I didn’t take a camera on today’s ride, so you’ll have to make do with a feeble iPhone shot of the bosque just starting to show some color.
Thanks to everyone who chimed in with birthday wishes on this, my induction into Official Geezerhood.
Is there a probationary period? If I fail to chase enough whippersnappers off my lawn will I be stripped of my galluses, wattles and trifocals, and demoted to Youth?
The birthday ride is done and dusted, and like last year I exceeded my expectations: 45 miles, or 72.4 kilometers. Thus I have some more kms banked for subsequent birthdays. One of these years I won’t have to ride at all.
Which will give me more time for podcasting. Yes, yes, yes, it’s another edition of Radio Free Dogpatch, Senior Moment Edition. You’re welcome. Now get the hell off my lawn.
Base camp at the overflow area in McDowell Mountain Regional Park, circa 2004.
It’s been a chilly, damp winter in Albuquerque, which isn’t saying much.
Still, it grates after a while, and never more so than during February, a month that is simultaneously too short and too long.
Herself has been to Costa Rica, the neighbors just fled to Mexico, and some other friends beat feet all the way to France.
And yet here I sit (no, this is not a poem, and it is specifically not that poem), rattling the bars on my window of opportunity and losing arguments with the voices in my head.
I’ve written often and at length about my irrational hatred for February, and I was getting set to do it again when I realized, “Hey, I’ve written often and at length about my irrational hatred for February. Why don’t I turn it into a podcast?”
Which I did. This is it. You’re welcome. Now hand me the snow shovel on your way out, would you? I want to smack myself in the head with it.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Editorial notes: The “Mad Dog Unleashed” column headlined “On the Road Again: Frown Lines Search for a Few Tan Lines,” which is my onion at the bottom of this bitter pot of bitch stew, first appeared in the February 2004 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. My line about February having roots in the French “febrile” is, as you may already know, complete and utter bullshit. The Cactus Cup has returned to McDowell Mountain Regional Park since that 2004 column — this year’s edition is slated for March 8-10. And finally, did you know that Peter “Sneaky Pete” Kleinow, pedal steel player for The Flying Burrito Brothers, was also a visual-effects artist and stop-motion animator who worked on “Gumby?” Neither did I.
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited in Apple’s GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro, adding audio acquired through fair means and foul via Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack (no profit was taken in an admittedly casual approach to various copyrights). Speaking of which, the pedal steel riff that closes the episode is from Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever,” as performed by The Flying Burrito Brothers on their eponymous 1971 album. The background music is “Trapped” from Zapsplat.com. And the rewind sound is courtesy of TasmanianPower at Freesound.org.
Wilbur Ross, The Man in the $600 Embroidered Slippers, doesn’t understand why federal workers idled and/or unpaid by Darth Cheeto might choose to visit food banks instead of the other sort.
Well, for an appetizer, even idled and/or unpaid federal workers like to eat at least once a day.
For the main course, unlike regular banks, food banks don’t require collateral, charge interest or repo your lunchbox.
And finally, for dessert, idled and/or unpaid federal workers know they won’t have to look at some bogus billionaire wearing $600 embroidered slippers while doing business with the food bank.
Yes, yes, yes, it’s another low-fat, low-interest episode from Radio Free Dogpatch.Bon appétit.
And remember, Wilbur, the Big Dog always eats last.
The pestilence of the Benighted States, Wally O’Steele, a.k.a. Artie Deal, wants a Big, Beautiful Wall® at the nation’s southern boundary to keep brown people* from crossing the border to work anywhere other than at his hotels or golf courses.
Unable to procure funding for same, he has instead walled off the feddle gummint from its own tax-paying citizens, idling more than a few of them in the process and forcing others to work without pay while selling their Christmas presents on eBay to keep from freezing to death in the dark.
It’s a hard reign, and the water — if that’s what it is — just keeps rising.
Man the lifeboats and rig for heavy seas, matey — it’s the latest episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.
* Russian oligarchs and Saudi princelings get a pass, of course, along with a coupon for a complimentary fluff and fold at Artie Deal’s Motor Inn & Money Laundry.
This is nothing new. The weather, that is. I began losing my interest in ’cross about the same time everybody else “discovered” it, in part because winter was starting to seem like something you saw in old movies, or that only the graybeards talked about.
“You call this winter? Pssh! Why, back in ’98. …”
For me, getting cold and muddy was about half the fun. While all the roadies were doing squats in the gym, riding fixed gears on the street, or even worse, sitting on the trainer in front of some old Tour tapes, a select few of us were running around in the slush, wearing thick coats of goo, broad grins, and perfectly rideable bicycles.
“Ooo, there’s some lovely filth over ’ere!”
Anyway, thinking about ’cross and the lack of proper weather for same reminded me of a BRAIN column from 2002, and that constitutes the bulk of this week’s episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, which got a bum call-up and thus is a little slow getting off the start line.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone, Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack, and the old 2009 iMac. Background music is “Newborn,” a jingle lifted from Apple’s iMovie, which also supplied the “Medal Ceremony” opener.
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