The traditional grumbling against January

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Them ol' January blues
Turkish snoozes away those ol' January blues.

January. Meh. The Turk’ and I both find it too tedious for words.

The upside of cycling in 30-something temps is that your bottles stay cool while your boogers get warm enough for you to bombard the iPod People with drive-by snot rockets as you zip past. The downside is that you have to wear every bit of kit in your footlocker and staying out for more than 90 minutes or so kinda sucks.

Yesterday I thought I’d be smart and toddled off to a nearby junior high school for a bit of solo cyclo-cross on Old Yeller, my favorite Steelman. The grounds there have a rolling nature, there’s a gravel track, some asphalt and a couple of staircases for run-ups, so yeah, perfect for chewing on that cold NNW wind only in tiny bites and getting in some vigorous healthful exercise.

Until the rear tire collected every goathead in Christendom and I had to take five to replace the tube, after first running a finger around inside the tire, probing for sneaky spines invisible from the outside. I found ’em the hard way, as usual. Owie.

This morning the front had gone flat, too. O bugger. That one I fixed indoors, where the furnace is.

Let them eat … nothing

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Welcome to the future: overfed lawmakers stiffing underfed kids.

I’d like to see a few of these empty suits lining up at their local food banks for a small box of whatever. Looks like the Durango Herald picked the right time to run this piece.

It will be interesting to see which measures manage to win the approval of the steely-eyed budget cutters at the state Capitol. Is it unreasonable of me to expect that the rich might continue to get richer?

Meanwhile, there’s a fresh rant up at VeloNews.com. It has a relatively low venom content and is comparatively foam-free.

The new old normal

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Racing back to the ranch.
I shot this at sunset out of the driver's-side window. Kids, don't try this at home. Or in your car.

We’re back on track here in Dog Country. The most pressing deadlines have been met, a weekend in the VeloBarrel logged, and the exercise regimen has resumed after a stretch of too many miles behind the wheel and too few in the saddle.

Naturally, the weather had gone to hell during my absence — snow on the roads and ice on the trails had me second-guessing my decision to skip a stop at McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Arizona, on the way home from California.

Oh, well. I’d probably have logged about one decent trail ride and then spent the remainder of my desert sojourn frantically cranking out the word count in some wired java shop, half asleep from trying and failing to nod out on the ground in the old Eureka two-man. That first day of camping is always the worst.

And anyway, the credit card was beginning to pulse and glow in my wallet; wisps of smoke periodically leaked from my hip pocket and I thought it might be wise to take it home, air it out a bit, let it heal.

So, yeah. I celebrated homecoming with a splashy run through the goo on Friday, rode for an hour on Saturday, then for 90 minutes on Sunday, and today — well, today was one of those days that makes me wonder why I don’t live someplace where the weather is a tad less psychotic.

It was sprinkling early on, so Herself and I bundled up for a short run. This seemed wise until about 30 minutes in, when the sun popped out and we both started shedding layers like snakes with leprosy. I was sweating like old dynamite and jogging along with a rain jacket in one hand and my hat in the other, gloves having been stuffed down the tights I wished I had left at home.

The sun being out, I considered a ride, but a squint in the ’fridge disabused me of that notion. It was back in the Subaru and off to the Whole Paycheck, where I tallied a personal best — $258, most of it basics rather than larks’ tongues, wrens’ livers or jaguars’ earlobes.

Like I said, we’re back on track here. Can y’smell what the Dog is cookin’?

The crazies on the crazy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

I don’t know who’s scarier — the grinning lunatic who guns down a congresswoman, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, among others, or the assclowns who are in the public eye because some folks treat the ballot box like a drive-up window at Mickey D’s after the bars have closed for the night (“Oh, just give me whatever.”)

Take Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Terror Babies), who thinks some folks (not him) need to tone down their rhetoric. Or Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-McCarthyism), a neotard who equates health care with terrorism — and who chairs a House committee on higher education and lifelong learning. And of course Caribou Barbie herself, who just can’t bear to see a TV screen bereft of her image, a grinning clown mask hung on an empty skull. A big shout-out to John “Get Off My Lawn” McCain for dropping this flaming sack of moose shit on the national stoop.

It must all be terribly frustrating for the staff at “The Daily Show,” with satire running a very poor second to reality. As Steve Benen at Political Animal noted, “The jokes write themselves.”

Home again, home again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Miss me? I drove to California for Theresa Coursey’s memorial service, and while it was swell to be among friends, people I hadn’t seen in a spell, a guy likes everyone to be present and accounted for, and we were one fine woman short.

Theresa’s service drew a standing-room-only crowd, the sort we’d all secretly like to have, but few of us deserve. Theresa had it coming. Her husband and their children all spoke, and if there was a dry eye in the house it was not one of mine.

Afterward we ate and drank, talked and took long walks, and after a few days together we all scattered, returning to our lives in Prescott, Philly, Tempe, New York, Colorado. But I’m still thinking of Theresa, wishing I’d spent more time around her, and I know I’m not alone.

Being present these days is not always easy, but it remains vital. In “Taking the Path of Zen,” the late Robert Aitken Roshi recounted the evening message of sesshin as given at Hawaii’s Diamond Sangha:

I beg to urge you, everyone:

Life-and-death is a grave matter,

all things pass quickly away;

each of us must be completely alert:

never neglectful, never indulgent.

That’s my evening message to you. In the morning, the comedy will resume.