Category: Memories

Notes from the road, part 3

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
A soggy “see ya later” to Bibleburg.

I was thrice blessed as I prepared to leave Bibleburg last Wednesday, an hour earlier than I had planned.

First, I had slept in a bed, in a room, not in my car parked in front of the hotel. I gave a thumbs-up to the stealth camper I spotted as I left to get coffee, for hiding in plain sight in the rain-drenched parking lot. But s/he got two thumbs down for being so obvious about it: a towel tucked into the top of a cracked rear window; clothing, water jugs, and other “not a guest here” hints strewn all over the front seats; and so on. Respect your adversary, dude.

Could’ve been a hotel employee, times being what they are. But still, style counts.

Second, the Starbucks across the road had that very morning begun opening at 5 a.m. instead of 6. Ordinarily I brew my own coffee on the road, but lately the hotels inflict these Keurig monstrosities upon us instead of mini-coffeemakers whose carafes can be repurposed for an AeroPress brew.

Pity that the smoke detectors dislike my little MSR IsoPro camp stove. “Outside use only,” kids. Just ask the guest in the Honda Hilton.

And finally, third: I was leaving Bibleburg an hour earlier than I had planned.

I always like leaving the B-burg, and leaving early is even better than not going there at all. I find myself in sympathy with my mom, who when we were transferred there in 1967 looked at downtown through a prism of memory from the 1940s and recoiled.

Yes, they let this work at the Gazette. I guess they really were libertarians.

Ten years later a colleague at the Gazette would say that anything east of Hancock Avenue wasn’t Colorado Springs, and mom would’ve agreed. I certainly did.

In my Gazette years I was living in an old Victorian carved into apartments at Cascade and San Miguel, right next door to The Colorado College, just north of what was still called “downtown.”

But when the O’Gradys first arrived we set up housekeeping east of Academy Boulevard, 3.5 miles into the prairie from my colleague’s Hancock border. Nearly six decades later, South Loring Circle feels almost urban.

The town goes ever on and on, to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins. In this instance toward Kansas, not Mordor, though the differences between the two may be undetectable to political scientists. (Hint: Mordor had mountains.)

I’ve left the place more times than anywhere else, which probably says more about me than it does about B-burg. And this trip I was ready to skedaddle again after just four days. The rain, the postapocalyptic state of the roads, the endless high-speed conga line of traffic — two final tallboys of Starbucks and I was on my way.

• • •

It was hairy from jump. Pitch black and still raining, with fog to boot, and despite mopping all my windows and mirrors with a towel before leaving I was flying blind for a few scary minutes until the a/c defogged the glass. Not optimal when you’re merging onto I-25 from Briargate Parkway at 75 mph with a few thousand of your closest — and I mean closest, as in halfway into the hatchback — friends.

Paging Graham Watson. …

The weather remained gloomy. I didn’t bother putting on sunglasses until I was past Raton. Creeks had become rivers and rivers were inland seas. Ponds appeared magically like Brigadoon. Folks who parked their trailers in low-lying areas found themselves with rudderless houseboats.

There were enough sunflowers at roadside for a regiment of Graham Watsons, guarded by ravens perched on fenceposts. Lots of fat black cattle living large in the tall salad. I fought the urge to stop at McDonald’s and instead yelled “Go home!” at vehicles with Texas plates.

Skidmarks demarking various unscheduled off-ramps to left and right with “Damaged Guardrail Ahead” signs for headstones. A giant shitbox bearing a plate reading “IH8UALL.” Making America great again, one vanity plate at a time.

My Steelman puddle-jumper, sans puddles.

In six hours flat, with one stop for gas, I was back at the ranch. My training-log entry for the day reads, simply, “Nothing.”

But the next day I was on the old Steelman I’d hauled with me to Bibleburg, tooling around the sun-splashed Elena Gallegos Open Space, a smile on my lips and a song in my heart.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jog; the desert’s the place for this salty ol’ dog.

Notes from the road, part 2

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
The O’Grady family mansion, circa 2025. I like what the latest owners have done with the place.

When someone asks me, “Where are you from?” I reply: “We were an Air Force family. Moved around a lot. I’m not really ‘from’ anywhere.”

But if I am “from” somewhere, it’s probably Colorado Springs.

Several versions of me have lived there off and on since 1967, when the old man got transferred for the final time, from Randolph AFB, Texas, to Ent AFB, Colo.

The Mitchell High School swim team in 1970, the year we went 11-0. Find the dork, win a prize.

Junior-high dork. High-school swimmer, gradually making the transition from dork to drinker and doper. College dropout sampling the blue-collar lifestyle. Rookie newspaperman. Rookie freelancer, freshly married, the two of us trying to make a few bucks while riding herd on my demented mom for free rent in the family castle. Pro freelancer, in our own home, the wife having reinvented herself as a librarian after a whirlwind tour of the University of Denver’s masters program. The drugs were long since in the rear view, and before we left for Albuquerque in 2014 the tonsil polish would be history, too.

I make my tour of duty there about a quarter-century, all told, which may be a long-enough stretch for Bibleburg to qualify as a hometown. For sure I have a love-hate relationship with the place.

And isn’t that practically the dictionary definition of “home?”

The place has a reputation for conservatism, which is ironic, in that the last actual conservative to run the joint was its founder, Gen. William Jackson Palmer, who saw to it that his successors would not be permitted to plant endless hectares of ticky-tacky rooftops and retail on every square inch of the place when he was gone.

Monument Valley Park, briefly the home of the Mad Dog cyclocrosses.

His legacy includes the donation of land for Monument Valley Park, North Cheyenne Cañon Park, Palmer Park, and Bear Creek Cañon Park, all of them stellar places for riding the ol’ bikey-bike or just hanging around in. He founded the Gazette, too, but we can hardly blame him for what happened there.

The place has been a haven for Birchers, Klansmen, and Nazis in my own lifetime, along with various tribes of generic libertarian fuckwits whose fontanelles closed up too soon (see Doug Lamborn, et al.). Indeed, there was a time when our cyclocrosses in Palmer’s parks drew about half the entrants typical of a Boulder or Denver race, because those posie-sniffing tree-huggers were afeared someone might beat some Jesus Goldwater into them if ever they dared venture south of the Palmer Divide.

In the Springs, “conservative” means “penny-wise, pound-foolish,” or in the vernacular, “We ain’t paying for shit until it breaks, and maybe not even then.”

Back in 2010, the city was shutting off streetlights — 8,000 to 10,000 of them — to save money, suggesting that anyone who liked to be able to see the muggers creeping up on them should “adopt” their friendly neighborhood light.

The adoption fee “may be tax-deductible,” one city mouthpiece noted, suggesting donors “consult a tax expert.” Because nobody wants to pay taxes to keep the fucking lights on, amirite?

Part of our old circuit in Bear Creek Regional Park.

During my most recent visit, it seemed nearly every street in town was either broken or being rebuilt. Whether this was due to decades of “conservatism” or the ravages of an unusually wet summer remains a mystery. I know the town pretty well and have more than one way to get from point A to point Z. But this trip all the letters of the alphabet were buried under orange cones.

Happily, Palmer’s parks seemed in great shape as per usual. In Monument Valley Park, I saw hard-hats using the trail-maintenance equivalent of ice-rink Zambonis to groom the goo right out of them.

Classic Bibleburg, man. Can’t keep the lights on, the fascists out, or the potholes patched, but when it comes to Gen. Palmer’s parks, it’s nothing but happy trails to you. He must’ve written it into his will.

Notes from the road

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Water? In the Rio? ¡Que milagro!

In Alamosa, the Rio Grande is actually a rio.

Killing time between breakfast and burial last Saturday I drove out State Avenue to River Road and parked at a little pullout across from the Cattails Golf Course, where a couple sat chatting as a kid fished.

Alamosa didn’t seem much changed from 1971, when I was a freshman at Adams State College, the only school in the state that would have me.

The school is called Adams State University now, but that seems a little grandiose. It’s still a small college in a small town, and the dorms — from the outside, anyway — seemed untouched, save by the ravages of time and undergraduates.

Coronado Hall, undated; shoplifted from the Adams State website.

Coronado Hall still has that generic Fifties-to-Seventies vibe. Could be anything from a budget apartment building in a Seventies sitcom to a residential treatment facility to a nursing home.

But the McCurry-Savage-Moffat-Houtchens L-block apartments would embarrass an East German, even before the Berlin Wall came down.

I took no pix of this academic detour down memory lane, not eager to be dubbed an elderly perv’, or worse, a narc.

“Do you have any children here, sir?”

“Uh, no, officer, not that I know of. If I did, they’d be in their 50s, and I could see their pictures any old time down at the post office.”

I don’t recall which of these hovels was my last known residence at Adams State — but Savage would seem appropriate, so I’ll take it. My roommates and I broke all the written rules and some of the unwritten ones, too, until I dropped out after two years and discovered the wonderful world of work. This sent me shrieking back to school in a year. Not to Alamosa, though. To Greeley, where I met all these Martinezes.

A half-century later, as I hauled bike and baggage into my motel, a man and a couple of women were discussing in low tones some loved one bound for a stretch in the federal pen. Could’ve been me in ’73. Stay in school, kids. And don’t deal drugs from your dorm room.

In other news, the Safeway has moved across the street. The Campus Cafe, Bank Shot, and Purple Pig are still around, but the Ace Inn is not. The Rialto, where I saw The Firesign Theatre’s “Martian Space Party” — double-billed with “Zachariah,” written by the Firesigns — is no longer a theater.

Tell me my man Jim isn’t gonna set this big ol’ cigar to smoking. …

And everyone still does their serious shopping in Pueblo or Santa Fe. In Alamosa, a Martinez cousin groused, “There’s nothing.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a big gay-pride rally just down the alley from William’s house on Saturday. The youngsters dashed over to buy a rainbow flag and T-shirt to prank their elders.

Speaking of pranks, there’s a largish artillery piece not far from where Jim and Lucy were laid to rest. I can see Jim having some fun with that on Halloween, New Year’s Eve, maybe Super Bowl Sunday if the Broncos ever get there again.

I can hear Lucy telling him to knock it off, too. “Cállate, mijo, people are trying to sleep here.”

Gone fishing

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Herself’s classic Barracuda A2T mountain bike.

I don’t know what possessed me.

Actually, I do.

Herself joined me for a ride on Friday, her first of 2025. We covered a moderate distance at a leisurely pace. The idea was for her to ease back into the activity while we looked for Gambel’s quail in the foothills. Not to eat. Just to see.

Both missions were accomplished. The high point was a pair of quail leading a dozen or so thumb-sized chicks through the scrub.

Back at the ranch, I glanced at Herself’s dusty, cobwebbed old Barracuda A2T mountain bike, slouched on two flats in a corner of the garage.

It’s so old I can’t remember just when I acquired it. But I remember where. Durango, during some long-ago Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, possibly the 1995 edition. So, exactly 30 years ago.

That would’ve been the year that Barracuda was sold to Ross Bicycles — you can read more about the company’s history here — and was blowing out Taiwan-built Tange Ultimate frames for $75 a pop during the Iron Horse.

“Why not?” I thought, being a cash-strapped freelancer trying to make his mark in Bibleburg. So I snatched one up and Old Town Bike Shop built it for me with some stuff I had on hand and a few bits I had to buy. (Sound familiar?)

There’s an anonymous RockShox elastomer fork, Deore V-brakes and levers, Crank Bros. Candy pedals, STX triple crank and rear derailleur with XT front, GripShift twist-shifters, Avenir stem and Zoom bar, and a mismatched wheelset — Mavic 230 SBP rim and anonymous hub (front) and Araya TM18 rim with Parallax hub (rear). A Terry saddle perches atop some ugly-ass no-name seat post.

And that was the high point of the 1995 Iron Horse for me. I had a shit road race, pulling a hamstring on Coal Bank Pass while leading a chase group and still facing the ascent of Molas Pass plus a snowy, wet descent into Silverton — “Worst time I’ve ever had at Iron Horse,” as I wrote in my training log — and spent the rest of the holiday weekend limping around Durango, covering the Roostmaster and the cross-country MTB race for VeloNews.

So, for the 30th anniversary of all that, I replaced the tubes in the Barracuda’s tires, checked the shifting, and took ’er for a spin round the cul-de-sac to see if everything worked.

It did. Including the hamstring.

R.I.P., Bill Baughman

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Big Bill McBeef, shredding the gnar. | Photo by Lolly AdventureGirl (lifted from FaceButt)

Our last track is a skull. — “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry,” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison

The letter was returned, marked “Deceased.”

This is how my friend Michael Schenk stumbled across Bill Baughman’s final footprint in our lives, when one of his annual Schenk-family newsletters, sent via snail mail, bounced back from Bill’s last known address in Bibleburg.

Michael emailed me on Wednesday: “Bill Baughman passed away! Have you heard about this?”

No, I had not. And I immediately set out to learn the details.

Which … were not forthcoming.

No obituary in the Gazette. No other trail that I could backtrack via Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing. Michael’s call to Bill’s former employer yielded only a vague reference to “health problems.”

Well, yeah. Sorta goes without saying, eh?

Bill was not always easy to catch, especially on the bicycle. But if true, this would be a breakaway unprecedented. We had always been able to find him again, somewhere. A bagel shop. A Mexican restaurant. At home, gaming, in his air-conditioned computer closet.

Old Dogs at the O’Neill farewell: Foreground, Joan Stang; background, Bill Baughman, Your Humble Narrator, Herself, and Karl Stang.

Herself and I last caught up with Bill in 2022, in Manitou Springs, during a celebration of life for another old velo-bro, John O’Neill. John, Bill, and his longtime friend Bill Simmons were among the O.D.s (Original Dogs) who joined me when I left Rainbow Racing to form Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs at Large Velo.

In those early days we trained a ton, barking Liggettisms at each other — suitcases of courage were opened, pedals danced upon or turned in anger, elastic snapped — on the Highway 115 rollers to Penrose and back; up Highway 24 through Manitou to Woodland Park and beyond; down to the racetrack south of Fountain, occasionally adding the dreaded Hanover Loop; or around the 1986 world-championships course at the Air Force Academy.

On race weekends we’d bunk three and four to a room in skeevy motels at Pagosa Springs, Durango, Crested Butte, and elsewhere. I was a popular roomie because I always packed my Krups espresso machine on road trips. The Bills proved extra popular with me after I broke a collarbone at Rage in the Sage; Simmons abandoned his own race to take charge of my bike, and Baughman drove me, my bike, and my truck back to B-burg.

Some three decades later, during our conversation at O’Neill’s sendoff, Bill seemed subdued, maybe even a wee bit sad, not at all his usual rollicking self.

His mother, ex-wife, and a son had all passed. He and Simmons had been out of touch. And he had been been hit by a car while riding his road bike, which snatched a knot in his fearlessness; he was avoiding both road and trail, and when he cycled at all he stuck to a few local bike paths. He drank only at home.

It seemed a stunning retreat by a renowned battler who, sweating tequila from a margarita marathon as the peloton thundered along, would turn a baleful eye on anyone who groused about the pace and growl, “Shut up and ride.”

Still, Bill looked good, as though he’d put on a few pounds. He’d always been thin as a frame pump. Holding his wheel during a group ride as he executed his famous “Marksheffel Plan” — an attack near the bottom of the long climb up the east-side road of that name — was like trying to draft a shark’s fin.

We talked about getting together again, the way people do when they reconnect, however briefly, to send some other old friend west. And after Herself and I got back to ’Burque I emailed him. He never replied.

How can someone just drop off the face of the earth with only the U.S. Postal Service taking the slightest bit of notice? I mean, sure, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” But you’d think Google might have the jump on them these days, especially since Jan. 20.

Facebook, the Pony Express of the AARP, was basically useless. The number I had for Bill Simmons was no longer in service. Cindy O’Neill, John’s widow, hadn’t heard the news until Herself passed it along.

And then I remembered: Amber Shaffer, who catered O’Neill’s farewell gathering, was not just a part of his Colorado Running Club crew — she was once a neighbor of Bill’s on the east side of B-burg, not far from the ancestral home of the O’Gradys on South Loring Circle. Ours really is a small world at times.

Late Friday afternoon I called Amber at Roman Villa Pizza; she said that yes, she had learned via text of Bill’s passing late last year, and … and that was all she knew. Fridays are busy in the restaurant racket, so I thanked her, promised to drop in for a meal next trip through town, and said goodbye.

Looks like Bill has dropped us all again, dancing on the pedals, the elastic snapped for good. I hope there was a frosty pitcher of margaritas waiting for him at the finish.

Let’s sing him off. This one goes out to all my friends who’ve died.