Category: Interbike

iBike 2012: Bibleburg to Flagstaff

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
One of my favorite spots in Santa Fe. Or anywhere else, come to think of it.
One of my favorite spots in Santa Fe. Or anywhere else, come to think of it.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (MDM) — There’s nothing quite like listening to Bach’s “Art of the Fugue” while motoring through the New Mexican desert, flipping the bird to Mitt Romney billboards.

I made the usual stops en route — Ten Thousand Waves, which as usual was awesome; and Second Street Brewery, which oddly was not (I guess everyone has a bad day coming, and theirs was Sunday night).

As I barreled westward the CD player spared me the news that the RomneyBot v2.012 had managed to waffle-stomp its electronic pecker again. I didn’t catch up on that action until I came within range of KNAU just outside Flagstaff, and may I say that it’s always pleasant to have one’s worst suspicions confirmed?

The guy called slightly less than half the country a shiftless bunch of jigaboos, beaners and white-trash layabouts who while away the hours sleeping off a drunk in their Cadillacs until it’s time to cruise down to the welfare office and harvest a bale of feddle-gummint money before getting their gold tooth polished at the Mayo Clinic.

The janitors at the Republican National Committee must have had a hell of a time sweeping up all the hair on the floor after that pail of mierda hit the abanico. But I bet they were whistling while they worked.

Apple of my eye

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
At left, the 2012 MacBook Air. At right, the 2006 MacBook.

Well, shit. After railing against Apple in comments for relentlessly driving us toward machines we can’t repair, upgrade or otherwise alter without a visit to the Genius Bar and/or the Devil, I’ve gone and bought myself a 2012 MacBook Air, the top-shelf 11-inch model.

So, yes, I’m a hypocrite. But I’m also the new owner of a pretty cool mini-laptop.

Longtime consumers of the DogS(h)ite will know that I manage a road trip about as often as does Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Still, I do manage to slip the leash from time to time, and when I do, my companion generally is my most “modern” laptop — a 6-year-old, 13.3-inch Intel MacBook that has already blown one hard drive, smells worse than Mister Boo on a hot day and weighs as much as a WorldTour pro’s bike (with the WorldTour pro sitting on it).

I can wrench a bit on this old black MacBook. Change batteries, upgrade RAM, swap hard drives and perform other basic tasks. But it’s not exactly cutting-edge technology.

And as the road test dude for Adventure Cyclist (harumph), with Interbike looming on the horizon like a carbon-fiber meteor from Hell, I do have a certain responsibility to embrace new technology, no matter how ridiculous and/or expensive. Right? Right.

Plus I had the money and Herself said OK.

So, yeah. I have a new laptop. It’s bound to make me smarter, funnier, thinner. Ask anyone in Cupertino.

SOPWAMTOS lives!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Back in the day, when Interbike was smaller and less regimented, Bruce Gordon, Mark Norstad, David diFalco and a few other folks united under the banner of the Society of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit (SOPWAMTOS) would present the annual Golden Toiddy Awards.

A parade through the aisles would feature dancing girls spinning titanium hula hoops, gents wearing Bruce Gordon fezzes, Mickey Mouse panties and damn’ little else, and Mark and Bruce — the two Self-Appointed Co-Dictators for Life — being wheeled along on a golden litter.

My Golden Toiddy
My Golden Toiddy, awarded for Excellence In Bad Taste. It's always nice to see one's efforts noticed.

The highlight was always the presentation of the Golden Toiddys, cleansed, spray-painted and hand-lettered toilet seats liberated from a dump near Petaluma, California. The SOPWAMTOS motto was “Standing for Rudeness and Truth in the Bike Business,” and the awards always had a strong flavor of a Friar’s Club roast emceed by Jeffrey Ross.

Cannondale’s Joe Montgomery got the “Smoke & Mirrors” award the first two years and loved it. Specialized’s Mike Sinyard got the inaugural “Best R&D (Rip-off & Duplicate)” award and was reportedly less pleased.

I even got one, for “Excellence In Bad Taste,” and was delighted. But not as delighted as I was to learn that SOPWAMTOS is enjoying something of a renaissance as a place where cyclists can buy good old made-in-USA products, among them White Industries hubs, Bruce Gordon brakes and other goodies. Other products said to be coming soon include items from King Cage, Paul Components, Phil Wood, Thomson and Wald Sports.

I immediately bought myself an official SOPWAMTOS T-shirt, as I am engaged daily in the design, creation and wholesale distribution of what some will wholeheartedly agree can be described only as shit.

Didn’t see any BG fezzes in the online store though, dammit. How’s an old bald guy supposed to keep the melanomas off his noggin when he’s parading around in his Mickey Mouse panties?

Return of the Interbiker: Songs from Uranus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
On the road again
Eastbound and down, loaded up an' truckin'.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Technology is not always our friend, and all too often the march of progress resembles the drunkard’s stumble that Tom Waits famously described in “Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)” as “using parking meters as walking sticks.”

For example, we now enjoy “Italian” bikes wearing Asian components, “high-speed Internet” that is anything but, and “smart” phones that no longer need humans to place calls, choose music or launch apps.

The Italian-Asian hybrid you already know about. The Internet of the Living Dead was at the Fairfield, where I spent much of last night pushing one pixel at a time through a virtual soda straw.

And the “smart” phone? It was in one of the cargo pockets in my shorts when it decided Interbike was boring and needed a fresh soundtrack. Thus throughout the day my iPhone 3GS would randomly set Tom Waits, Gladys Knight and the Pips or Elvis Costello to singing, Ace Ventura-like, out of my butt, generally while I was trying to conduct a little business.

When that proved so 15 minutes ago it started ringing up people in my contacts list and launching apps at random. What’s next — texting my editors to ask them whether they’re wearing crotchless panties? Some of them probably are, and then where the hell will I be?

Oh, yeah — I’ll be on the road, that’s where. Show’s over, and I’m Colorado bound.

Return of the Interbiker: What, you again?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
The $799 Bianchi Campione is a steel gran-fondo bike that comes equipped with an eight-speed cogset, toeclips and straps — and downtube shifters.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Some things never change. I always think I’m going to have a ton of time to post fresh snark about this and that during Interbike, and then I find myself caught up in the flow, like medical waste in the California surf.

The Adventure Cyclist folks are a great bunch — we’ve spent some hours trolling for toys, drinking, eating and bullshitting, which beats the mortal nuts off being chained up in the Sands basement, cranking out word count for the Show Daily.

The crowd has gotten a tad weirder since I was last here. Fewer booth bimbos, but enough tattooed, shaven-headed, multiply pierced, fat honky bastards to outfit three Aryan Nations chapters and a pirate fleet, for starters.

But what the hell? If they’re all about the bikes, then I love them all like the ugly, surly ADHD children I never had, thank God.

I’ve stumbled across old friends and made a few new ones, drooled over some toys, and even rode a bike to the Sands once — a Bike Friday New World Tourist. That was educational. You want a rear-view mirror for that high-speed run along Sands Avenue to the expo. Maybe some body armor, too.