Banzai Buddy Boo and the Islamic terrorist holding him hostage.
Check this strange beverage that falls out from the sky, as Tom Waits once growled. Snow, and in winter, too. Who knew?
Mister Boo loves the stuff. Herself took him out for a quick trip around the block and “quick” is the operative word here. The Boo took four corners a sight faster than Davis Phinney ever did, and maybe Danica Patrick, too. His Nipponese ancestors must have hailed from the top of Mount Fuji. He looked like a bug-eyed little snowplow bounding up the sidewalk.
Not so Miss Mia Sopaipilla. The little minx slipped through the open door as I was taking a picture and instantly thought better of it, hanging a 180 and jetting back inside to criticize my weather-management skills.
Being a Russian blue, Mia’s family tree may be rooted in Stalingrad, or perhaps Siberia. But just ’cause you’re from there doesn’t mean you have to like it. You don’t see me hanging around Annapolis, after all.
The weekend was a tad busy, and come Monday I had a minor case of the ass.
I wanted, needed, to go for a ride — especially since I have a couple of bikes that need reviewing in fairly short order — but my usual routes had become yawn-inducing, an affliction that surfaces from time to time, like malaria or herpes.
The weather had mostly been sunny and dry, so I decided to spend a couple hours dicking around on the trails in Palmer Park, and riding a fendered MonsterCrosser® on the bone-dry single-track proved a pleasant change of pace.
Good thing I got ’er done when I did, too. Because we awakened this morning to a heavy wet blanket of snow on the deck. Thus today’s exercise consisted mainly of upper-body work, to wit, shoveling.
I’m not complaining, though. This ongoing drought is no joke — come Thursday, we’re back to another stretch of sunny, windy and 50-something — and I fear for our silver maple, which shades my office window. It takes a lot of water to keep a big tree happy, and an inch or two of snow every couple of years won’t do the trick.
The Kona Rove is a cyclo-cross-slash-whatever bike, with eyelets for racks and fenders and plenty of clearance for tires forbidden by the UCI.
The departure of the flu coincided with a return of springlike weather, so I’ve been spending some time outdoors of late, searching for my lost legs.
It’s been three weeks since the bug laid me low, and my pipes are still not quite up to snuff — I’m gonna have to refill that albuterol prescription one of these days — but nonetheless it’s been pleasant to be out and about, far from the iMac and its penchant for delivering evil tidings.
The bike of choice lately has been the Kona Rove, which as mentioned in an earlier post is on deck in the Adventure Cyclist hit parade. As usual, I can’t say much about it until the paying customers get theirs, but I will note that it’s not a touring bike — the Sutra fills that particular niche for Kona.
I had to put a little Irish on the front fender’s left strut (it’s much better than English) to work around the Hayes disc brake.
Nope, the Rove is one of those whatever bikes, which is to say that whatever you feel like riding it will handle without complaint.
It’s been interesting to watch the industry come up with a fresh take on the kind of machinery I rode when we lived up Weirdcliffe way. I tried to get Brent Steelman to build me a drop-bar mountain bike to tackle the wealth of gravel roads, two-track and single-track we had up there, but as I recall he had doubts about welding up such a weirdo.
So instead I made do with one of his old CC cyclo-cross bikes. Brent billed the CC as “a 700c mountain bike” — in fact, it may have been one of the earliest 29ers — and in its final configuration before I sold it to a friend its Excell frameset wore 700×40 Ritchey rubber, a triple (46/36/24), a seven-speed 105 drivetrain (12-28) and bar-end shifters.
The Rove comes stock with a set of 700×35 Freedom by WTB Ryders, but it likewise can handle 700×40 tires, and with fenders, too. Go without fenders and you can run tractor tires, if that’s your idea of a good time.
The Rove is considerably burlier than my old CC, in part because it uses Hayes CX5 disc brakes for stoppers instead of a pair of Dia-Compe 986 cantis.
Of course, its rider is considerably burlier than was the old ’crosser who used to race that CC, so I’ll hold my fire in that regard, stone-wise.
And besides, that which does not kill you makes you stronger, right? The flu didn’t get me, and I doubt the Rove will, unless I try to pick it up and run with it. That would be just begging for it.
You know what’s even better than not watching Ol’ Whatsisface gnaw through his lower lip while pretending to be sorry for what he did instead of for getting caught at it?
Riding your own damn’ bike for the first time in two weeks on a sunny, 55-degree afternoon, that’s what.
My pipes felt a tad rusty after the flu, and I wished for a big hit of albuterol, but that would’ve been doping. So I made do with a cough drop and a hefty dose of moral superiority.
Before getting back in the saddle I mounted fenders to the Kona Rove, which is next up in the Adventure Cyclist review queue.
Ever fit fenders to a disc-brake-equipped bike? Me neither. What it takes — for the front wheel, anyway — is a pretty abrupt bend in the left-side fender stay, a long-ass bolt and a spacer of some sort. I used about an inch of the plastic housing from a cheap pen liberated from a motel, which saved me a trip to the hardware store.
After two weeks on the disabled list I resembled a cyclist about as much as Ol’ Whatsisface resembles a penitent, but like him I didn’t care. It was enough to be out there.
This Tavel rosé pairs well with food. It’s also pretty damn’ nice all by its lonesome.
We shipped Herself the Elder back to Tennessee this morning, or so we thought.
Her flight out of Bibleburg, slated for 10:45 a.m., didn’t go wheels up until 12:30 p.m. And her connector in Dallas was canceled, so she’s camped in the Dallas airport awaiting another. If she’s lucky she’ll be back in the loving bosom of her cats at midnight.
Meanwhile, Herself the Younger is driving home from Denver in a light snow and cursing like a sailor, because she (a) hates driving in the dark, (2) hates driving in the snow, and (iii) hates driving in the snow in the dark.
Only I am left unscathed to tell the tale, because I have the great good fortune to be unemployable and thus possessed of abundant leisure to motor hither and thither in the daylight, when it is not snowing. Thus did I hie me to the grog shop, fortified by a largish check for making things up, thence to restock the wine rack stripped bare by our Yuletide revelry.
Now I’m sipping a tart Tavel rosé and sifting mentally through the available leftovers: quite a bit of posole; the makings for a short round of tacos de papas con chorizo; some pintos in chipotle chile; the underpinnings for a second round of beef enchiladas on red chile, save the sauce.
Posole, tacos and beans it is. Even a slacker deserves a day off.
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