Mind the ruts

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Is it all downhill from here? Yes and no. …

Things have been a little “Groundhog Day”-ish around here lately. On a loop, dully predictable, like customer-service hold music or the hourly news.

Thinking I might derive some mental-health benefits from taking a little road trip somewhere, I had the Subaru serviced. But then it struck me that I couldn’t think of anyplace a reasonable drive away in a 20-year-old car that would be a step up from where I already was.

Anyway, long stretches of the calendar had already been spoken for. A plumber was to diagnose and treat a leaky toilet. Herself blocked off a five-day visit to Aspen. Labor Day reared its capitalist head.

And finally, in-laws were inbound — Herself’s two sisters, the only survivors of a much larger expedition that, like Your Humble Narrator, just couldn’t seem to get buckled up and backed out of the garage.

Thus, lacking opportunity and inspiration, I’ve been trying to shake some of the dust off my local cycling routine, which over the long, hot summer took a two-wheel drift into a 20-mile rut.

It went like this: Get up early, have coffee, then some more coffee with toast, then a serious breakfast, and finally dash out for a 20-mile romp through the foothills before Tonatiuh started cooking.

This is fine, as far as it goes, which is not very; about 20 miles per sitting, according to my cyclometer(s). But after a while this sort of repetition devolves from joy into work. Exercise. Basically, gym class, which I always hated.

No wonder people get fat. Bor-ing.

So lately, with Tonatiuh having stepped away from the stove for a spell, I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit.

Last Saturday I joined a few other riders for a bit of paceline practice, zooming down Tramway to the North Valley and then drilling it out to Bernalillo and back. All told it was good for about twice my usual mileage.

Northbound on the bosque trail.

On Tuesday I cranked out a solo 42-miler, likewise down in the valley, but this time south on the Paseo del Bosque trail to just past Interstate 40 and back. I hadn’t ridden the bosque since March; half a year later the trees are starting to show hints of fall color, so I need to get back down there soon.

Yesterday I grabbed a Steelman Eurocross and did a quick hour on the trails in the Elena Gallegos Open Space. Hadn’t done that since mid-August.

Grunting up a few steepish rocky pitches reminded me that I needed to replace the bike’s chainrings, chain, and cassette. Not just from wear and tear, though there’s plenty of that, but mostly due to the mileage on its 1954 engine. Down with the 48/36T chainrings, up with the 46/34T! And the cassette will get four extra teeth at the fat end. Death to the 36x28T — long live the 34x32T!

Today various crucial segments of Your Humble Narrator were complaining bitterly about working conditions and threatening to go on strike, so I decided to take a lazy jog along our shortest foothills loop as a change of pace.

I’d been neglecting my ground-pounding, and thought I’d top it off with a little light weightlifting, likewise neglected. Must preserve the muscle mass, if only for speed-scrolling past news items like “Scientists use food dye found in Doritos to make see-through mice.”

What? Hit the back button. Doritos? See-through mice? Holy hell.

Is this for real? A lactic-acid flashback? Or maybe the WaPo’s A.I. just filed the serial numbers off an abandoned Monty Python script to make the Limey boss-fella blow his breakfast gin out his snout.

Whatever. I think I just got a great idea for a Halloween costume.

Definitely challenged, but no record

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
The clouds conceal us from the sun god.

With any luck at all the unseemly heat has broken. For the moment, anyway.

Come morning we don’t have to worry that the air conditioning will click on if we throw the doors and windows open to admit a listless 80° breeze that frankly falls miles short of refreshing. But 68°? That’s more like it.

Now and then we’ve gotten a soupçon of rain overnight. Better and better.

As a consequence the cycling has been excellent. It’ll be a while before we have to start thinking about arm and knee warmers, but the other day I packed a jacket and rode a bike with fenders just to ensure that there would be no rain while I was out and about.

Your Humble Narrator, failing to distinguish himself in a time trial at Alamosa sometime in the Nineties. Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Despite the heat I’ve been logging 100-120 miles a week since mid-June, plus occasional short trail runs and even some light weightlifting. Exactly why remains a mystery. The only possible justification is the faint hope that all this sweaty nonsense will help me continue smiling down at the daisies instead of scowling up at the roots.

The other day I found myself afflicted with the impulse to resurrect my old Steelman time-trial bike. Must’ve been some distant, pain-wracked memory of the Record Challenge Time Trial at Moriarty trying to crawl out of its coffin.

The best ride I ever had there was in 1991, when I turned a 56:43 for 40km despite being mired in the move from Fanta Se to Bibleburg. I was logging most of my mileage in the ’83 Toyota longbed but still managed a PR that was only about 10 minutes slower than Kent Bostick’s best time on the course (he didn’t even race that year and still beat me).

Imagine my surprise when a casual check of the Innertubes found that the Paula Higgins Memorial Record Challenge Time Trial is on for the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

Hmm. Now that I’m a geezer I’d be racing the 20km. The way I’ve been training, who knows? I might even be able to break the hour.

Stand and deliver

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
“I thought it would never end.”

We’re all three of us pooped here at El Rancho Pendejo.

Up too late and too early; chores neglected or mishandled; dinners largely inadequate, poorly timed, and eaten in front of the TV; all so we could hear what the Democrats had to say for themselves.

Two things, basically: First, “We’re not crazy.” And second, “Let’s kick that guy’s ass.”

Most of the speakers said it with more grace, wit, and style, of course. But that was the long and the short of it.

And that’s really all I care about at the moment. It’s a big country in a bigger world, with a metric shit-ton of things that need doing, at home and abroad.

But none of them will get done if we don’t kick that guy’s ass. Wear out a six-pack of kneecaps each if we have to. Leave him and his bootlickers tasting our shoe leather until 2028.

And have a few laughs while we’re doing it.

This guy and his punks and their paymasters can’t stand it when we laugh at them. It makes ’em crazy. Well, OK, crazier.

Maybe that’s why Glen Bateman’s speech to Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s “The Stand” sprang to mind after the DNC finally wrapped up this week.

Once again the dark man was making promises he had no intention of keeping, and Bateman couldn’t help himself — he started laughing at him.

“Stop laughing.”

Glen laughed harder.

“Stop laughing at me!”

“You’re nothing!” Glen said, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. “Oh pardon me … it’s just that we were all so frightened … we made such a business out of you … I’m laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance. …”

It was Bateman’s last laugh. Flagg still had followers eager to do his bidding. But Bateman knew Flagg’s dark magic was on the ebb and said so, loud and clear. Heckled the evil sonofabitch, and not from the safety of the cheap seats, either.

If that ain’t a kick in the ass, I don’t know what is.

Now, as you all know, I’m a reasonable fellow. I’ll be happy to hear what an actual Republican candidate has to say, if what remains of the GOP ever manages to resurrect one. Project 2025? Sheeyit. How about some ideas that should’ve been dead and buried years ago, not a lightly reworked Project 1934 from Nuremberg? Or Project 1478 from Spain?

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, f’chrissakes.

Our lot doesn’t have all the answers, Dog knows. It’s a bigger tent, occasionally with an embarrassment of clowns and more tabbies than lions.

But I like to think our clowns are mostly marching forward, honking and h’yuking and tripping over their own oversized shoes. And who doesn’t like kitty-cats? Either you already know the answer to that one or I’m preaching to the wrong choir.

So how about we live in the future? It’s just starting now.

The big O

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
You get a sky shot! And you get a sky shot! And you get a sky shot. …

I have never paid the least bit of attention to Oprah Winfrey, not even when she sat down with Ol’ Whatsisface to chat about how it really wasn’t about the bike.

But after last night I can see why so many other people have.

Holy hell. There must be a metric shit-ton of folks who wish she’d run for office, and even more who pray she never does.

I have paid some attention to Bill Clinton, and often wish I hadn’t, especially after doing it again last night. (See Hunter S. Thompson on Mister Bill in “Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie.”)

After watching Mister Bill polish his own idol for the better part of quite some time it was a positive relief to hear Coach Walz singing Americana a cappella. I am not and never will be a football fan, but I’m finding the Democrats’ sense of play in this go-round as refreshing as a cold beer in the cheap seats.