Category: Weather

John Versus the Volcano

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Call me a cab! All right, you're a cab.

It’s a gray day in Bibleburg. We had some rain last night and the forecast calls for more of the same over the next week. Maybe it’ll tamp down the tree pollen a bit. Herself and I are going through boxes of Kleenex at an alarming rate. An entire rain forest soaked in snot and flushed down the loo to Pueblo.

At least we don’t have any active volcanos in the neighborhood. That Icelandic rascal is dumping hot ash over many a traveler’s itinerary, including Monty Python’s John Cleese. According to The New York Times, Cleese found himself stranded in Oslo and hired a Mercedes taxi to drive more than 900 miles to Brussels, where he hoped to get a train to London. Three drivers took turns at the wheel and the fare came to about $5,000, said one of his agents, Dean Whitbread. Rather too far for a silly walk, don’t you know. Right, off you go.

Meanwhile, expect a reduced field at Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race thanks to air-travel restrictions. Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, Cervélo’s Carlos Sastre and Volodymyr Gustov, and Caisse d’Epargne’s Alejandro Valverde, Luis Leon Sanchez and Luis Pasamontes are among the riders who apparently can’t raise the cabfare.

Winter, discontent, etc.

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Well, son of a bitch. There is a winter storm warning between me and points south. It seems a pile of snow is anticipated in Trinidad, Sex Change Capital of the World, and if it closes Raton Pass I will be in something of a time bind.

I do have a substantial cushion — I don’t really need to be in Tucson until Saturday afternoon. But I like to take my time on road trips, savoring this, that and the other, and this friggin’ storm may cost me some much-anticipated eating, drinking and soaking time in Santa Fe.

At moments like this I can understand why some people fly. Buy the ticket, check your luggage, fork over $175 each way to take a bike along, sample any number of airborne viruses while strapped down in your pressurized aluminum tube, reassemble the bike at your destination — assuming that (a) it and your toolkit get there, and (b) none of your stuff is destroyed — do your ride, then repeat the whole process in reverse, only this time with a severe upper-respiratory infection and an $8,000 bike with a dent in the down tube and an inexplicable stain on the saddle.

Y’know, come to think of it, driving a Subaru Forester packed to the gunwales with bike crap, journalism tools and camping gear through blizzard conditions seems kind of pleasurable by comparison.

Hinterbike

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Interbike starts tomorrow with Outdoor Demo West, and I feel a minor twinge of regret about not attending this year, if only because it’s not likely to be raining in Las Vegas.

Here’s the forecast for Bibleburg. And here’s the forecast for Sin City. I’m not certain that I’m up for 96 with a low haze of Marlboro exhaust, but 52 and raining? Again? With a chance of snow? Already? I’m sorry, but this is not acceptable. Even the aspens are complaining. I’ve only seen a few looking fashionably red and gold; the others merely look sodden and depressed, like leafy winos.

I may or may not be commenting on the festivities from a distance. I’m back in the VeloBarrel starting Monday for some extra-credit editing during Interbike, and one never knows how fast said barrel will fill up, or with what.

The corner of Deluge and Vine

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
We get any more rain and this vine is liable to start marching around like one of those space-alien vegetables in "The Day of the Triffids."
We get any more rain and this vine is liable to start marching around like one of those space-alien vegetables in "The Day of the Triffids."

No wonder we felt as though we were growing gills in July. According to the Bibleburg Gaslight, we got 5.39 inches of rain — 3.43 inches more than normal — and there’s more on the way, as August is normally the rainiest month of the year.

This weather is one of the reasons my ancestors fled the Emerald Isle, the others being the Catholic church, the Presbyterian church and of course, the English.

And it’s why I left Oregon for a job on the copy desk at The Pueblo Chieftain, which is a newspaper in the same sense than a Roadmaster is a bicycle.

Alas, I can’t flee Bibleburg for drier climes. I’m married now, and a property owner. Plus there are the cats to consider. Their shortest auto trip is my bus trip to Vegas.

Besides, we have this vine taking over the deck we can’t use because it’s generally about as welcoming as the boat dock outside the hotel in “Key Largo.” Someone has to stick around and keep an eye on it.