Category: Just mumbling along

I’d rather push my Toyota than . . .

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Twenty-six years old and it still starts — if one knows which demons to invoke.
Twenty-six years old and it still starts — if one knows which demons to invoke.

It must be International Try to Start Your Piece of Shit Truck Day.

I needed to haul the Voodoo down to Old Town for transformation into a flat-bar bike with thumbshifter (courtesy of Paul’s Thumbies) so I can get back to riding the road sometime soon (I hope). Toward that end, I was trying to fire up the White Tornado, my neglected and carbureted 1983 Toyota 4WD longbed pickup, ’cause it’s easier to slide a bike into its 6-foot bed one-handed than it is to park one on the Subaru Forester’s roof rack.

The 2005 Subie, on the other hand, is easier to start. Twist the key and off you go. The Toyota … not so much, especially if it’s been nestled up to the curb for a few weeks of wintry weather.

As I was cranking away, stomping rhythmically on the accelerator while mumbling various incantations and imprecations, I heard some other vehicle trying to harmonize with mine. Down the block, with its hood up, sat a Ford 100 Custom Cab of indeterminate age, its owner, like me, betting against the ravages of time, neglect and weather.

I eventually got my beater going, so I guess I win. But his has a better paint job, and collector’s plates, too, so it looks much niftier sitting immobile against the curb.

Happy Thanksgiving (hold the turkey, please)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla's no turkey — when it's chilly, she likes to toast her po-po on the DSL modem.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla's no turkey — when it's chilly, she likes to toast her po-po on the DSL modem.

Thanksgiving is always a tad offbeat around the DogHaus. Turkey is rarely on the menu, though as an omnivore I have nothing against consuming them. As Freewheeling Franklin once said during an argument between Phineas and Fat Freddy, “Naw, it’s okay to eat turkeys. That’s just God’s way of punishing them for being so stupid.”

I’m just naturally contrary, I suppose. If everyone else is going that way, well, I’m going this way. Nothing personal. It just looks less crowded over there.

So today Herself and I, joined by the Sis and Bro’-in Law, will enjoy chicken cacciatore over fettuccine with sides of arugula with roasted red pepper, green beans in a soy-sesame seed-garlic sauce, and ciabatta with dipping oil. Raspberry cobbler for dessert.

And wine, of course. Not Italian (there he goes again).  We have a French white (Domaine du Tariquet 2008), a Spanish rosé (Protocolo 2007) and a couple of French reds (Domaine des Rozets Coteaux du Tricastin 2007 and Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2009).

Here’s hoping you and yours have lots to be thankful for today. Miss Mia Sopaipilla certainly does. For starters, she’s thankful to have a fine Motorola DSL modem to sit upon on chilly November mornings.

Giant steps

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

OK, I’m a week into my disfigurement (disfingerment?) and I can see it’s gonna be a long healing process, just like the time I dislocated the thumb — which, ironically, shares a hand with the splinted middle finger and met its fate a long stone’s throw from where the birdie bit the dust, on a technical bit of trail near Lazy Land in Palmer Park.

My choice of stationary-trainer tunes has come in for some light criticism, so I’m turning to you, my small, deeply disturbed following, for your advice on a soundtrack for an extended Tour de Living Room. I did 70 minutes on the Giant Tempo yesterday and will probably be ramping that up to two hours, so I need a shitload of music and it can’t all be redneck rock, though I have some Charlie Daniels in reserve for emergencies.

Meanwhile, the wizards at VeloNews.com are still stomping bugs at the new digs. Seems IE6 doesn’t like the new site’s calendar and we have a significant number of prehistoric readers who insist on logging on via abacus, smoke signal or log drum. Christ, what’s next? “Optimized for Mosaic?”

A Giant pain in the ass

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

Feh. Forty-something and sunny and what am I doing? The Tour to Nowhere in the living room on our Giant Tempo trainer. An hour and 10 minutes’ worth.

Lord, I woke up this mornin', had them Statesboro Blues.
Lord, I woke up this mornin', had them Statesboro Blues.

Thank God for my iPod, the Allman Brothers Band and their compilation “A Decade of Hits: 1969-1979.” It’s the best indoor cycling music ever recorded and has seen me through many a grim living-room sweat-fest since its release in 1991.

I wrote a column about it once, if memory serves. I’ll see if I can dig the sumbitch up from the archives, as that will be easier than typing something original with one of my birdies grounded.

• Late update: Well, whaddaya know. Even a dumb dog digs up a bone now and then. But the Allman Brothers album was only one part of the column, not the entire topic. Here it is — a blast from the past, going all the way back to 2002, when we lived on a rocky outcropping in the Wet Mountains, 10 snowy miles from Weirdcliffe.

Blast from the past (and present)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

The FBI croaked what it described as the leader of a Muslim fundamentalist group today during a series of raids in Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the late Luqman Ameen Abdullah was the leader of a group that calls itself “Ummah, a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law-governed state within the United States.”

What caught my eye was that the Ummah is said to be ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, the former Black Panther leader who is serving big, bad time — as in life without — at the Supermax outside Florence, Colorado, for shooting two cops in Georgia, one of whom died.

You can scope out his New York Times rap sheet here, and his Wikipedia page here.

How long before Flush Limburger links him to Obama?