Fear and loathing … but mostly loathing

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Fear and Loathing, Campaign Trail style
The more things change, etc.

Every time I read a story like this I wish someone could reanimate Hunter S. Thompson and send him lurching back out on the campaign trail.

Wouldn’t you like to get the take on Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio from the guy who wrote: “Any political party that can’t cough up anything better than a treacherous brain-damaged old vulture like Hubert Humphrey deserves every beating it gets. They don’t hardly make ’em like Hubert any more — but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.”

Or of the inevitability of Richard Nixon: “This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we really are just a nation of 230 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

Or: “Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

Bluesday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
There's a slight chance of snow this morning. Doesn't matter, I'll be inside cooking chicken soup as a deterrent.
There’s a slight chance of snow this morning. Doesn’t matter, I’ll be inside cooking chicken soup as a deterrent.

The Crud is undefeated and still champeen. It finally got Herself, the last holdout in the Maryland Four, and as I understand it the past couple of days have been as unpleasant as a close working relationship with Ted Cruz.

She’s on her way home as we speak, and I hope she (a) left The Crud back in Maryland, and (2) in her weakened condition doesn’t collect another bug from the pressurized aluminum test tube busy folks use as transportation in these modern times (que viva Air Subaru, baby).

Freelance rumormongers don’t get sick days. We don’t work, we don’t eat. Especially if we’re too busy barfing to cook.

Snowmopocalypseageddonzilla!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Photos: Herself | Mad Dog Media East Coast Bureau

Deep doodoo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Nope, no snow up there.
Nope, no snow up there.

Thirty-six inches: That’s the final tally from Maryland, where the digging out has commenced.

"It snowed how much? Where? Let's never go there."
“It snowed how much? Where? Let’s never go there.”

Adding insult to inundation, the gut rumble that started working its way through the kinfolk beginning with the brother-in-law has so far claimed 75 percent of the clan, with only Herself spared (so far).

Meanwhile, the mom-in-law’s flight back to Tennessee got croaked by the storm, so Herself the Elder is enjoying a little extra recovery time before clambering into an aluminum tube full of fresh viruses for the trip home.

This whole clusterfuck was intended to give her the chance to inspect a couple of properties with an eye toward relocating somewhere down the road.

I bet the trip made Albuquerque look like the Garden of Eden. The place has its warts like any other, but the snow rarely arrives three feet at a time and the only time anyone ever shits themselves is at the thought of living in Maryland.

"'Maryland,' you say? Sounds like Hell to me."
“‘Maryland,’ you say? Sounds like Hell to me.”

Chile, hold the snow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
You can still find some snow around here, but nobody is duking it out at the grocery over the last can of Spaghetti-Os.
You can still find some snow around here, but nobody is duking it out at the grocery over the last can of Spaghetti-Os.

I bitch a fair amount (OK, so I bitch a lot, maybe even a whole shitload), but I’m having a hard time complaining about my lot in life today.

For starters, I am not in Maryland, where Herself is going toe to toe with Snowmageddon, various blood relatives and in-laws, and a vile case of gastroenteritis that has already felled 50 percent of her party.

The Four Corners Elite isn't your grandpappy's steel touring bike, nosirree. Now get off my lawn.
The Four Corners Elite isn’t your grandpappy’s steel touring bike, nosirree. Now get off my lawn.

No, I am right here in the Duke City, where today it was a balmy fiddy-sumpin’ and strictly blue skies as I rode the Marin Four Corners Elite around and about for a blissful 90 minutes, inspecting a bit of bike path with which I was unfamiliar.

The sonofabitch takes more inexplicable twists and turns than a Caribou Barbie speech, but the Domingo Baca eventually gets you there, “there” being the North Diversion Channel Trail, a major north-south backbone of the local trail network.

Once safely on the main stem I took my usual route back to El Rancho Pendejo, heading over I-25 and along Osuna to the John Roberts Dam, where Walter White caught his getaway ride in the extractor’s red Toyota Previa, and then riding the dirt trails behind the dam to the Tramway bike path and home.

I arrived back at the ranch just in time to receive a generous compliment on one of my videos for Adventure Cyclist — just call me Quentin Ferrentino — and now I’m cooking up a green chile stew by way of refreshment and celebration.

Tomorrow looks even better. And I won’t even have to cook the stew when I get home.