Category: Snow

‘Cross purposes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla inspects the weather outside and pronounces it frightful.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla inspects the weather outside and pronounces it frightful.

Looking a little cyclo-crossy out there today. Ordinarily I’d be right out in it, but Friday is the day I always braid my nose hair.

You should have heard the wind that blew this stuff in last night. It sounded like Sarah Palin farting through a bugle in a tin washtub full of nitroglycerin and live ferrets. I had to use some cardboard wedges to stop the bedroom kiva screen from rattling like a GoPro HERO3 Black Edition Velcro’d to a chainstay on a Duke City trail.

Speaking of cyclo-cross, the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships are coming up this weekend in the Czech Republic.

The video studio at the Rancho Pendejo Center for the Deforming Arts.
The video studio at the Rancho Pendejo Center for the Deforming Arts.

Those of you who have cable TV may be able to watch the race via Universal Sports Network, but the rest of us will have to dance around our computers in bear skins and feathers, shaking rattles and sprinkling chicken blood around and about as we try to make various pirate feeds and VPN dodges work as well as watching the fucker through opera glasses from a Land O’ the Free rooftop.

In the meantime, I’ve filed my print review of the Novara Mazama with the fine folks at Adventure Cyclist and am hard at work pushing pixels around for the video review, a chore that has been complicated more than somewhat by the weather.

Oh, well. I have my nose hair to keep me warm.

• Preview of coming attractions: I have the new Soma Saga Disc touring bike in-house and ready for review. It’s a beaut’, isn’t it?

The latest iteration of the Soma Saga touring bike, this one with disc brakes and a dynamo headlight.
The latest iteration of the Soma Saga touring bike, this one with disc brakes and a dynamo headlight.

How ’bout them Mazamas?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
There's snow in them thar hills.
There’s snow in them thar hills.

See that? No, not the nifty red Novara Mazama — the non-blue sky.

Yup. It started snowing on me during today’s ride. Snowing! And in late January, too. Who knew?

Naturally, I kept riding. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and deadlines are deadlines. That Mazama review for Adventure Cyclist ain’t gonna write itself.

But when I got home I didn’t sit down at the iMac. Nossir. I got right in the kitchen and whipped up a steaming pot of posole.

Did I mention it’s snowing?

In unrelated news, we watched the State of the Union last night, as is our habit. The prez — when he wasn’t giving off a strong subtextual whiff of “Fuck all y’all!” — reminded me of the future Sen. John “Bluto” Blutarsky trying to rouse the Deltas with stirring oratory.

But the prez wasn’t speaking to Delta House. He was addressing Omega Theta Pi.

 

Got them Suburban Snowsick Blues

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 39 Comments
It was a mother of a Mothers Day at Chez Dog.
It was a mother of a Mothers Day at Chez Dog.

The weather has been, shall we say, unsettled.

One minute a fella’s cycling around and about wearing little more than a bit of team kit marinated in sunscreen, and the next he’s huddled over a furnace grate in a snowmobile suit, Ruger Mini Thirty locked and loaded, ready to repel a terrorist yeti raid on his bacon and beans.

I made my preparations on Saturday, whipping up two steaming tureens of Southwestern fare, the first of a pork-and-potato-laden green chile stew and the second of pinto beans with onion, garlic and chipotle chile. To say the atmosphere has grown heavy indoors since would be an understatement of epic proportions.

The weather wizards were shrieking about inches and feet of white stuff, but this latest resurrection of winter proved to be not so much of a much. What little we got was heavy and wet, to be sure, and at one point I had to venture out with a broom to flog it off the tender branches of the young Canadian red cherry in the back yard.

This morning we have gray skies, temps below freezing, a stiff wind, and flurries, which is to say it’s May in Colorado. It caused me to compose a protest song in the style of Mr. Robert Zimmerman, though it’s tough to be musical without guitar, harmonica or talent. Still, I had a whang at it in an email to a friend and colleague in the mountains.

How much snow have you got there?
They said we’d get it everywhere
But mostly, down here below
the worst was that the wind did blow

It sucked, actually
Real cold
Movin’ t’Arizony

(squee honk blaat hoot snort honk twee)

 

Indoor sports

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments
Oak Creek Grade, between Cañon City and Weirdcliffe, where a fella is definitely gonna want something lower than 30x30.
Oak Creek Grade, between Cañon City and Weirdcliffe, where a fella is definitely gonna want something lower than 30×30.
The silver maple in the front yard at Chez Dog wearing a thick coat of snowy goodness.
The silver maple in the front yard at Chez Dog wearing a thick coat of snowy goodness.

“Man plans, God laughs,” goes the Yiddish proverb.

So, naturally, as I was contemplating the intricacies,  logistics and amusements of a bicycle tour, Management reminded me that spring is only a word, an arbitrary date on a manmade calendar.

Yesterday I was motoring around Fremont and Custer counties with the windows down, scoping out various back roads between Florence and Weirdcliffe with a Colorado Atlas & Gazetteer in the passenger seat while tugging frequently from a water bottle. Today I awakened to a few inches of heavy, wet snow on the deck, with more on the way.

No complaints here, mind you. Water from on high is water I don’t have to buy from Colorado Springs Utilities. And it sure beats being on fire.

So it looks to be a fine day for hanging around indoors, viewing with alarm. For instance, I notice that the Supremes are trying to make it less onerous for the 1 percent to run the country the way they see fit. And a Colorado judge is intent on making it harder for the 99 percent to catch them at it.

I’m starting to think Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito are deserving of life terms after all. Not on the high court, mind you, but in Leavenworth, making little rocks out of big ones for their crimes against the people.

Your snow of snows

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments
The Kona Sutra at Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta Park, which sits right on the North Diversion Channel trail.
The Kona Sutra at Albuquerque’s Balloon Fiesta Park, which sits right on the North Diversion Channel trail.

After a few too many days of my own personal Winter Olympics (ride, try not to fall on the ice; walk, try not to fall on the ice; stay indoors, try not to fall on the ice)  I had the Subaru serviced, packed it with cycling and journalism gear, and got the hell out of a house that was starting to feel a tad too small for optimal mental health.

It was strictly a professional decision, of course. I’m reviewing another bike, the Kona Sutra, and it’s hard to evaluate a road bike if you can’t see the road for all the lumpy ice piled on the sonofabitch.

I considered Arizona, but time is short, and so is money. So I roared down to Albuquerque, set up shop in a Hilton property using Herself’s accrued points, and got to riding sans neoprene.

I shouldn’t be crowing about the lack of snow in a state so short of water, but it feels downright heavenly to ride the Paseo del Bosque Trail in shorts and short sleeves. Plus I had a small combo plate at Mary & Tito’s Cafe last night, and you just can’t find that kind of grub in Bibleburg, not even if I’m in the kitchen.

Sid Caesar got out of town, too. But he’s never coming back, more’s the pity.