Hot times in the old town (for now)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Bibleburg popped a 4-year-old record today, hitting 78 degrees. And the springlike weather had all the eejits  out and about, believe you me.

First, I nearly got right-hooked by an inattentive motorist at a stoplight on the outbound leg of today’s ride; happily, being a lifelong paranoid, I saw her coming. On the homestretch I avoided T-boning a couple of dipshit mountain bikers on a fast descent through Palmer Park. They rolled casually from a parking lot into the road, right in front of me, screened by a phalanx of parked vehicles. Once again, I was lucky to have seen them long before they saw me. Disc brakes helped, too.

There is a particular class of narcissistic nitwit at large these days whose members believe that nothing they do can ever be wrong. It’s thinking on a par with Tricky Dicky’s “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”

Then again, calling it “thinking” is a bit extravagant. I saw the faces of both motorist and mountain bikers, and they resembled nothing so much as the vacuous mugs of feedlot cows, contentedly chewing their own cuds.

The temptation is to lock up the binders, gesticulate and in general make a spectacle of yourself, offering up loud, detailed and specific instruction delivered mostly in words containing only four letters.  But what kind of crazy bastard shouts at cattle on a beautiful spring day?

No, really …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Palmer Lake on April Fool's Day 2011
This minor metropolis is a pleasant, slightly uphill, nearly auto-free 25 miles from Dog Central.

This is not an April Fool’s joke, no matter what you may have seen over at VeloNews.com: I not only had nothing to do with this year’s April Foolery, I spent the day riding my Nobilette ’cross bike from Chez Dog to Palmer Lake and back.

I developed delusions of grandeur on the outbound leg and nearly rode to the Greenland Open Space trailhead, but the restrooms along the way were still closed and their water fountains shut off, so I turned my little comedy act around at Palmer Lake lest I dry up and blow away.

And a good thing, too, ’cause I found myself chewing on a headwind all the way home.

All in all, I wound up with 50 miles on the day, which ain’t bad for an old man riding a steel bike off-road. But Lord, was I slow. I won’t tell you how slow. You might defect to some other blog. Let’s just say that last year I covered the distance 15 minutes quicker than I did today.

Of course, that was on June 1, not April 1. And I had a tailwind for the homebound leg last year, plus 2,000 miles in my legs. This year, not so much. Plus the Republicans have control of the House, which slows everything up, including me.

In God We Rust

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

That’s the name of Lewis Black’s tour, and Herself and I caught the Bibleburg stop last night, with our friends Steve and Christina.

I hadn’t heard that he had done time in Bibleburg as a young man, in 1972, when I had fled the place for Alamosa. He was trying to get a theater going here, and I was trying not very hard to go to college. He spent a year here, which he confessed was all he could take. I managed two in Alamosa, which was all I could take. We both say “fuck” a lot. Makes you think. Maybe not.

He went off on the Gazette at one point and I nearly gave out with, “It was worse to work there than it was to read the sonofabitch,” but soon was glad I didn’t, because (a) there is no Audience Participation Time in standup comedy, and (2) shortly thereafter when he was recounting a screwing he’d endured at the hands of Verizon over a Droid purchase some bimbo chimed in about how he should’ve bought phone insurance and Lewis leaped from the stage into the crowd and tore her throat out with his teeth.

Well, OK, he didn’t actually do that. But he fucked with her for quite some time, and worked the insurance bullshit into another bit, and if she had anything else to contribute thereafter I didn’t hear it.

If you’d like to spend a memorable evening pissing your pants while laughing hysterically, here’s his schedule.

And now the rumors behind the news

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
Robin in the maple
It's a little brisk yet this morning and this guy is looking pretty puffy.

Thanks, all, for the birthday wishes. I was buried in deadlines and only now have I been able to rear my ugly head.

Looks like all the usual skullduggery has continued unabated in my absence. NBC News avoids reporting that its owner, General Electric Co., earned $14.2 billion in profits last year but paid no federal income tax (having just signed off on my returns, I can assure you that Mad Dog Media paid through its cold, wet nose).

Steve Benen makes a “Star Wars” reference (“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”) in noting Joe Klein’s apprehension at the “vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers” queuing up to race for the GOP presidential nomination.

And Fox News VP Bill Sammon is full of shit to the sideburns.

Those are the highlights so far this morning. No doubt there will be others. But they’ll have to wait until after I enjoy a nice, long, skull-flushing bike ride.

Dude, where’s my spring?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Ho hum
The Turk' finds our pre-spring weather too tedious for words.

Another birthday in the books. Funny, I don’t feel a day over 57.

I spent the joyous occasion hunkered down in the titanium and carbon fiber VeloBarrel, which had sprung a few leaks on Saturday after a software update. Nevertheless, I managed to abandon my post for 90 minutes both days for the never-ending struggle against my inner fat bastard. And there was whiskey last night.

Meanwhile, our typically psychotic spring weather continues. Gray skies, freezing fog, light snow and/or rain in the morning, semi-sunny and fitty-sumpin’ in the afternoon. For a guy who likes to take his exercise around 10 in the morning this creates something of a problem — as in, how to avoid the sort of embarrassing shrinkage that makes a guy look like a pudgy, bald-headed Ken doll in Lycra.

The solution so far has been to ride in the afternoon, when it’s warmish. But I’m a creature of habit. Get up at 7, caffeinate, eat a little sumpin’-sumpin’, write a bit of paying copy or rough out a cartoon, then tug on the bibs and go scare some iPlodders on the bike path at 10 a.m. sharp. Post-ride, I get back after the money-making, sit zazen, rustle up some vittles, have a dram or two or three, enjoy a bit of electronic entertainment and hit the hay.

I mean, what’s the deal here? All I’ve ever asked of the universe is that I have everything exactly the way I like it. Sheesh.