I almost forgot to pass along the word that John Crandall’s Old Town Bike Shop has once again been named the top local bike shop in the Colorado Springs Independent‘s Best of 2010 issue.
And Colorado Running Company recently scored a featurette in the Gazette noting (albeit belatedly) its 10th anniversary plus the opening of a second location up north in the Industrial Christianity Zone. CoRunCo is managed by longtime Dog John “Usuk” O’Neill, who is another portly Irish-American tosspot cluttering up the local sporting scene with his opinions on this, that and the other.
It's a damp fall morning in Bibleburg, and happily for us, all our worldly goods are inside.
The gods are bowling. We can hear them up there like so many really big Lebowskis trying to convert a 7-10 split. And somebody up there must’ve spilled his beverage, because we’re getting our first precip’ in the better part of quite some time. Hallelujah. A trail ride these days leaves my bike coated with a fine brown dust and sets me to wheezing.
The boisterous young swine who apparently have been evicted from the crumbling rental across the alley will not welcome a bracing rain, however. A crew of laborers spent the past few days piling their goods in the tiny back yard, and a mighty big pile it was, too.
The owner has a tragic history and according to Rumor Control was no better at picking husbands than she is at picking tenants. We’ve seen quite a parade of folks come and go at her rental property, most of them night-crawling yowlers who remind me very much of me at a certain age, only with more tattoos. Dogs were much in evidence, and once a child, but mostly it was a progression of shaggy young men with no visible means of support.
The cops paid a visit to the place recently, flanked by a fire truck and ambulance, and shortly thereafter the inhabitants vanished, leaving strangers to stack their worldly goods outdoors. A metal bed frame disappeared overnight, as did a bicycle. A battered Hotpoint range, boxes of cassette tapes and magazines, a stained mattress and a scattering of clothes remained when we sneaked a peek this morning.
They weren’t there for long, though. Word spread and a flock of scavengers in pickup trucks spent most of the morning picking through the refuse for objets d’art. Looks like the recession still has its hooks in some folks, no matter what The Wall Street Journal says.
Last but not least came the trash truck for the items nobody else wanted, even for free. There’s something kind of sad about that.
Still, there’s also something to be said for walking away from a fuck-up instead of packing it along with you like luggage. Here’s another bit of Thomas McGuane, from “Something To Be Desired.” Lucien Taylor and his estranged father are indulging in a bit of unauthorized camping, and as many things do in a McGuane novel, it ends badly.
His father circled the tent slowly, digging a finger into his disordered hair, inventorying the camp, the camp that a few days ago had been erected as a gateway to an improved world.
“We’re looking at under a hundred bucks,” said his father, standing at their camp. “Let’s walk away from it.”
One shot, three seasons: Summer in the lawn, fall in the trees and winter on Pikes Peak.
Deadlines suck. Like The Turk, I’ve been indoors more than I care to be lately, in my case generating bicycle comedy for fun and profit (well, for profit, anyway, and only just barely). This is particularly irksome because we’ve been enjoying a stellar fall here in Bibleburg. It’s 76 right now — 76! — at 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 15. Imagine my amazement.
This will change, as it must. Tomorrow and Sunday look pretty damn’ nice, and wouldn’t y’know, I have to clock in for a couple of shifts in the old VeloBarrel. Come Monday, the weather should become a bit more seasonal, as in 50-something with a chance of showers. Ick.
After that, it’s the Colorado lottery, which means exactly what it sounds like — a total meteorological crapshoot, which I must say keeps life interesting, like the wining jug in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” a punch blended by understudy barkeep Eddie using any booze left in glasses by the patrons of La Ida. A Palace Flophouse roommate, Jones, first pans, then praises the concoction:
“You take whiskey,” he said hurriedly. “You more or less know what you’ll do. A fightin’ guy fights and a cryin’ guy cries, but this —” he said magnanimously — “why, you don’t know whether it’ll run you up a pine tree or start you swimming to Santa Cruz.”
That’s the sad part. Pine trees we got. But Santa Cruz … not so much.
Finally it feels like fall. We had a smidgen of rain late yesterday afternoon, and then the wind sprang up and the leaves began falling. This morning, the furnace clicked on.
I surrendered to the inevitable and skipped the shorts in favor of some cotton samue drawers. My sleeveless summertime wife-beater T bit the dust a couple days ago, but I’m not quite ready to go to the full-on sweatpants-and-socks combo. Not yet.
Steel-cut Irish oatmeal fortified with cinnamon, honey, nuts and fruit is back on the breakfast menu, as are eggs, especially when scrambled with green chile or hardboiled, sliced and served alongside a potato hash involving chopped chile and scallions, diced red bell pepper, minced garlic, Mexican oregano and some leftover protein from the previous night’s dinner (chicken, beef or pork).
Did I mention chile? I made a green chile stew using chicken thighs instead of pork last week and it was killer. Tonight I may whip up some buffalo enchiladas in a red sauce that has its red-hot roots in Chimayo, New Mexico. You can’t stop me.
Also back on the menu is running. I haven’t been doing much of that this summer, but since it’s no longer summer it’s time to suck it up and get back to the ground-pounding. It’s not as nifty as cycling, but it’s easier to do in the snow.
Snow? Did I say that or just think it? Where’d I leave those wool socks?
On a dead-end street.— “It Makes No Difference,” The Band
Sounds like day three of the Interbike trade show, doesn’t it? A convention center full of thousand-yard stares from zombies who are getting too much Scotch and not enough brains.
OK, so I rushed right out and bought some potatoes for the green chile stew I’ll be making this evening. Also a sixer of Bohemia. And I picked up an extra day of work posting news (remotely) from Vegas about stuff I can’t afford and don’t need anyway.
But I did persuade one of my colleagues who is actually at Interbike to spend some time focusing on affordable goodies. There should be plenty now that we’re all shittin’ in the tall cotton again, right? Right.
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