Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Join Charles Pelkey, the Man On the Scene (MOTS), The Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter, some other old fat bald guy, and the proverbial Cast of Thousands this Sunday when Live Update Guy will follow the 2015 edition of Paris-Roubaix as it happens.

That’s why they call it a “live update,” in case you were wondering.

Paris-Roubaix will be something of a test drive. Consigliere Pelkey, being an attorney and freshly elected legislator, is busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, but he’d still like to keep a toe in what we like to jokingly call “cycling journalism.” If all goes well, we’ll consider doing all three grand tours again, as has been our practice for the past few years.

It’s a public-radio-style deal, dependent upon financial support from the audience, so if free-range, grass-fed, gluten-free, humanely raised, organic-hemp live coverage is something you find marginally valuable, pop round for a heaping helping of our patented Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah (NRRBBB)™ come Sunday and consider dropping a copper or two into our beggars’ bowl as we cover the queen of the cobbled classics.

I would not feel so all alone. Everybody must get stoned!

Blood Moon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Any of you early risers catch this morning’s lunar eclipse? We might have missed it had it not been for the vigilance of Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), who discerned a threat to the State brewing and roused us at 5 a.m. for a brisk inspection of the perimeter.

If I were a better photographer, or were awakened more easily (think Dracula asked to leave his coffin before sunset), I’d have had a go at a snap or two of this third Blood Moon eclipse in a series of four. Instead we just enjoyed the five-minute spectacle. Sorry ’bout that.

Good god

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 36 Comments
Danger indeed.
Danger indeed.

I see the noted humanitarian Jeb “The Smart One” Bush (see Schiavo, Terri) has weighed in on Indiana’s god-bothering asshattery.

If this keeps up, there’s not gonna be any room in the Wayback Machine for Sherman and Mr. Peabody. It’ll be nothing but GOP presidential candidates in there, and standing room only.

 

Kilometers or miles?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
You find yourself on a nicely appointed bike path like this and the idea of turning around just seems wrong.
You find yourself on a nicely appointed bike path like this and the idea of turning around just seems wrong.

I gave myself a helluva birthday gift today.

Herself had proposed that I piss off to Ten Thousand Waves to leach all the venom out of my 61-year-old carcass while she and her visiting pal Lester terrorized Duke City. But I thought a bike ride might serve the same purpose, and without the need to start the car and drive an hour or so north.

Being a shrunken, feeble shadow of my once mighty self, I thought riding my age in kilometers would be just the thing. Then the ride sort of got away from me and before I knew it I was well on my way to riding 61 miles.

Classify it under, “I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway.” My longest ride this year was a shade over half that, and I had only two bottles and limited grub. But conditions were ideal — 50s at the start, 70s at the finish — and I actually had a cross/head wind out and a cross/tail wind back, which never ever happens.

Plus I finally rode the Paseo del Bosque Trail all the way south until it coils back on itself via Rio Bravo. So I can cross that one off the old bucket list.

On the homebound leg a brisk tail wind pushed me up Spain toward Tramway, and glad of it I was, too, because it’s mostly uphill from the bosque and I was feeling a tad weary for some reason. The torpor of the aged, no doubt. Anyone care to recommend a nice nursing home? One with secure bike parking?