Of Flanders and fences

April 3, 2011April 3, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

No ride for Your Humble Narrator today. See Tour of Flanders. Damn’ fine race. I was able to watch the last 40km live via streaming video courtesy of Eurosport, with almost-English-language commentary from Sean Kelly, and it was a nail-biter right to the finish.

When I wasn’t posting words or pictures I was wrestling with our backyard fence, which is somewhat the worse for wear after one too many windy springs. A couple uprights have gone rotten underground and the bugger flaps like Glenn Beck’s blubbery lips when the wind is from the right quarter, and last night it was a howler. Beat the living snot out of downtown and kept us awake most of the night. It was so bad that a neighbor wondered whether a plane was plummeting to earth somewhere nearby.

Anyway, the fence is a wreck, I hate fence work, and the dude we usually hire to do things I hate has hurt his back and thus is unavailable to make my cushy life even easier. So today I braced the sonofabitch with a couple of 2x3s and then guy-wired it down, using some 14-gauge looped around the uprights and thence to tent pegs pounded into the turf. That ought to keep it in the neighborhood for as long as it takes for our guy to heal up.

Meanwhile, after record-breaking heat yesterday it’s presently snowing sideways from about six different directions at once, yet things remain on fire. Springtime in the Rockies.

And now the rumors behind the news

March 30, 2011March 30, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment

Robin in the maple — It's a little brisk yet this morning and this guy is looking pretty puffy.

Thanks, all, for the birthday wishes. I was buried in deadlines and only now have I been able to rear my ugly head.

Looks like all the usual skullduggery has continued unabated in my absence. NBC News avoids reporting that its owner, General Electric Co., earned $14.2 billion in profits last year but paid no federal income tax (having just signed off on my returns, I can assure you that Mad Dog Media paid through its cold, wet nose).

Steve Benen makes a “Star Wars” reference (“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”) in noting Joe Klein’s apprehension at the “vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers” queuing up to race for the GOP presidential nomination.

And Fox News VP Bill Sammon is full of shit to the sideburns.

Those are the highlights so far this morning. No doubt there will be others. But they’ll have to wait until after I enjoy a nice, long, skull-flushing bike ride.

The new old normal

January 17, 2011January 17, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Racing back to the ranch. — I shot this at sunset out of the driver's-side window. Kids, don't try this at home. Or in your car.

We’re back on track here in Dog Country. The most pressing deadlines have been met, a weekend in the VeloBarrel logged, and the exercise regimen has resumed after a stretch of too many miles behind the wheel and too few in the saddle.

Naturally, the weather had gone to hell during my absence — snow on the roads and ice on the trails had me second-guessing my decision to skip a stop at McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Arizona, on the way home from California.

Oh, well. I’d probably have logged about one decent trail ride and then spent the remainder of my desert sojourn frantically cranking out the word count in some wired java shop, half asleep from trying and failing to nod out on the ground in the old Eureka two-man. That first day of camping is always the worst.

And anyway, the credit card was beginning to pulse and glow in my wallet; wisps of smoke periodically leaked from my hip pocket and I thought it might be wise to take it home, air it out a bit, let it heal.

So, yeah. I celebrated homecoming with a splashy run through the goo on Friday, rode for an hour on Saturday, then for 90 minutes on Sunday, and today — well, today was one of those days that makes me wonder why I don’t live someplace where the weather is a tad less psychotic.

It was sprinkling early on, so Herself and I bundled up for a short run. This seemed wise until about 30 minutes in, when the sun popped out and we both started shedding layers like snakes with leprosy. I was sweating like old dynamite and jogging along with a rain jacket in one hand and my hat in the other, gloves having been stuffed down the tights I wished I had left at home.

The sun being out, I considered a ride, but a squint in the ’fridge disabused me of that notion. It was back in the Subaru and off to the Whole Paycheck, where I tallied a personal best — $258, most of it basics rather than larks’ tongues, wrens’ livers or jaguars’ earlobes.

Like I said, we’re back on track here. Can y’smell what the Dog is cookin’?

No frost on the punkin

October 29, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Lacking arboreal elegance in the backyard, I've installed a bit of performance art. It will perform as soon as I find some playing cards to clip to the spokes.

Ah, Colorado. Twenty degrees yesterday morning, 50 today. We’re looking at a high of 70-something, and good weather is in the forecast (mostly) for the next 10 days. Is it any wonder our rose bushes are seriously confused, budding out in October?

Normally we’ve had at least one round of moderately unpleasant weather by Halloween, but two rounds of slightly subfreezing temps hardly qualify.

This is good news for Democrats come Tuesday’s midterms, as conventional wisdom is that we’re all too fearful of inclement weather to venture outdoors on Election Day, preferring instead to huddle communally in our organic hemp houses, chuckling as NPR sacks its uppity conservatives, teaching our kids to be gay and e-mailing detailed aerial photos of nearby military installations to Al Jazeera.

It’s also good news for those of us who have backyards bereft of trees. A neighbor has a young maple she’d like to get rid of before it cracks her sidewalk, and since we seem to be enjoying fine weather for transplantation, we may adopt it. The yard looks naked without trees, as if somehow there is more of it to mow.

If a tree falls …

October 26, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

We were here when it fell, and we heard it. The last tree standing in our back yard has been sawn down and hauled away in chunks.

Turkish loved that crabapple tree, and so did Miss Mia Sopaipilla. It was fine for climbing, and occasionally held a toothsome squirrel or two.

We two-legged sorts were less enamored of it — it shat bitter green apples all over the yard each fall when it was in sound health — but it was lovely to look at until fire blight carried it off, as it did the smaller ornamental apple next to the driveway.

Before that it was either aphids or a bacterial infection that did in the small stand of black walnuts by the fence. These were a favorite of the late Chairman Meow, who used them to access the pergola over the deck, so she could keep an eye on things. She always did like heights.

I miss the Chairman, and I miss the trees, too.