Category: Journalism

Change in the weather

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Just a hint of color, nothing like fall in Ottawa, where I spent a few years as a kid.
Just a hint of color, nothing like fall in Ottawa, where I spent a few years as a kid.

Hm. The old updates aren’t exactly coming fast and furious, are they? Probably because there isn’t anything particularly edifying about a 55-year-old tosspost chained to a desk, doing an actual job of work for the first time in recent memory.

I’m on my seventh consecutive day in the barrel at VeloNews.com and won’t get out until Tuesday, so amusing digressions, quips and observations will be few and far between for a couple more days at least. We have the Vuelta a España, the Tour of Missouri, the Tour of Britain, the Tour de l’Avenir, Univest GP and even the world military cycling championships going on all at the same time, all in different time zones, and it makes for a fairly long shift, what with live updates, stage reports, results, photo galleries, rider diaries and all the other bells and whistles that draw eyeballs and keep kibble in an old dog’s dish.

I don’t remember the last time I rode a bike, to be honest. I have gotten out for a few hikes, walks, lurches and staggers, and today’s came in a light rain, with cloudy skies, temperatures in the 60s and leaves on the deck. It was something of a shock to my system, as we haven’t really had what I would call a summer.

Mia Sopaipilla doing her Maltese Falcon impersonation.
Mia Sopaipilla doing her Maltese Falcon impersonation.

Can it be fall already? Yep. Disregard the calendar. If we had a woodstove, I would be feeding it a smidgen of aspen and cedar instead of tapping away at the keyboard, waiting for the furnace to click on. It’s about 68 in the office, even with two large flat-panel monitors and a G4 Power Mac cranking out the BTUs. I’m actually wearing socks in the house. Oh, God.

You know it’s brisk when Miss Mia Sopaipilla takes to sitting atop the Motorola DSL modem and Turkish curls up on the boss-fella’s shorts. The big galoot even wanted some time in the actual lap today, which is a sure sign of a tough winter ahead, the Farmer’s Almanac be damned.

Herself is off to some soiree in Mile High, so it’s just me, the cats and VeloNews.com for a few hours. Last night’s buffalo tacos will enjoy a return engagement this evening, as will a few drams of Castillo de Monséran 2007 to ward off the grippe.

Turkish naps in a virtual lap.
Turkish naps in a virtual lap.

If all goes well I will be a free man on Tuesday, and the comedy will resume shortly thereafter. Until Interbike, that is, when it’s back in the barrel for Your Humble Narrator.

What does one drink to ward off a trade show? I used to use single-malt Scotch, but that was in Vegas, when the publisher was buying.

Labor Day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
"Is he bitching again?" asks Miss Mia Sopaipilla from her perch atop the fridge. "Give him some cream and maybe he'll settle down. It always works for me."
"Is he bitching again?" asks Miss Mia Sopaipilla from her perch atop the fridge. "Give him some cream and maybe he'll settle down. It always works for me."

“Labor” Day is exactly right. I labored for the better part of quite some time, with a short break for grilling a couple New York strips in the dark (I had to take a table lamp outside to see what the hell I was doing). It was a double Monday in Monday sauce, with a side of Monday, a couple glasses of Monday, and Monday with Monday frosting for dessert. But the steaks were OK.

There was racing in Spain, France, Missouri and Georgia, with live updates, race reports, results and photo galleries. This makes for a longish day when you’re the only guy posting, especially when you throw in a couple of technical difficulties for flavor, and thus I’m feeling a bit cross-eyed this morning.

I finally got out for a short walk around 11 p.m. or so. It was cool and quiet, just what the doctor ordered, especially since it looks like more of the same today. We’ll have another guy in the barrel, which should help. Maybe I can even get out to ride my own bike sometime.

Tim Johnson (OUCH-Maxxis) said yesterday that he’s looking forward to cyclo-cross season. I couldn’t agree more. ‘Cross races don’t start with doomed breaks, finish with field sprints or drag on for three weeks.

Splash and crash

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

‘Tis a fine soft day, as my bog-trotting ancestors said, before they wised up and hopped a boat for Americay. The calendar read August 30, but when I slipped out for a quick ride between bouts of journalism it wasn’t sunscreen I was wearing, but a long-sleeved jersey and undershirt, bibs, knee warmers and long-fingered gloves. I even had a rain jacket stuffed in one pocket, and I needed it, too.

But I’ll tell you this: An hour of soggy cycling beat the mortal shit out of slouching in the office chair, watching the VeloNews.com server farm stumble along, slower than a drunk Repuglican congressman reading health-care legislation. I could get the day’s cycling news out faster with an arthritic carrier pigeon.

• Late update: Someone finally broke out the Bravo Foxtrot Hotel and gave the VN server hamster a good swat upside his pointy little head, waking his dumb ass up just in time for the finale of the U.S. pro road race in Greenville, S.C. Chapeau to George Hincapie for his third stars and stripes jersey. Now if that goddamn limp-winged pigeon will just flutter back here with a race report and some pix, I can post the sonsabitches and get about the serious business of drinking a little Spanish red and eating posole.

Don’t touch that dial

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

In the never-ending quest to determine Just Exactly What the Fuck Is It That You People Want, NPR.org will be potting down the audio and ramping up the written reportage.

Instead of short paragraphs that direct users to click on links to audio reports taken from NPR’s programs, the Web site will now offer fully reported text versions of articles, so users can click from their cubicles.

Says Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president and general manager of NPR Digital Media, in a chat with The New York Times: “We think the midday experience is much more text-driven.”

He may be onto something there. The cube farmers turn in by the jillions at VeloNews.com to catch Charles Pelkey’s text-based live updates during major events, such as the recently concluded Astana-Saxo Bank training ride around France. But our new corporate management is headed in the other direction, emphasizing VN.com’s first tentative steps into video, called VeloCenter.

I appreciate the work that goes into VeloCenter, but I don’t watch it. I’m not the prototypical sports fan — I can’t watch an event, then read about it, then watch a bunch of people talking about it. It’s a bike race, f’chrissakes. But then we don’t even have cable. Our primary video-delivery system is a rabbit-ears antenna from (wait for it) RadioShack.

And that’s the way it is. For now, anyway. Just what the fuck is it that you people want? When we find out, we’ll let you know.