Category: Pissing and moaning

Interbike 2013: Leaving Las Vegas

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
As has become traditional in these outings, a storm chased me out of town, finally catching me in Santa Fe.
As has become traditional in these outings, a storm chased me out of town, finally catching me in Santa Fe.

BIBLEBURG, Colo. (MDM) — After all these years you’d think I would know better than to try to blog from Sin City. I should just post a “Closed Until Further Notice” sign and save us all the aggravation.

I attend Interbike for three primary reasons: First, to gather salable intelligence for my various employers; second, to reassure said employers in our one get-together per annum that, despite all published evidence to the contrary, I am not a rabid dog hellbent on biting the hand that feeds me; and third, to reassure the reading audience that I am a rabid dog hellbent on biting the hand that feeds me and somehow getting away with it. Which I am, of course. (Don’t tell my employers.)

It’s quite a tightrope to walk for an antisocial old drunkard who has trouble navigating a wide sidewalk after happy hour. And it’s particularly sketchy when I’m bunking in a casino hotel with all the ambience of a Donna Summer retrospective in Hell. Never again. It was a 20-minute walk from my room to the show and I never left the building.

When I finally hit the door running I was very tired of the sound of my own voice and desperate for a smoke-free environment, proper music and the open road.

As I battled traffic on Flamingo a roadside political scientist announced via hand-lettered poster that Jewish communists control the media. He never met the crowd I work for; a variety of faiths, creeds and religions, but capitalists one and all. Racing the commuters through Henderson I saw a disintegrating paceline fighting a massive headwind on a gradual climb. Glancing at the dash I noticed it was 96 degrees outside. Who’s crazy here? I wondered.

Me, of course.

Editor’s note: Coming up — a few bikes from Interbike 2013 that an adventurous cyclist might find interesting.

Welcome to the working week

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

It’s Monday. Know how I can tell? There’s a plumber in the driveway and my Visa card just spontaneously combusted.

One of the few downsides to living in an old neighborhood like ours is that the plumbing is even older than the residents. I think Hammurabi laid the original pipe, and the Romans handled most of the maintenance (But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?) until the Vandals came along and ensured that the pumps would no longer work by appropriating the handles.

Anyway, the lone bathtub at The House Back East™ has become something of a wading pond, and a plumber is over there panning for gold as we speak. I expect he’ll find some.

Burning daylight

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

Today started and ended well, lightly toasted slices of metaphorical bread comprising an actual shit sandwich.

On arising I recalled that we had a huge slab of meaty Ranch Foods Direct bacon in the fridge, so breakfast included coffee, eggs over easy, American fried potatoes, buttery English muffins and great thick rashers of pigmeat. Your basic heart-attack special, but I like it.

My plans for the workday hinged on breaking a piece of new technology to harness, but despite a hearty breakfast I couldn’t even get my rope on it, much less my brand.

Being something of a persistent cuss — you may call it “obsessive-compulsive,” I call it “persistent” — I kept working at it, trying first this and then that and finally the other, all the while taking copious notes on each fresh dysfunction with an eye toward eventually tattooing same on someone using an icepick and ball-peen hammer, with a sack of wormy dogshit for ink.

Thus the hours passed and the daylight faded, and the technology breezily countered my every move. By late afternoon, which saw the mailperson deliver an overdue check for services rendered that was redeemable for slightly less than half the expected quantity of Dead President Trading Cards, I was at a rolling boil, hissing like a teakettle full of vipers, blistering steam boiling out of both ears.

Herself and I had earlier scheduled a joint birthday dinner with friends, so I stuck my head in the freezer, counted to a thousand in Irish, and off we went to The Blue Star, where the four of us ate all manner of good things while discussing music, metaphysics and literature. Also, we solved every last one of the world’s problems save mine (you’re welcome).

Now I’m hardly pissed off at all. But tomorrow is another day.

A fine soft day (yeah, right)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
The green is wearing a bit o’ dew.

The first cold, clammy day of autumn always reminds me of why my forebears fled the Emerald Isle for Americay. It wasn’t so much the Limeys and the Prods as the weather.

Doesn’t help that Herself is enjoying a weeklong vacation on the Big Island with a gal pal. Beaches for her, bitches for me. ‘Tis not at all the same thing.

Of course, last time I went to Hawaii the locals endured a volcanic eruption and a tsunami. Maybe it’s better that I stay put. For them, anyway.