. Colorado sends them to the U.S. House of Representatives.