Have a ‘Heart’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
Ed's first collection of his Denver Post columns.
Ed’s first collection of his Denver Post columns.

Ed Quillen left the party way too early.

Every time some greedhead with a talent for skinning the rubes floats a Barnumesque balloon full of canned farts and damned little else, I miss Ed and his quiver of curmudgeonly arrows.

Here’s one Ed aimed at tourism back in 1993:

“Tourism is the biggest industry in the world, and apparently it functions like any other industry — if there’s a conflict between telling the truth and making money, so much the worse for the truth.”

Writing of the perils of “health-care rationing” in 1994, Ed said:

“Here’s some news for our protectors in the U.S. Senate — unlike you, with your excellent, government-funded health plan that covers everything, most of us already have rationed health care. It’s rationed by what we can afford, or by how much our insurance companies will pay.”

And in discussing a plan to raise Colorado’s gas tax by a nickel per gallon back in 1987, Ed said the only problem he had with the concept was that it was about $9.95 short of what was needed.

A gas tax of $10 per gallon, he argued, would reduce street crime, air pollution and penny-ante tourism while giving a boost to carpooling, public transportation, cycling, walking, and something called “telecommuting,” which he confided was “how this column gets from Salida to Denver.”

“Raising the tax won’t even be a good start, though,” Ed concluded. “Get it up to $10 a gallon, and see how Colorado prospers while becoming a vastly better place to live.”

All these examples of Ed’s savvy come from his Denver Post columns circa 1985-98, compiled in the 1998 book “Deep In the Heart of the Rockies.”

Ed left us last year, but his words remain. And a new collection of Ed’s work from 1999 to 2012 is being assembled by daughter Abby Quillen, along with her husband, Aaron Thomas, Ed’s friend and colleague Allen Best, and friend of the DogS(h)ite Hal Walter of Hardscrabble Times, among others.

The book is a Kickstarter project, and if they don’t raise the minimum funds needed (a pittance of $5,500), the book won’t happen. I think it’s a thing worth doing, and have kicked in a couple of bucks.

Abby hopes to use the proceeds to fund a memorial bench, and perhaps a scholarship in Ed’s name for students interested in journalism or Colorado history.

But perhaps the best memorial to Ed would be the book itself, a reminder that the smart guys will not always be around to slap the hands of the hucksters trying to pick our pockets, or worse, and that we will have to start paying attention and raising a ruckus on our own behalf.

Smooth as Silk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Bike Friday Silk Road Alfine
All folded up and nowhere to go.

I should know better than to tempt fate with posts like that last one.  The Million-Pound Shithammer began its rhythmic rise and fall shortly thereafter, I commenced evasive maneuvers, and next thing you know it’s August and I haven’t posted some useless bit of nonsense for days.

Our tenant in the House Back East™ moved out just in time for one of Herself’s old childhood chums to move in for a short reunion that involved a road trip to Santa Fe. For the womenfolk, naturally, not for Your Humble Narrator, who had chores to perform.

I just wrapped up the last of them about 15 minutes ago — a short video review of a Bike Friday Silk Road Alfine for Adventure Cyclist. I’ve done a couple-three of these things now, and while they’re getting slightly easier, they still take me way outside my comfort zone, because at heart I’m an ink-stained wretch with a radio face and a habit of peppering every conversation with at least five of George Carlin’s fabled Seven Words, especially if I happen to be talking to myself, as is usually the case.

Like writing and cartooning, these two-minute videos are a one-man job. I write the script, shoot and edit the video, do the voiceovers, and serve as the on-camera “talent,” har de har har. If the aliens ever see one of these things, they are certain to write off the planet as a dangerous slum populated by mental defectives who never developed the internal combustion engine.

This last one was something of a rush job — an Aug. 5 deadline somehow became a figment of my imagination, and so I spent the past couple of days playing Quentin Ferrentino. But that’s all over now, the video is shipped, and tomorrow I can get back to my acting career, to wit, acting like a guy who rides a bike.

High on the hog

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
Soma Double Cross
The Soma Double Cross in semi-touring configuration at Blodgett Peak Open Space.

Yesterday was a rare day indeed, one largely free of responsibility for Your Humble Narrator (save for meal preparation), so I pissed off for a couple leisurely hours of cycling.

I chose the Soma Double Cross, which had been undergoing refitting for touring before the plumber took his monkey wrench to my plans for a little post-Tour getaway; I had reattached the rear rack, but hadn’t gotten around to the low-rider or fenders.

The Double Cross is not particularly light, but neither am I, so who cares? I felt like riding it, I felt like climbing some middling hills, and the ride proved as delightful as free beer on a hot day.

You may be disappointed to hear that there was some performance enhancement involved. Before heading out, I ate a sandwich of Niman Ranch applewood-smoked ham and Alp and Dell Muenster on rustic Italian bread. That little piggy (and not all that little, either) sure flattened out those inclines. A sign of the Aporkalypse? Perhaps.

Thank Buddha that nobody from USADA was around to catch my Zoom-Zoom impersonation. My sweat smelled like bacon, which is a dead giveaway that I’m on The Program again. They don’t even bother to draw blood once they get a whiff.

HTFU?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 42 Comments
uisce beatha
There stands the glass. …

Outrage repeated ad infinitum is like an overlong intervals session. At some point you come up off the saddle and then sit right back down.

I’m not even in the saddle for the news about Stuart O’Grady and the rest of them from 1998. I’m back at the house, with the bike on its hook, and looking longingly at that unopened bottle of Bushmills in the kitchen. My performance-enhancer of choice for longer than I care to remember, even if I could.

So, instead of me struggling to gin up an anemic burstlet of apoplexy, how ’bout we take a trip down memory lane to August 2007, when “Friday’s Foaming Rant” still bestrode the narrow cycling world like a Colossus?