Category: Winter

Stupid cold

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Phoning it in? Nope.

It was only 14 miles.

Hell, I do this a couple times a year. Drop the Subie downtown for a little love at Reincarnation, ride a bike back to El Rancho Pendejo. Repeat in reverse to collect the old warhorse and drive ’er home. Ain’t no thang.

Except Tuesday, it kinda was.

God damn, but it was cold.

I had been expecting a temp in the low 30s, which for some reason sounds a lot warmer than high 20s, which is what it was. So I wore a jacket over a long-sleeved jersey over a long-sleeved base layer, tights over bibs, wool socks, cold-weather shoes and gloves, and tuque.

Wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. And I knew it at 9 a.m., a half-block into the 14-mile ride home.

O, lawd, I will never be smart. I had Buff neckwear, beefier tights, an old balaclava, and an even older pair of sure-’nough winter gloves … and they were all in a drawer back at the Rancho.

“Well,” I thought, “at least it’s all uphill.” And so it was, 1,200 feet of up, not including a long stretch of that fabled “invisible hill,” which is to say a damp, bitter wind out of the NNW and straight into Your Humble Narrator’s chattering choppers.

Whoever coined the phrase “What can’t be cured must be endured” was probably not thinking about stupidity. But I was as I grumbled my way up the North Diversion Channel Trail, whenever possible sitting bolt upright with hands tucked into armpits.

At Montgomery I came upon a street person’s smallish campfire underneath the bridge. I couldn’t decide whether to report him or join him. So I did neither. Onward!

By the Arroyo del Oso Golf Course, with six miles to go, I had gained some altitude, caught a soupçon of sun, and warmed up just a bit … so much so that I began contemplating some extra-credit stupidity, to wit, leaving the pavement at Juan Tabo for the trails that wind through Bear Canyon Open Space to the Embudito trailhead.

Now, in my defense, we’re talking extremely non-technical trails here, and I was on the Soma Double Cross with its 42mm knobbies. Easy breezy like a cover girl! Assuming she were properly dressed for conditions and had a pro mechanic to get her rolling again in 30 seconds after a puncture.

I, on the other hand, was dressed for conditions that existed only in my head, which was up my arse as per usual. I would be fixing my own flat with half-frozen fingers, only 80 percent of which are fully functional when warm. It would take longer than 30 seconds. Finally, there was the absolute certainty of some rapid evaporative cooling on the 1.5-mile paved descent from the trailhead to the Rancho.

So for a change I did the smart thing: took the pavement home, slammed a steaming mug of tea, and spent way too much time in a hot shower. Around 3:30 I got back on the bike and zipped down to fetch the Subie. Didn’t even need the jacket for the return trip. Ah, the desert Southwest, with its 30-degree temperature swings.

This is hardly the stuff of legend, or even unpaid bloggery. There was a time when I would drive for hours in much worse weather just to race bicycles in it, then tidy up at the car wash afterward. But that was when I was a man — a slightly better insulated man — instead of whatever it is I am now.

Plus my auto mechanic was only 14 minutes away by bike. Sometimes I’d just run home.

A fossil, fueled

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Still no new pope? Whoops, wrong chimney.

Doesn’t look like we’ll be needing the ol’ kiva fireplace in the master bedroom for a while, if the long-range forecast is any guide.

Actually, we’ve never needed it, nor the bigger one in the living room neither. We both got our fill of wood-burning Back in the Day®, when we lived at 8,800 feet in frosty CrustyTucky and tossed big chunks of aspen, cedar, piñon, and oak into the Lopi fireplace insert faster than ICE Barbie’s masked goons throw brown people out of the country, only with less horseshit and gunfire.

Here in scenic cosmopolitan Duck!Burg, a couple-three thousand feet lower and more than a few Fahrenheit degrees higher, we manage to skate by with fossil fuels. This keeps Your Humble Narrator away from chainsaws, always a good idea, especially in these dark days. Will he do an injury to himself or someone else? Stay tuned!

The chainsaw always made me nervous, actually. What I liked was splitting rounds with the ax, another implement that should probably be under lock and key for the duration. The chainsaw is long gone, but I still have an ax, a couple smallish camping hatchets, and a few handsaws in case I need to dispose of a body … uh, of some downed limbs! Tree limbs!

Goddamnit, this is what comes of reading the news of a morning. Some days there just isn’t enough coffee in the world.

But it does look like we will have oddly springlike conditions for the near future, and so instead of burning wood or anything else, I can expend a few calories on the old bikey-bike. And without all the heavy-weather gear, too.

At this rate, an old white guy could find himself browning up enough to get deported. I hear South Sudan is lovely this time of year.

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‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
There’s a cat in here some’eres. But where?

Are we going about this whole “new year” thing wrong?

Maybe the new year should kick off with the spring equinox. New life in the offing, and better weather to keep it comfy-cozy.

We were already into the 50s here last March 20. Zach at Two Wheel Drive had found me a Deore derailleur for the as-yet-unbuilt Soma Pescadero, and I went out for a short trail run to celebrate. The next day I was burning up the Elena Gallegos trails on my old red Steelman Eurocross while TWD assembled my new whip. Talk about your bowl of cherries.

Black-eyed peas under construction.

January is usually a bowl of something else altogether. The month is named for the Roman deity Janus, god of change, passages, and beginnings: “Better beef up your kit before you head out that door to start your run, Mr. Not-So-Smarticus. Add a base layer, maybe a jacket and cap, looks like rain.”

When I revisit January in old training diaries I see a lot of short runs in frosty temps. Which is fine, as far as it goes, which is not very. And I’ll probably be doing one of those directly, as we seem to be getting sloppy seconds from the ongoing deluge in California. Just because I have fenders doesn’t mean I want to use them. I like my January showers warm, with the bathroom door closed and a space heater on.

But it’s gonna be extra hard to drag my ass out that door this Jan. 1. El Rancho Pendejo smells like simmering black-eyed peas and ham hock, with baking cornbread soon to lend an aromatic hand, and it’s a good thing I have more than a few keyboards around here because I keep drooling into this one.

Happy New Year to one and all.

• Addendum: The cooking process is greatly enhanced by playing “The Allman Brothers Band: A Decade of Hits 1969-1979” throughout.

Blue Monday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Pistache! Gesundheit!

Winter, being less than tempestuous around here, always catches me with my pants down. Then up. Then down. Then up. …

Take yesterday, for example. It wasn’t all that cold, but there was a stiff, bitter wind out of the northwest. I briefly considered and swiftly rejected a bike ride, then set about trying to figure out what to wear for a short trail run.

Jaysis wept, etc. The winter clothing options in my dresser look like the “Free” box at the last day of a garage sale in a bad neighborhood.

Paddygucci base layers from when they were still made in the US of A. Hind tights old enough to run for president, in any season. Prehistoric Smartwool socks that couldn’t even make the cut for that “Free” box.

And none of this gear has a pocket for the iPhone, which I have carried religiously since breaking an ankle during a tech-free run five years ago (unable to summon a chariot like a king wounded in battle I had to serf home using a downed tree limb as a crutch). One long-sleeved Columbia top, a bit of VeloNews swag, sports a zippered iPod pocket in the left sleeve, with cutouts for earbud wires. Anybody remember iPods? Wired earbuds? Or VeloNews, for that matter?

In the end I chose the Columbia top (leaving the iPod and earbuds at home); the warmest (and possibly eldest) of my Paddygucci base-layer shirts; Darn Tough wool socks; Sugoi tuque; Smartwool gloves; and the lightweight Paddygucci Terrebonne pants I shredded when I broke the ankle (three pockets plus plenty of holes if I wanted to choose the scenic route for the earbud wires from the iPod I wasn’t packing).

And thus equipped, as Herself and I were jogging up the final winding climb before the paved descent back to El Rancho Pendejo, I thought, “Goddamnit. I am totally overdressed for this shit. I should’ve gone for a ride.”

Fourth and long

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“Holy hell, hon’, better start filling the sandbags.”

Winter finally came a-calling yesterday.

More of a “ring the doorbell and run” deal, actually. Left 0.06 inch of rain on our doorstep instead of a flaming sack of dog shit.

We’ll take it. Don’t gotta stomp it out or nothin’.

Today dawned clear and cold, and the furnace and humidifier were harmonizing on what sounded like some sort of mariachi tune as I awakened just before 4 to “shake hands with the governor.”

“Are you getting up or going back to bed?” Herself asked as she set about her day.

“Back to bed,” I mumbled, and made it so. The next two hours of sleep were top shelf, curled up like an old dog under blanket and comforter. The news cycle can’t get me in there, with the phone locked and in silent mode. No wonder Miss Mia Sopaipilla loves the bed-cave I make for her every morning after coffee. And she doesn’t even read The New York Times.

The press is deep into “The Year in Review” mode now, which reminds me of the last time I went to a Broncos game at the old Mile High stadium, back in the days when the Donkeys would have had their hands full going up against a Pop Warner squad from Saguache.

Anyway, the Donks were getting their asses handed to them, by whom I can’t recall, and though there was plenty of time remaining on the clock, the stands were emptying faster than bladders overloaded by the industrial lager the fans were slamming to drown their sorrows.

In mid-exodus the PA gives out with a cheery, “And don’t forget to watch ‘Bronco Replay'” on whatever local TV channel was playing the piano in that whorehouse. After which some tosspot a few tiers downhill from us lurches to his unsteady feet, bellows, “Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?” and then tumbles down the stairs.

All these years later three hundred and sixty-five steps seems like quite a tumble, especially since I’m not wearing any protective gear — like, say, sinuses lined with cocaine, a beer-swollen liver, and a couple dozen extra elbees of adipose tissue.

So please excuse me if I skip the replay. It was bad enough the first time.