With the Giro finally in the history books, Herself and I decided to spend the morning upgrading a few of the empty pots cluttering up El Rancho Pendejo. We also finally got around to installing our shrine to the Egyptian feline goddess Bastet. Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Defense Regiment), and his aide-de-camp Miss Mia Sopaipilla had complained that we were hampering their freedom to worship as they choose, and their protests are rough on the carpets.
I was all on my oddy knocky for today’s penultimate stage at the Giro d’Italia. Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey had to dash off to the Wyoming state Democratic convention, which was being held in a Prius in Rock Springs, so Your Humble Narrator was flying solo.
And quite a stage it was, too. If you missed the call you can read back on it here.
Chazbo will be back tomorrow for the big finale, and then we will both be off to other pursuits for a bit. I think he’s committed to doing one final Tour. Me, I think I should be committed.
Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey and I were discussing anniversaries the other day, and I was reminded that I’ve been working in my chosen profession for nearly 39 years now; 40, if you count the time I spent as a copy boy at the Colorado Springs Sun back in 1974.
No wonder I fail to amuse myself now and then.
This week was one of those times. Mornings spent working the Giro at Live Update Guy. Back-to-back ship dates at Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, which meant I had to crank out two “Mad Dog Unleashed” columns and two “Shop Talk” cartoons in two weeks. And two bike reviews ongoing for Adventure Cyclist. Thousands and thousands of words.
There are harder ways to earn your biscuits and beans — for example, maglia rosa Steven Kruijswijk went ass over teakettle into a snowbank coming off the Cima Coppi in today’s Giro stage — but nevertheless, now and then it feels very much like work.
Other things take a back seat. Cooking (lots of cold suppers lately). Chores (you should see the laundry pile). Cycling (I went for a 45-minute run yesterday because I was sick of bicycles).
And this blog, of course.
In “A Moveable Feast,” Ernest Hemingway wrote of a line he refused to cross:
“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
I’m no Hemingway. I don’t write novels, or short stories; I don’t even do journalism anymore, not really. More of a rumormonger, actually.
But still, damn. I look in the bottom of the well lately and all I see are rusty pesos, a couple of dead silverfish, and … and. …
Say, is that the bullet that killed Vince Foster down there?
Once we fanned over a little ville that had just been airstruck and the words of a song by Wingy Manone that I’d heard when I was a few years old snapped into my head, “Stop the War, These Cats Is Killing Themselves.” Then we dropped, hovered, settled down into purple lz smoke, dozens of children broke from their hootches to run in toward the focus of our landing, the pilot laughing and saying, “Vietnam, man. Bomb ’em and feed ’em, bomb ’em and feed ’em.”
That quote from Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” just snapped into my head as I read this New York Times piece about the prez authorizing the sale of “lethal military equipment” to Vietnam.
Pretty much describes our entire foreign policy, doesn’t it?
Bomb ’em and feed ’em; bomb ’em and feed ’em.
