Category: Just mumbling along

Of websites and worksites

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
The resurrection of the basement is under way.
The resurrection of the basement is under way.

I remember when there used to be something called “the off-season.” No longer. Websites don’t like downtime, and so there’s always something needs doing over at VeloNews.com.

My days in the barrel as online editor at large are Monday and Wednesday. Come important events, like the Amgen Tour of California or any of the grand tours, it’s all hands on deck for the duration of the cruise.

It’s not physically demanding work; there’s no heavy lifting to strain the back, though calluses on the brain are a common occupational injury. But it can be wearisome, especially amid distraction and when combined with other tasks.

The resurrection of the basement has begun with a vengeance, and work crews have been scuttling in and out of there like roaches, dismantling the futon and carting it away to storage, replacing drywall and sealing concrete. This both disturbs and fascinates the cats, who as a consequence have been spending far too much time confined to my office. Turkish loathes and despises all characters of the two-legged persuasion, while Mia just wants to gallop downstairs and leap into the middle of it all.

So yesterday I had a basement full of drywallers and an office full of cats while I pushed pixels around the website in consultation with various colleagues, banged out two columns and a cartoon for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News and tried to diagnose a couple fresh computer issues that popped up like virtual Whack-a-Moles (O, the joys of working on 10-year-old equipment). No healthy, restorative exercise was to be had, but there were a couple bottles of wine in the kitchen and so recreation of a sort was available.

Today it’s more drywallers, and perhaps carpet and vinyl selection. But that’s not until the afternoon. And so with all deadlines met and no pixel-pushing until Monday, I think I’ll get outdoors for a couple hours and run a little fresh air through my headgear.

Late update: Damn, leave the office for an hour and look what happens: E.W. Scripps Co. throws the Rocky Mountain News on the scrapheap. I know at least one journo’ there — Chas Chamberlin, a former VeloNews art director — and I sure hope he can land on his feet. It’s an evil job market out there for us ink-stained wretches. But it looks like The Denver Post is picking up a few lucky sorts.

Meanwhile, Google is sticking a toe in the local-news market with Patch, a new online venture that aims to provide local reportage in backwaters ignored by cash-strapped newspapers. Public service or another step on Google’s march to global domination? We report, you decide. Thanks and a tip of the green eyeshade to Indiedoc on Twitter.

Bonjour, mon sewer

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Tales from the Shitworks, Part II: We’re on our third vinyl-floor-removal dude. He took a shot at the title with what looked like a spade, then gave up and left to fetch what he called “a ripper stripper,” some class of power chisel that scared the piss out of the cats but did the job on the laundry-room floor.

Now we have to get the futon out of there somehow so the crew can take up the rest of the carpet. I never liked the giant sonofabitch anyway, and I like it less now that I have to find a way of getting it up our narrow stairwell and out the back door. It was assembled downstairs when we bought it, and thus disassembly is indicated. With an ax.

Late update: The Intertubes are all atwitter with word that Lance Armstrong will not be attending Don Catlin’s Anti-Doping Science Institute. Frankly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I understand Lance has a note from his mom.

Dog day afternoon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Gave myself the day off in honor of William S. Burroughs’ birthday. I can do that, because Mad Dog Media is a one-dog shop. Unsnap the leash and off I go.

It being 60-something and sunny, I broke out Old Reliable, my Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocross, and rode the trail to Fountain and back. It’s about a two-hour U-turn, if you throw in a few didos on the return leg, like a lap of Monument Valley Park for extra vitamin-D absorption.

A couple largish downed trees this side of Highway 85 require a quick zig and zag; a short pair of run-ups around a washed-out concrete climb follow. Other than that it’s smooth sailing. A guy could do it on a road bike. Not me, though. Not as long as I have five ‘cross bikes taking up space in the garage. Put those fat bastards to work and save the skinny rubber for the streets.

Ike got a fine crop of tulips to keep her company last spring.
Ike got a fine crop of tulips to keep her company last spring.

A bit of drama greeted me on my return home. An elderly neighbor needed an assist with her equally aged greyhound, which has been having balance issues and today lost control of its front legs. Being creakily past my own prime I commiserated briefly and then helped load the dog into her car for a trip to the vet. She was expecting bad news and got it. The vet prescribed a dose of steroids, but confessed it was a delaying action, the equivalent of locking up the cantis on a sandy descent. You may slow that long downhill slide but you ain’t gonna stop it.

Upset me, it did, in part because I have a beloved cat — Ike, a.k.a. Chairman Meow — buried in the back yard. I miss any one of my departed animal pals more than all of my deceased relatives. So I showered the grit off and went to Trinity Brewing Company for a couple of IPAs and a bowl of their mac’ and cheese. I’d never been there, and the online reviews were not encouraging, but I was not in the mood for my usual haunts, so I took a chance and it paid off. Good beer — the brewmaster used to whip up the popskull over at Bristol Brewing — and a friendly, attentive staff. Just what the doctor — or, in this case, the vet — ordered.

20 and counting

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
It's not all strip malls, fast-food joints and Focus on the Family here in Bibleburg.
It's not all strip malls, fast-food joints and Focus on the Family here in Bibleburg.

It struck me today that most of my recent photos have been of cats, various foodstuffs and other items found ’round the house, and as a consequence you may think I never leave the place. Not true.

For example, instead of hewing strictly to my deadlines, today I broke out a mud-encrusted Steelman Eurocross and went for a short ride in the sunshine, up to around Mesa and 31st, where the bike path gives some spectacular views of the Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak.

Then I rolled back to the ranch and whipped out the cartoon marking my 20th anniversary of drawing same for VeloNews. And no, you can’t see it. Not unless you’re a subscriber, a buyer of newsstand copies, or patient.

Back in 1989, I was running out of rope at The New Mexican in Santa Fe and less interested in cartooning than in the VeloNews managing editor’s job. I applied for it, got an interview, and was turned down for my lack of magazine experience (12 years of newspapering as a reporter and editor was worth exactly jack shit).

But the Trio — the troika of owners, which then included Felix Magowan, John Wilcockson and David Walls — said they would have no objection to my banging out some editorial cartoons for the mag. That worked out pretty well for all of us, “us” not counting the advertisers, various functionaries at cycling’s governing bodies and anyone else with an impacted sense of humor. The Trio hired Tim Johnson as ME, and a fine job he did, too, before they airbrushed him out of the company portrait. And I got to poke fun at people for 20 years.

I wouldn’t have lasted 20 months in that ME’s job. Too much like work, don’t you know. And I’ve always been much better than Tim at pissing people off.

Late update: Speaking of work, as I reached one milestone an old friend and colleague reached another — fellow writer and copy editor Hal Walter learned today that two weeks hence his services will no longer be required at The Pueblo Chieftain. The job was beneath him, true — The Chieftain should be printed on soft, perforated rolls of tissue and hung in toilet stalls so that it may be put to the use for which it is best suited — but nevertheless it paid in American money, so Hal will be examining his options, as he has a wife, son and several dogs, cats and burros to support. You can keep up with his doings via his blog, Hardscrabble Times. Indeed they are.

Home for the holidays

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Herself and I are fresh back from a run through Monument Valley Park. While taking the scenic route home along an east-west set of railroad tracks, I noticed that the homeless folks quartered here, generally under a bridge or in various makeshift shelters barely masked by sparse foliage, got themselves a gift from Santa this Christmas — a pair of sturdy dome tents, one large, one small.