Wake me when it’s over

January 4, 2010November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady

Miss Mia Sopaipilla employs a comforter against the cold.

We’ve barely dipped a toe into winter and already I’m sniveling about the cold. It’s gonna be a long January for you people if this keeps up.

We have one semi-pleasant day coming up tomorrow, according to the fine folks at NOAA, and then boom! Back in the deep freeze. Meanwhile, McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills should be looking at temps in the mid-60s for the next few days. I am not there for some reason. I will never be smart.

I should’ve ridden today, but I couldn’t face another day of fenders and neoprene so early in the new year, so I went for a run in Palmer Park instead. Tights, two long-sleeved shirts, tuque, gloves and a sharp eye peeled for icy bits, of which there were many. Tire tracks, too, some imprinted deeply in the damp clay. Bad mountain bikers. Bad, bad, bad.

The rest of my day was devoted to keeping an eye on the VeloNews.com beta site, which remains very much a work in progress. Without warning, the old site vanished overnight like the proverbial Cheshire cat, taking the readers’ forums along with it and leaving no grins behind.

Meanwhile, as the mag’ staff cranks on the March edition, our lone wire service, Agence France Presse, sent us fuck-all between 10:16 a.m. local time on New Year’s Day and 7:46 a.m. this morning, when we got two stories, both on the same topic — the Team Sky launch in London — one in French and the other in English. No pictures. Zut alors.

Happily, our Euro’ whiz Andrew Hood was on the job, providing wisdom in U-nited States American, and ace shooter Casey B. Gibson came through with some pics courtesy of a colleague who was at the Sky shindig while the Frogs were busy letting the saucers stack up at some café or surrendering to someone. Welcome to the New Wheeled Ordure, January Edition.

No wonder Miss Mia Sopaipilla feels like staying in bed all day. Sometimes I do, too.

New year, same old dog

January 3, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Today I managed a third consecutive day of outdoor cycling and field-tested my ability to fix a flat with a damaged digit. All is well. I froze my nuts off, true, but that’s nobody’s fault but my own for underestimating how much heat a fat bastard can generate riding a flat-bar cyclo-cross bike in subfreezing temperatures with a brisk north wind.

A windproof jacket would’ve been smart. Ditto full booties instead of toe covers. Hell, how ’bout staying indoors and drinking whisky out of the bottle? How many 55-year-old fat bastards do you know who are layering on the Lycra for a 90-minute ’cross-bike ride on a football Sunday when they could be in some warm pub drinking Clydesdale piss and sneaking peeks down the waitress’s blouse?

Yeah, I know. Plenty. And I was one of them. Because I am a dog with a mission — get fit enough to do the Adventure Cycling Association’s Southern Arizona Road Adventure in mid-March without embarrassing and/or killing myself.

Then I will write about it for Adventure Cyclist magazine, cash the check, and use the proceeds to buy warm clothing. Or whisky. Or both.

Moe, Larry, Curly, Pete, Jim and Michele

December 29, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

You call this a December morning in Colorado? I've seen more color at a Klan rally.

Feh. Another in our apparently interminable series of gray days. It’s too early in winter to see all this dirty snow and ice piled up all over the place, thanks to a stretch of subfreezing temperatures. It reminds me of Weirdcliffe, only with more horses’ asses than horses.

Speaking of which, it’s fine to see the Repuglitards continuing their craven buffoonery, slavish toadying to corporations and shameless pissing in the political sandbox. If a guy has to be stuck inside, it’s nice to have some entertainment. There are more than three stooges on the national stage as 2009 limps to a close, to be sure. Just check out Kevin Drum’s capsule look at the past two weeks in politics, and don’t miss Mother Jones‘ list of “Capitol Hill’s Most Unhinged Republicans.”

The unfunny part is, of course, that some of our fellow Americans think this lot should be running the country.

Cold comfort indeed

December 9, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

Turkenstein the Large is all puffed up with noplace to go (because I won't let him out). — Turkenstein the Large is all puffed up with nowhere to go (because I won't release him into the frigid wasteland that is Bibleburg).

Eleven below zero. Jesus H. Christ. I just saw an entire squadron of witches’ tits flying south for the winter with ground support from a battalion of nutless brass monkeys.

Posting has been spotty around here lately ’cause it’s the monthly deadline crunch — cartoon for VeloNews on Friday, double-posting on the old and new VeloNews.com sites on Sunday and Monday, ’toon, column and the Grapevine roundup for Bicycle Retailer due by close of business today. Why, it’s almost like having a real job, except for the lack of health insurance, paid vacation, 401(k), and employer-supplied office, phone, Internet service, computer, software and technical support.

At least I don’t have to drive anywhere, wear a tie, piss away the day in pointless meetings. I’m parked at the keyboard in sweatpants and a Mount Taylor Winter Quadrathlon T-shirt from 1990, when I was young and fit and had hair in places other than my shoulders, ears and nose.

I had a real job then, too. My last one, I hope. Boy, did that ever suck. If I were still doing that bullshit I’d have had to edit something about Caribou Barbie instead of drawing a Mud Stud cartoon.

Freezer burn

December 7, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

We’re in the deep freeze here in Bibleburg. It reminds me of the bad old days up in Weirdcliffe, where Herself and I passed many a winter day huddled in our bearskins by a blazing woodstove, sipping whisky from CamelBaks with our fingers buried in the ample guts of a freshly killed Republican to prevent frostbite.

Saw a hand surgeon today and the good news is he will not need to rewire my port-side communications network. The bad news is I get to enjoy three weeks of intense physical therapy and am probably looking at three to six months before the left birdie regains full flippage.

Adding insult to injury, as I was leaving my first PT session I set my keys and cell phone on the driver’s seat of the Subaru and commenced to knock ice and snow from its windows. As I let the driver’s-side wiper fall to the windshield the security system hooted once and there I stood, locked out of my ride in 8-degree temps with a light snow and a brisk wind from the east.

As I told a colleague earlier, next time I lay it down I’m gonna see to it that the head hits the deck first. Brain damage is not a handicap in our line of work — it’s a prerequisite.