If I didn’t have to work weekends I’d be up in Fort Collins today and tomorrow, spectating at the New Belgium Cup.
But I do, so I’m not. If you’re in the same boat you can catch the action live via streaming video over at VeloNews.com.
• Late update: Jesus, these guys suck. No focus on the real action, no details of same, lousy camerawork, no sense of timing. It’s like watching your dad’s home videos, if dad smoked a lot of weed. I updated my Flash Player for this? I don’t care how many Clif Shots Colt had — I want to know what lap folks are on, splits between the leaders and the chasers … you know, all that boring journalisticky kind of stuff.
• Even later update: Bad ugly mud up there at Fort Fun. Brick-making stuff, like the evil adobe goo we have in sections of Palmer Park and Sondermann Park, as I discovered the hard way. Now I stay the hell out of those places after a bout of what the Irish call “soft” weather. The Fort Fun car washes will collect many quarters tonight, while local motels endure the dread Brown Towel Syndrome.
Nearly three decades old, covered with maple boogers, leaves and acid rain ... and it still runs.
Wow. Color me amazed. I hear that the temps are dipping down to 19 tonight and I think, “Hm, probably be smart to run the ’83 Toyota in for a quick check of its vital bodily fluids,” since it mostly lives out its miserable life snoozing beside the curb in front of Chez Dog.
The problem with my little scheme will be starting the old girl, which lately is about as easy as doing the people’s business in Congress. So I break out the portable jump-start system and give ’er a whirl.
Nothing. Zip. Nada. Niente. I could’ve brought a six-pack of monsters to life with the juice I poured into this thing and sent them all to Washington, D.C., to kick ass. Lord, this battery is truly fucked. And it’s not brand new, but neither is it particularly old. Out it comes.
I drag the misbegotten sonofabitch over to Advance Auto Parts on Nevada, from whence it came, fully expecting to have to buy a new one. The place is a madhouse. A businesslike young dude tells me the battery seems OK, if a bit undercharged, and says he’ll pop it into his charger and give it another look-see in about a half hour.
So I go home and give the battery clamps a good scouring because as an auto mechanic, it’s all I’m really qualified to do. I’m thinking, “Uh, huh, the battery’s gonna test out fine, so I probably need new cables, or a new starter motor,” mentally tallying the cost of maintaining a 27-year-old carbureted 4WD rice-grinder that I use about as often as Rush Limbaugh does what serves him for a brain.
But when I return the young dude has run a battery of complicated tests on the thing and declares it a miracle of modern science, leaking magnetism, black magic and voodoo and probably creating a singularity under my hood every time I turn the key, which explains the voices emanating from the radio, if not my head.
And he gives me a brand-new battery. Free of charge.
Thus the White Tornado is powered, oiled, greased and lubed, its elderly cooling system’s loins warmly girded against midnight engine-block explosions due to plummeting temperatures. Another fiscal tragedy averted.
And a man needs a truck, truly, if only to haul his fat ass around.
Thanks to all of you who — without a single bit of prodding by me — contributed dollars or tools to Brian Gravestock’s Bike Clinic Too. Your example caused me to haul a couple of beat-up old bicycles, soon to be parts donors, down to Old Town today.
Well, OK, I needed some cyclo-cross tires too. And some knee warmers. So sue me. I did a good thing anyway. And so did you.
One of the Old Town Bike Shop wrenches scored some nice ink in today’s Colorado Springs Independent, the local alt-weekly.
When he’s not puzzling over one of my beaters, Brian Gravestock spends a couple days each week refurbishing donated bikes for the homeless, with the help of three volunteers and two trainees, in a donated garage in West Bibleburg.
He and Peter Sprunger-Froese first started doing this sort of thing back in 1993, and today they have more “customers” than they can serve, thanks to brochures and word of mouth at the local shelters, halfway houses and soup kitchens.
Small acts of kindness and generosity often get swamped by the daily tsunami of evil tidings. It’s reassuring to see that not every good deed escapes notice.
• Editor’s note: Meanwhile, from the News As Usual Department comes Charles Pelkey’s take on the Eagle County hit-and-run. Bob Mionske weighs in, too. The Vail Daily, which broke the original story, urges the judge to reject the dimwitted DA’s insane plea bargain with Mr. Moneybags. And last but not least, a good-news/bad-news report: An LA fashion designer bumper-tags a cyclist, drives off, turns herself in, pleads no contest to two misdemeanors and gets 90 days in jail — that she will be allowed to serve on weekends. Jesus wept, what’s next? Letting rich folks hire homeless dudes and illegal aliens to do their time for them?
That’s the last of the blue skies around here for a bit. The temperature just dropped like a poisoned pigeon, Herself reports that she is driving home from Denver in a snowstorm and the forecast calls for rain and perhaps an inch or two of snow. Can’t be 70 and sunny forever, I guess.
After committing a bit of journalism in the morning I broke out a Steelman for a pleasant hour or so of low-impact cycling, then hopped on the Vespa for a quick spin downtown for lunch, just beating a light sprinkle home. Now it appears to be snowing, so I’m fortifying myself against pneumonia with a delicious glass of 2006 Ramón Bilbao Tempranillo Limited Edition.
Hey, it could be worse. I could’ve had to drive to Fruita for the VeloNews gang’s annual clusterfuck, and right now there just ain’t no good way to get there from here.
Happily, I wasn’t invited to attend this year, in part because I insist on being paid for hours logged and travel endured and in part because I refer to annual retreats as clusterfucks.
