Category: Spring

Ooo, it’s all sticky!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
April showers bring May flowers. May showers bring puddles.
April showers bring May flowers. May showers bring puddles.

That was Eddie Izzard talking about landing on the moon only to find it was covered in jam, but he could have been talking about Bibleburg. Except Bibleburg is more squishy than sticky, and if there were any jam lying about, the rain of the past few days would’ve washed it away, so no. Sticky? Not so much. Squishy, that’s the thing. There. Glad we’ve got that sorted out.

This would be fine weather if I were a duck, but since I’m more of a dick it’s not doing much for me. Or for the Turk’, either. I just heard a loud thunk from the living room and went in to see him affixed to the top half of the screen door, forepaws spread wide, like an inmate clutching the cell bars. “Hey, y’dirty screw, call m’lawyer! I’m innocent, I tell ya! Lemme outa here!” If the Turk’ had a spoon and opposable thumbs, he’d be digging a tunnel in a blind corner somewhere.

Speaking of prisons, The New York Times recently paid a call on Cañon City and Florence to sample public opinion about sprinkling Gitmo inmates around the various local graybar hotels. One dingbat who owns a coffee shop fears an influx of Muslims and terrorists that would drive down property values for “good Christian conservatives” like himself. Never mind that property values have already taken quite a beating from the good Christian conservatives running the country and its financial system for the past eight years.

No, by all means let’s reserve our correctional system for fine upstanding American nutbags, like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who enjoys three hots and a cot in the federal Supermax at Florence. At least they won’t hate our freedom, despite having none of their own.

The waste land

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Mia Sopaipilla auditions for the starring role in a feline take on the noir classic "The Meowtese Falcon."
Mia Sopaipilla auditions for the starring role in a feline take on the noir classic "The Meowtese Falcon."

T.S. Eliot was full of shit. “April is the cruellest month,” my large, pale Irish-American ass. So far, May in Bibleburg sucks like a New Orleans pumping station crosswired to a black hole.

It can’t even rain properly around here, f’chrissakes — just this mincing little dribble that reminds me of why I fled Oregon like a Norway rat rocketing out of a sewer pipe. Fog, gray skies, the temperatures barely above freezing, Mia toasting her bum on the DSL modem and Turkish begging to go out for reasons only known to himself. Maybe he’s sick of dried cat chow and dreams of catching a passing fish, if there are any with legs in these parts. Good luck — that species appears to be restricted to Darwin emblems affixed to Volvos.

Up in Crusty County, meanwhile, my man Hal Walter has taken on the swine whine with recommendations for reducing your vulnerability to marauding bugs. It boils down to reducing stress and eating properly, which is a lot cheaper than building a R. Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome with an airlock and enduring hourly rubdowns with Lysol.

And on the seventh day, he worked

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Chairman Meow's tomb is a colorful sight come springtime.
Chairman Meow's tomb is a colorful sight come springtime.

Chasing typos around the Intertubes instead of wheels along the trail. Feh. Sunday is no-fun day if you happen to be an editor for a cycling website, even a part-time one.

They’re racing everywhere this weekend, on roads and trails, from Belgium to California — Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Little 500, the Athens Twilight Criterium, the Historic Roswell Criterium, the Santa Ynez Valley Classic and the Dana Point Grand Prix.

Each writer presents a different editorial challenge (some understand deadlines and English, others not so much); each promoter supplies results in a different fashion (HTML, Excel, PDF or not at all); each photographer has his own little quirks (giant jpgs with incomprehensible filenames, teensy jpgs with no captions). I, of course, bring my own peculiar habits (surly bibulousness) to the project.

Back in the day, when I was still a newspaperman instead of whatever it is that I am now, all these disparate personalities congregated under one roof, where we could all shout at each other over not much and then go get convivially shitfaced once the presses started rumbling.

Now we’re in Spain, Belgium, Wyoming, Boulder, Georgia, California and Bibleburg, and shouting over IM or via e-mail just isn’t the same. Plus a guy in León can hardly buy a round for another guy in Bibleburg, and vice versa.

We had more hands back in the day, too. We’re always undermanned at VeloNews.com, but this weekend the herd is especially thin for a number of perfectly defensible reasons. So instead of doing a little leisurely swashbuckling through a couple of short stories, I found myself pretty much glued to the office chair from 6:30 a.m. to late afternoon, hacking at this and that, frantically twisting my Strunk & White Secret Decoder Ring and muttering dire imprecations that would land you a chat with Human Resources in one of today’s newsrooms. And it ain’t over yet. California and Georgia have yet to check in. And they wonder why I drink.

I did get out to snap a couple pix of Chairman Meow’s tomb, though. She has a colorful honor guard again this spring, and if it ever rains, they should get plenty of reinforcements.

Blue skies, smiling at me

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Enjoying a hint of springtime on the back deck.
Enjoying a hint of springtime on the back deck.

No, that’s not the stairway to heaven — that’s a shot of the pergola over our back deck, taken from a folding chair while the cats chase bugs around the yard. Alas, those beautiful blue skies are supposed to give way to showers this weekend, a little gift from the gods to the body-armored knuckleheads who live for manhandling their double-boingers across the wet clay trails of Palmer Park, where their tracks will remain for alien archaeologists to ponder some eons hence.

Speaking of dark clouds, some of you may wonder why I haven’t weighed in on the debate over “enhanced interrogation techniques” that has been so much in the news of late. It’s because in a sane society no debate should be required. Torture is wrong, period, end of story. And anyone who says otherwise should be tortured.

And speaking of torture, there is much bicycle racing coming to flyover country here as April segues into May. There’s the 31st edition of La Vuelta de Bisbee, which starts today in the Arizona town of the same name, and the 23rd annual Tour of the Gila, which kicks off April 29 in Silver City, N.M. I covered LVDB once, back in the day, but I’ve never been to the Gila. VeloNews.com’s grand poobah, Steve Frothingham, is headed that way again this year, so look for lots of word count, pix and maybe even some video.

Good day sunshine

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Beer-thirty. Well, actually beer-twenty. But who's counting?
Beer-thirty. Well, actually beer-twenty. But who's counting?

Another brutal two-day stint in the editorial barrel is slouching toward its finale, and being as today is 4/20, I cracked a beer at 4:20, just ’cause. Hey, it’s not like a guy needs to be stone-cold sober to commit misdemeanor journalism, ’cause nobody bothers to read or write any more. It’s all thumbs on CrackBerries and up arses.

I took the cats out for an airing when the temps topped the mid-60s and did a spot of editing in the sunshine. Those glossy MacBook screens really pop outdoors, and so do those nasty blisters a peckerwood like me gets after about 15 minutes of solar roasting following a winter of discontent, so ours was a short stint under the Big Yellow Ball, much to the cats’ dismay.

The Turk’ in particular loves the outdoors, and when he’s not busy trying to murder something he rolls ecstatically about on the toasty sidewalk, thunking his noggin against the concrete with every flip. Thock, thock, thock. No wonder his mental processes seem a bit scrambled from time to time.

We’re supposed to be enjoying a stretch of sunshine and 70s here, so I hope to emulate the Turk’ and spend more time rolling about in the sunshine, though I hope to keep my cranium off the concrete. I’m getting to the point where if John Goodman should happen to see me (not likely) he might bellow, “Jeez, look at that fat bastard.” I stretch the design limits of my cycling kit much more and it will go from red and black to pink and gray.

Getting back to journalism: I can’t help but notice that the Pulitzer committee overlooked me again this year. When, oh when, will they announce a Sister Mary Stigmata Memorial Award for Filthy Mouth and Bad Attitude?