Category: Kvetching

Thorazine is on my Xmas list

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla views with alarm
"You said a bad word," says Mia. "And another. And another. And another. ..."

What’s been going on around here, you ask?

Well, let me think here for a minute. Hmm. …

We had the big Thanksgiving Day U-turn from Bibleburg to Fort Collins and back on Thursday; a full day of VeloNewsery plus dinner with our across-the-street neighbors Larry, Jill and Wendy on Friday; lunch with (and saying adios to) our wonderful next-door neighbor Judy on Saturday, with an extra-large side of work; and work work work on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, culminating in yet another dinner with friends tonight, a northern New Mexican project to which I tended between bouts of pixel-pushing for the Boulder boyos.

Whew. Long week for an old dog. And it ain’t over yet.

As you might imagine, something’s had to give around here, and that something is exercise. My ass is approaching critical mass, and I ain’t talking about the traffic-snarling bicycle parade, either.

I did sneak out for a 20-minute “run” this afternoon before putting the beans on the stove. Folks probably thought they were seeing a particularly ugly, sluggish zombie on the prowl.

And I probably managed to sweat off a couple of grams running around the kitchen, chopping, mincing, slicing, sautéing and stirring bits of this and that until in desperation, running out of time, I finally dialed down the menu from cheese enchiladas in green sauce with one side of beans in chipotle and another of red chile roasted potatoes to a bare-bones platter — bean burritos smothered in green with a side of the aforementioned spuds.

The bad news is, I probably put those lost grams right back on by going back for seconds. Plus pie. Did I mention pie? Oh, Lord.

Meanwhile, we will return to our regularly scheduled snark come Thursday, when I have a day off — and the weatherman is calling for wind-driven snow and a high in the 20s. I foresee much grumbling and the first stationary-trainer ride of the season, not necessarily in that order.

Of Flanders and fences

~ 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.

Dude, where’s my spring?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Ho hum
The Turk' finds our pre-spring weather too tedious for words.

Another birthday in the books. Funny, I don’t feel a day over 57.

I spent the joyous occasion hunkered down in the titanium and carbon fiber VeloBarrel, which had sprung a few leaks on Saturday after a software update. Nevertheless, I managed to abandon my post for 90 minutes both days for the never-ending struggle against my inner fat bastard. And there was whiskey last night.

Meanwhile, our typically psychotic spring weather continues. Gray skies, freezing fog, light snow and/or rain in the morning, semi-sunny and fitty-sumpin’ in the afternoon. For a guy who likes to take his exercise around 10 in the morning this creates something of a problem — as in, how to avoid the sort of embarrassing shrinkage that makes a guy look like a pudgy, bald-headed Ken doll in Lycra.

The solution so far has been to ride in the afternoon, when it’s warmish. But I’m a creature of habit. Get up at 7, caffeinate, eat a little sumpin’-sumpin’, write a bit of paying copy or rough out a cartoon, then tug on the bibs and go scare some iPlodders on the bike path at 10 a.m. sharp. Post-ride, I get back after the money-making, sit zazen, rustle up some vittles, have a dram or two or three, enjoy a bit of electronic entertainment and hit the hay.

I mean, what’s the deal here? All I’ve ever asked of the universe is that I have everything exactly the way I like it. Sheesh.

Real wool socks and virtual ravioli

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Thank Buddha for wool socks. The only way to get a gas flame around the DogHaus today is to light one’s own farts.

Happily, it is October, not February — which means it’s about 55 outside and 65 inside as we speak at 10 a.m. Bibleburg time. That ain’t bad, though I confess I miss our old Weirdcliffe wood stove. It, unlike our rooftop solar unit here, worked even on cloudy Sunday mornings like this one.

Meanwhile, Friend of Dogpatch Larry T. sends word of his raviolipalooza. Watch and weep as you nibble your shredded wheat.

Winter, discontent, etc.

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Well, son of a bitch. There is a winter storm warning between me and points south. It seems a pile of snow is anticipated in Trinidad, Sex Change Capital of the World, and if it closes Raton Pass I will be in something of a time bind.

I do have a substantial cushion — I don’t really need to be in Tucson until Saturday afternoon. But I like to take my time on road trips, savoring this, that and the other, and this friggin’ storm may cost me some much-anticipated eating, drinking and soaking time in Santa Fe.

At moments like this I can understand why some people fly. Buy the ticket, check your luggage, fork over $175 each way to take a bike along, sample any number of airborne viruses while strapped down in your pressurized aluminum tube, reassemble the bike at your destination — assuming that (a) it and your toolkit get there, and (b) none of your stuff is destroyed — do your ride, then repeat the whole process in reverse, only this time with a severe upper-respiratory infection and an $8,000 bike with a dent in the down tube and an inexplicable stain on the saddle.

Y’know, come to think of it, driving a Subaru Forester packed to the gunwales with bike crap, journalism tools and camping gear through blizzard conditions seems kind of pleasurable by comparison.