I was gonna make this very argument yesterday, but Kevin Drum did it today, so I don’t gotta.
Looks like Rudy the Putz is getting fitted for those Redi-Mix traveling shoes.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s a Sicilian message. It means Rudy Giuliani sleeps with the fishes. Which reminds me, any of yis seen Mick Mulvaney lately?”
Bicycle Week continues at El Rancho Pendejo with a long-distance peek at the National Bicycle Tourism Conference in my old hometown of San Antonio, Texas.
BRAIN’s Steve Frothingham, a very busy fellow indeed, is down on the scene and learning all about the bicycle tourism, including the Bourbon Country Burn, an event I might’ve leapt at a few years back when I was still a drinking man, assuming that any reputable publication’s editor would have been loopy enough to send a copper-bottomed tosspot to it in the vain hope of getting anything in return for the investment in time and treasure beyond a phone call from jail and a plea for lawyers, guns and money.
The BCB went from 200 participants to more than a thousand in three years, sez Steve to me, he sez. So they must be doing something right. (See “Which distilleries will I see,” above.)
The Adventure Cycling Association has boots on the ground, too, so look for a report in an upcoming edition of Adventure Cyclist.
BRAIN honcho Steve Frothingham takes us on a spin down Memory Lane with a look at Ross Bicycles, then and now.
I saw my first Ross mountain bike in the mid-1980s. My man Hal Walter had one, a blue Mt. Rainier acquired from Great Divide in Pueblo, and what a beast it was. A steel burro that never needed hay.
“That was a great bike,” Hal said today via Messages. “It was almost heavy enough to get a workout.”
Oh, indeed. Ishiwata 4130 chromoly tubes, 48/39/28 Sakai crank, Suntour derailleurs, 14-34 freewheel, Dia-Compe cantis, and chromoly Bull Nose bar and stem, a heavy-metal package that tipped the scale at 31 pounds.
It encouraged me to get my own mountain bike, a 1986 Trek Antelope 830, a comparative featherweight at just 28.9 pounds. Light enough for me to throw it into an arroyo on some BLM land outside Española when it failed to climb a loose, steep pitch after several tries. Only as the bike was leaving my fingers did I recall that I would need it to get home.
Of course, this was when men were men, and so were the women, and we all rode rigid steel, with thumbshifters, rim brakes and 26-inch wheels. I will concede, however, that today’s machinery is a whole lot easier to throw when it lets you down. Which it will.
… little Paddy wants to play.
We have a new review bike at El Rancho Pendejo, a Cannondale Topstone 105, but the weather is proving uncooperative as regards its maiden cruise.
What a good thing that I whipped up a vast tureen of posole before this wee November squall rumbled through town.
As the cool drizzle quietly flogs the last of the leaves off the backyard maple under leaden skies, it’s looking like your basic one-pot day, meal-wise.
Cook the oatmeal, have breakfast, wash the pot.
Hm. Still raining.
Reheat the posole, have lunch, wash the pot.
JFC. Still raining.
And dinner? I may outsource that one, if only because I’m out of posole, and who wants oatmeal for dinner?
Anyway, even a one-quart saucepan needs a break now and then.
Herself the Elder celebrated a birthday today with two of three daughters and one son-in-law (not me).
I’d never tell a lady’s age, but rumor has it she first appeared on the scene in the same year as White Sands National Monument, Esquire magazine, and the Marx Brothers Movie “Duck Soup.”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted!”
“That’s what you think.”
Anyway, a delicious seafood luncheon was had, “Happy Birthday” was sung by a son-in-law not in attendance (me, via FaceTime), and now the birthday girl and her middle daughter are kickin’ it back at the crib.
Which will not be her crib much longer. With the Not-So-Great Pumpkin poised to become the apostheosis of Florida Man, Herself the Elder will be abandoning the Sunshine State and setting up shop in the Land of Enchantment. She’s not overly fussy as regards neighbors, but one must have some standards.
Herself the Elder should be in residence here in ’Burque by Thanksgiving. Seafood will not be on the menu. Once she realizes we’re all sand and no ocean she’ll probably join a club and beat me over the head with it.
