Category: Mad Dogs & Irishmen

Éirinn go Brách

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

Imagine my surprise. You can teach an old race new tricks.

After just one day of the same ol’, same ol’ — line up the choo-choo, hop aboard, let your boyos break everyone’s legs before you lop off their heads in the final 5km — the peloton finally muttered, collectively, “Fuck that shit,” and put the boots to Team Sky from the gun.

And an Irishman won the stage, which makes it so much sweeter. If there’s anything a Mick loves more than a free pint of the black, it’s a Limey on the deck where a bold lad can give him a bit of the auld shoe leather. A right proper hooley it was.

Sure, Zoom-Zoom Froome is still in yellow. But today is about the wearin’ of the green.

Vulneratus non victus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
HTFU
The bracelet says “Harden the Fuck Up.” That’s Aussie for “Vulneratus non victus.”

It means “Wounded, not conquered,” and it’s the O’Grady family motto. ’Tis a suitable one for Stuart O’Grady, who has broken nearly every bone in his body at least once in his long tour of duty as a pro cyclist. (He has another, of course, part of which you can see in the wristband I’m wearing.)

Happily, today Stuey was in fine fettle and helped drive the Orica-GreenEdge squad to victory in the team time trial at the 2013 Tour de France. The Aussie squad nipped the world champions in that discipline, Omega Pharma-Quick Step, by less than a second.

Alas, Cannondale’s Ted King was less fit today. Battered and bruised from that stage-1 crash, he was quickly dropped by his team, rode in alone, and saw insult piled atop injury when the wankers who run the race decided that he had finished outside the time cut, a hard-hearted and dubious ruling that drew widespread condemnation from riders, journos and fans.

It’s a bitter ending to King’s first Tour. But Stuey’s proof that a wound need not spell defeat. He’ll be back.

Up the rebels!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Bog Trotters jersey
The famous Bog Trotters jersey, which sold about as well as Frankenhein’s fantasies about Big Tex once the deal went down.

It beats me how a guy with no job can have so little free time.

Today’s simple two-hour chore turned into a seven-hour slog, and tomorrow could be worse. Friday is traditionally a day under which PR types hope to bury unpleasant stories, and there are still a few of them shambling around out there post-Halloween, Lycra zombies badly in need of a hotloaded .44 Magnum round to the brain.

Today’s tidings brought a smile to my face, however. It seems that Paul Kimmage has filed a complaint against Fat Paddy and Frankenhein, the first for being a Guinness-soaked mouth attached to a prolapsed asshole with a reverse flow and no filtering apparatus in between, and the second for being a shameless striapach whose teeth fold back at the flip of a wooden nickel.

I considered it a delightful riposte to these spalpeens for having brought a similar action against the crusading Irish journo’ for merely calling them what they are. And so today, in Kimmage’s honor, I wore my Bog Trotters jersey on the daily ride, with a green headrag under the old brain bucket.

Some days previous I also kicked in a smallish sum to Kimmage’s defense fund, managed by the merry band of misfits at Cyclismas. It’s some of the best money I’ve ever spent outside a pub, especially considering that Fat Paddy and Frankenhein get to enjoy the hangover.

Public service announcement

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

I don’t often make pitches like this, but a friend and colleague finds himself in something of a financial hole and I’d like to help some other friends throw him a long green rope.

Patrick Brady, the guiding light behind the website Red Kite Prayer, provided space and funds to Charles Pelkey and John Wilcockson last year when they found themselves abruptly double-flatted with no spares in three-legged-pit-bull country. Now Padraig himself is in something of a pickle, having kissed the planet at speed and, as a consequence, incurred some medical bills to which the insurance company is giving the old ho ho ho.

Long story short, another friend is soliciting small donations on Padraig’s behalf — basically, the equivalent of a tasty microbrew that one might buy for a riding buddy — and if you feel moved to kick in a fin or two I will see to it that he personally kisses you on the lips once his lips are more or less back where they belong. That is all.

Home again, home again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Miss me? I drove to California for Theresa Coursey’s memorial service, and while it was swell to be among friends, people I hadn’t seen in a spell, a guy likes everyone to be present and accounted for, and we were one fine woman short.

Theresa’s service drew a standing-room-only crowd, the sort we’d all secretly like to have, but few of us deserve. Theresa had it coming. Her husband and their children all spoke, and if there was a dry eye in the house it was not one of mine.

Afterward we ate and drank, talked and took long walks, and after a few days together we all scattered, returning to our lives in Prescott, Philly, Tempe, New York, Colorado. But I’m still thinking of Theresa, wishing I’d spent more time around her, and I know I’m not alone.

Being present these days is not always easy, but it remains vital. In “Taking the Path of Zen,” the late Robert Aitken Roshi recounted the evening message of sesshin as given at Hawaii’s Diamond Sangha:

I beg to urge you, everyone:

Life-and-death is a grave matter,

all things pass quickly away;

each of us must be completely alert:

never neglectful, never indulgent.

That’s my evening message to you. In the morning, the comedy will resume.