I’m really starting to hate Sundays. It’s like someone docks a Waste Management truck to my office window and offloads a metric ton of moldy corn dogs, crushed Grain Belt cans and elephant shit from the Iowa GOP caucuses into my iMac.
I clocked in at 7 a.m., just in time for the first lap of the men’s World Cup opener in Pilsen, and I didn’t really find the bottom of the VeloPile until about 4 p.m. Pee-yew. There’s more to be done, of course, but it never found its way to me and thus has become someone else’s problem.
Doesn’t help that I’ve somehow managed to throw out my back again, which adds personal injury to professional insult. Sending two Tylenol Extra Strength tabs after that old refrigerator-delivery injury was like pitting a Boston cream pie against Rosie O’Donnell, without the potentially funny bits.
Happily, as I do my part to help smash the State through Occupy Office Chair I’ve gotten some top-notch attention from Dr. Turkenstein, though I note he is prone to wistful window-gazing. And no black-glove coppers have pepper-sprayed me yet, so I’ve got that going for me.
Associate editors Turkish and Buddy provided valuable oversight during the Vuelta a España and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge.
The (Not the) Tour of Colorado® raced to its conclusion in the Mile High City today, and I couldn’t be happier. These occasional stretches with stage races across the water and right here at home make for some long stints in the old VeloBarrel, especially since management decided there were too many necks still wearing heads.
For example, today I arose at 7 a.m., grabbed a cup of joe and sat down at the iMac. The VeloNews.com site was missing a little something — what should have been the marquee photo from Saturday’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge stage was instead a blank white box — so after a bit of frustrating flailing about in the website tool I re-edited and reloaded the pic and harmony was restored.
Next came a bit of Intertubular surfing, intended to find out what the hell was going on at the Vuelta a España. I touched base via IM with Charles Pelkey over at LiveUpdateGuy and contributed a bit of pointless snark as he interpreted the stage for his audience; then, once the streaming video from stage nine kicked in, I started writing the day’s race report.
Andrew Hood, the mainstay of European coverage for Velo and VeloNews.com, is following the Vuelta around Spain, but if someone can throw up a rudimentary stager to keep the punters occupied and buy him some time, it frees him up to do other stuff — gather quotes, write sidebars, compile his Vuelta notebook, and whatnot.
Next up: results from the GP Ouest France. Easy. No reporter there, no Agence France Presse report in English, so just results. Fat city.
The pièce de résistance: the Colorado race, the one drawing all the eyeballs. Short and sweet, that one. I got video about the time the break and chase were coming off Lookout Mountain, so it was the same drill —compile data and and write a stager while onsite staff ran the live updates and gathered intelligence, wait for a writethru, post a Casey B. Gibson gallery and finally swap out the marquee photo.
And suddenly it was 3 p.m. Time to dash to the grog shop for a sixer and then cool my heels (and my tonsils) while awaiting the final torrent of bits and bytes from the Colorado contingent.
It doesn’t sound like much, and frankly it isn’t. But it does take a fair amount of time, a commodity which is always in short supply.
Tomorrow I plan to swap the office chair for a Flite saddle and take a nice, long ride to somewhere. Please don’t run alongside me wearing a penis costume and beating on a giant IUD with a rubber sperm. It’s been a long week.
I signed on for a couple extra shifts in the VeloBarrel during the Vuelta and (Not) The Tour of Colorado, and also have been chiming in mornings at Charles Pelkey’s newest venture, LiveUpdateGuy.com, so I’ve been scurrying about like a roach on a griddle the past couple of days.
Being a professional slacker who hasn’t had a full-time job since the fall of 1991 it always comes as a shock to my system whenever I actually have to work anything close to a full week. How the hell did I do it all those years? How the hell does anyone do it?
Every aspect of the literary and artistic life suffers as a consequence. Grocery trips become hectic affairs instead of leisurely noshing expeditions, and mealtime the equivalent of filling the tank at a Conoco. The quality and quantity of training declines. The liquor tab takes on Pentagonesque dimensions.
But at least no one has cut me, and I’m not wearing a cone. There’s an upside to everything.
Fans of Charles Pelkey’s live updates from top-shelf bike racing as seen at VeloNews.com will be pleased to learn that he hopes to continue providing them via his own website, LiveUpdateGuy.com, during the Vuelta a España, which commences mañana.
Unlike consigliere Pelkey, I am not an attorney. Nevertheless, I don’t consider that I am violating my contract with Competitor Group Inc. by noting that VN.com will not be providing live updates from the Vuelta, by Charles or anybody else, though you may expect the usual post-stage journalistic virtuosity from Andrew Hood, Graham Watson and a cast of … a cast of … well, it ain’t gonna be Cecil B. DeMille, but just pop round the site for a look-see anyway. Hoody and Graham are always worth a good, long glance.
Meanwhile, the occasional high-powered guest may appear at LiveUpdateGuy.com during the Vuelta to provide keen insight, cogent analysis and witty repartee. I may drop in, too.
That's "Hanover," not "Hangover," though I have felt hungover here many a time while chasing leather-lunged leg-shavers back in the Nineties.
I don’t care what the calendar says — yesterday was the first day of fall. It was mostly cool and overcast until late in the day, when summer made something of a comeback. Nice change from the 90-plus weather we’ve been enjoying lately.
Naturally, I didn’t get out for a ride. It’s been heavy lifting around here, what with breaking in a new dog, working the VN.com site by myself on weekends, and deadlines for Velo the magazine (Monday) and Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (Wednesday).
The BRAIN column was a real bitch to write. The turmoil at Velo and VeloNews.com has been much on my mind, as has my friend Charles Pelkey’s cancer, and of course the never-ending mad-hattery in the nation’s capital, where the League of Small Hat Sizes holds sway. So I’ve been oscillating between rage and despair, neither of which is exactly fertile ground for bicycle comedy.
Nevertheless I prevailed — I shat out something, words in a row, and beat the clock with minutes to spare. And today I fled the office and the Innertubes for a fat-burning 50-miler that really flushed out the old headgear.
I’ve been contemplating a short bicycle tour, but finding a safe, pleasurable route out of Bibleburg has proven problematic. I’ve never liked riding Highway 24 west — too easy to get picked off by an 18-wheeler or RV between Manitou Springs and Cascade. North lies Jesus country and then Denver; no, thanks. And nobody in his right mind goes east. We’re Westerners, goddamnit.
That leaves south. But Highway 115 is under construction through October at both ends — Fort Carson and Penrose — and after a short recon by Subaru the other day I crossed that formerly delightful highway off my list, too. Single-lane climbs, gravel trucks and commuting prison guards give me the heebie-jeebies.
Thus the mainline out of Bibleburg is Interstate 25 — not exactly the sort of bucolic backroad one sees chronicled in Adventure Cyclist magazine. Still, you tour with the road you have, not the road you might want or wish to have at a later time. So today’s outing was something of a recon on two wheels, and it proved very illuminating indeed.
I wanted to avoid as much of the interstate as possible and so took Las Vegas Street to Highway 85/87, and portions of both roads sucked very much indeed, as in crumbling 55-mph two-laners with little or no shoulder. Nonetheless I survived and picked up I-25 at the Fountain exit. Hoo-boy, was that ever a barrel of laughs. At least the endless parade of tractor-trailer rigs blunted the headwind until I pulled off at the defunct Pikes Peak International Raceway, 22 miles south of the DogHaus.
Coming back was excellent. I not only had a tailwind, I skipped the interstate in favor of Old Pueblo Road, which is a staple of the leg-shavers’ Saturday ride out of Acacia Park downtown. It’s a winding two-laner that heads back to Fountain, and traffic was light, practically non-existent.
At Fountain I briefly considered revisiting the 85/87-to-Las Vegas route and then said screw it, instead picking up the Fountain Creek Regional Trail, which leads to the Pikes Peak Greenway Trail and home. Fat city, especially with a tailwind. More miles, but more smiles.
This, incidentally, is how Brian Gravestock of Old Town Bike Shop and the Bike Clinic Too gets out of Dodge when he has a hankering for some Mexican food in Pueblo, 45 miles south of here. He rides the trail to Fountain, picks up Old Pueblo, and then takes the frontage road where it’s available and the interstate where it’s not.
Sure beats sweltering in the office, awaiting evil tidings.
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