A jihad against January and journalism

January 25, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

January should be struck from the calendar. What a waste of days. One day you’re singing the praises of global warming as you cycle along in summer kit, and the next you’re freezing your nutsack off and watching it “snow,” which in Colorado these days means greasing the streets just enough to keep the ERs and body shops busy.

I'm goin' down — down, down, down, down, down.

If I had any brains and a little money to go along with them I’d be camping in McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Arizona. Alas, I am short on both. Herself’s Subaru just got about four years’ worth of service all at once, and paydays remain uncertain as publishers try to find a pulse somewhere on the bike business.

The new owners of VeloNews have a mania for contracts that delayed my check for services rendered during January as online editor at large of the VeloNews.com website, and now we must negotiate a deal for the remaining 11 months of 2009. I’ve gotten along just fine for the past 20 years without a written deal with VeloNews, and so has VeloNews, but as the song goes, the times they are a-changin’.

Now we must set down at length in black and white what both parties already know — that for chasing typos around Al Gore’s Intertubes I will get a monthly paycheck and nothing else, and can be cut loose at any time with neither severance nor notice. Feh. When has it ever been otherwise? Cycling journalism is not a union gig, last time I checked.

And anyway, I learned a long time ago that a union card isn’t exactly a crucifix when it comes to warding off corporate vampires. The Newspaper Guild provided about as much protection as a thousand-year-old rubber when I found myself at odds with the management of The Pueblo Chieftain back in 1985. I negotiated my own buyout and got the fuck out of Dodge before they could sack my dumb ass. Before long I found an even worse job, at the Sentinel Publishing Co. in Denver, which laid me off two years later. No golden parachute that time, just six months of unemployment insurance.

My man Hal Walter is staring down that long lightless tunnel now, trying to figure out what’s next. He has a wife, child, mortgage and truck payment, in a changing world that seems to no longer need newspapers, so he can’t do what I did in January 1988 — give up the apartment, throw the dog and some essentials in the truck, and go looking for another newspaper job.

Snow job

January 4, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Feh. Typical Bibleburg snow. Not enough to shovel, but too much to broom. And 13 degrees to boot, with a brisk wind out of the east. I note that it is 52 and partly sunny in Las Cruces, N.M. Yet I am here instead of there. I will never be smart.

A guy needs chile inside when it's chilly outside.

I’m putting off the ride to nowhere as long as possible. Didn’t I burn some calories shifting snow from here to there? Sure I did. Counts as exercise, I don’t care what anyone says. And anyway, we broke fast with a revoltingly healthy meal of oatmeal, toast and orange juice, largely because we are out of eggs, sausage and potatoes. Stick that in your heart-rate monitor. Pfffbbblllpphhh.

Speaking of heart-healthy food and New Mexico, if I were there, I wouldn’t have had to spend too many blisteringly cold minutes just now roasting up some green chile on the back deck. I could’ve simply bundled up and toddled on down to Tia Sophia, The Shed or La Choza to knock back a couple or six warming tequilas while waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting, chile-wise. Instead, the neighbors are treated to the all-too-familiar sight of the block whacko, clad like Peary at the Pole, frantically flipping chiles on the gas grill in a wind chill of minus-3 so he can whip up some chicken enchiladas in green chile sauce to treat his pneumonia.

Oh, no, there goes Tokyo

December 27, 2008November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Back when I was a man, instead of whatever it is I am now, winter was just another season, albeit one that required more clothing. I’d kit up like the Michelin Man and go out for a road ride, or maybe a mountain-bike jaunt. If the weather was truly foul, I’d settle for a quick hour of cyclo-cross. Got to keep that edge, I’d think. Racing season is just around the corner.

But I quit racing several years ago, and these days I find less joy in a frozen, slushy outing that ends in a bike wash followed by laundry detail. I’d ski or snowshoe, if we had any snow, but unlike the San Juan Mountains the Front Strange is woefully light on precipitation. And my idea of a good time is decidedly not sharing the highways with a few jillion of my closest friends en route to a ski weekend in the mountains. These silly sods can’t even drive properly on dry roads.

So I run. It’s shameful, I know, but it’s also simple. Pull on the tights, long sleeves, cap, gloves and shoes, and off you go (with a courtesy call to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden to let them know that Godzilla is on the loose again).

Four wheels warm, two wheels cold

December 22, 2008November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

I'm melting, melting ... what a world, what a world.

My Subaru has a thing for thermostat gaskets (it doesn’t like them), and this morning I had to drop it off at Heuberger for the annual replacement of same. Herself was rocketing about the house, getting ready for work, so I chucked the Voodoo in the car, cranked up the heater and the seat warmer, and rolled off to Motor City. Fifteen degrees, said the dashboard thermometer. O, goody.

The mechanics all looked at me like I was from another world; Pluto, or maybe Goofy. And it’s true, I did not look as though I had just stepped from the pages of Bicycling magazine. In point of fact, I may be the worst advertisement ever for fashionable cycling.

My winter kit is a motley collection of premillennial gear, most of it so old I can’t remember where or when I got it (though most of it was made in the USA, which is something of a tip-off). From top to bottom, today’s ensemble went like this: Columbia tuque; Patagonia ski mask; Smith glasses; Cannondale jacket; Patagonia turtleneck; Pearl Izumi gloves, bibs and heavy-duty tights; SmartWool socks; Hi-Tec GT Euro shoes. Only the gloves, glasses and shoes came from overseas. And I know for a fact that the socks are the only item purchased in this millennium, from Colorado Running Company.

The Sammy Safetys among you will notice that this list does not include a helmet. So sue me. I wear a 7 5/8 hat. Try stuffing that fat bastard into a helmet without a pry bar and some Vaseline.

Late update: The Subaru remains unfixed (shorthanded at the shop), and the ’83 Toyota 4WD won’t start (a battery that even my charger won’t reboot). O, bugger. And me with an incomplete holiday grocery list, too. Off to the auto-parts store for a heavy-duty battery.

I’m stuck in this old city now

December 20, 2008November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Oh, Colorado’s calling me
From her hillsides and her rivers and her mesas and her trees,
When blizzards snap the power lines
And all the toilets freeze
In December in the Colorado Rockies
—Colorado, by Christopher Guest, Sean Kelly and Tony Hendra, 1973

The wind sang us a lullaby, the snow was thick as cream. . . .

People and critters get weird around these parts come December. My old pal Hal, who ranches chickens, burros and beeves outside Weirdcliffe, claims the deer ate his Internet the other day. It seems only fair, as he’s been eating them for years, along with elk, antelope, and other four-legged neighbors, generally after shooting them first. But still, it leaves a country boy a tad isolated, especially if his TV blows up about the same time.

Meanwhile, down here in Bibleburg, our large and ferocious feline Turkish has developed a fondness for my lap, in an oddly closeted sort of fashion. If Herself is not in evidence, Turk’ will leap up on my drawing board, stalk across my closed Asus Eee PC laptop to the next table over and give me the big blue eyes until I pat my quads a couple of times. Then he hops aboard and commences to purr, knead, nap and otherwise act like an actual cat instead of a furry Edward Scissorhands.

If anyone walks into the office, of course, I am less of a love boat than a launching pad, much to the detriment of my sweat pants (and quads, or what remains of them). But that’s December in the Colorado Rockies for you.