The Iron Hose

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
In 1993 I thought I'd try racing the Iron Horse mountain bike race instead of its road cousin. Turns out I sucked at that, too.
In 1993 I thought I'd try racing the Iron Horse mountain bike race instead of its road cousin. Turns out I sucked at that, too.

Memorial Day weekend: High gas prices, check; lousy weather, check; Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, check.

I was never any great shakes at the Horse. My best finish was a 12th place in 1991, racing the masters 35 (2:31:33). My nadir was in 1995, the year we hit snow on Molas Pass. I had blown up earlier on Coal Bank, after tweaking a hamstring while working a chase group with Mikey O’Schenk, and was shaking like a dog shitting peach pits on the winding descent into Silverton, having all kinds of no fun at all.

O’Schenk’s wife, Susan, dragged my half-frozen ass into their minivan along with a couple of other blue-lipped Dogsicles. The sound of teeth chattering made the van sound like a Dumpster full of pissed-off timber rattlers. “Worst time I’ve ever had at Iron Horse,” I noted afterward in my race diary. And that was that.

The next year, instead of pinning on a number with the rest of the suckers I worked the race for VeloNews and watched colleagues Tim Johnson and Charles Pelkey freeze their nuts off along with a thousand or so of their closest friends. Some 400 racers were evacuated from the route in ’96, and many of those who made it to Silverton were treated for hypothermia; two were hospitalized.

In ’97, snow, whiteout conditions and 40-mph winds croaked the Horse altogether just as a 13-man break in the elite men’s race hit Purgatory. That year, I didn’t even show up with pad and pen; senior editor John Rezell covered the race for VeloNews.

But O’Schenk soldiers on. He and his wife — who had her own nightmare ride in 2007 after her drivetrain got sideways after an early crash — are registered, as are ex-Dogs Tungsten Alcazar and Mike Elmer. Susan didn’t get a chance to get back on the Horse last year, when the race was canceled due to (wait for it) snow. Here’s hoping she enjoys better luck this time around.

Even the weather should be vastly improved. The forecast is for rain.

Busy, busy, busy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
It was curtains — for the blinds. For the yos among you, that's some retro Jimmy Cagney gangster lingo, a'ight?
It was curtains — for the blinds. For the yos among you, that's some retro Jimmy Cagney gangster lingo, a'ight?

Between the Giro d’Italia, deadlines and various household chores, I haven’t had much time for politics lately. That said, fuck Dick Cheney. This pustular pestilence is less in need of a soapbox than of the contents therein, though I expect it would take more than Ivory or even Lava to wash the bloodstains off his pudgy pinkies. Perhaps we should try napalm or white phosphorous.

But enough about Evil Dick. How’bout that Giro time trial, hah? Didn’t turn the GC all topsy-turvy the way some pundits had predicted, but it sure was fun to watch — until the Universal Sports feed went black in the final 3km of Denis Menchov’s winning ride.

A certain former Tour champ has ceased speaking with the working press, freeing reporters to actually write about the race for a change. And while my homeboy Danny Pate is not exactly a GC threat, it was nice to see Juliet Macur of The New York Times note the former U-23 world time-trial champ’s performance in this most recent race against the clock — seems he lost it on a descent and shot straight through a hospitality tent.

“I just rode into there, went around some tables and shot back out,” he said. “I didn’t have any time to grab Champagne.”

Oh, snap. Swing on by when you get back to Bibleburg, homes, we’ll pour you a little sumpin’-sumpin’.

Here in Pate country, meanwhile, we’ve been doing our little part to keep the economy humming along. Herself’s mother is coming to visit for a few days, and we have no spare bedroom, so we had to hunt up a love seat that folds out into a single bed. I proposed that Herself v1.0 camp in the back of the ’83 longbed, which isn’t getting any use right now, but that dog didn’t hunt with v2.0, so we’re out a few C’s that could have been spent on bike parts and beer.

Another substantial chunk of change evaporated when Herself decreed that our bedroom needed curtains after a half-dozen years getting by with some cheapo blinds. And those pricey new curtains do indeed look nifty, but not as nifty as, say, a week at the beach, quaffing colorful beverages with little umbrellas shading their ice cubes.

Then the fire blight is nibbling at the trees again, the decks demanded stain as protection against the elements and our basement remains incomplete after someone screwed the pooch on a key measurement, leaving us with a bathroom door that won’t fit; it only took six weeks to build and ship, but the good news is that its replacement should only take four. Yeah, right.

Whoops, here come the love-seat-delivery dudes. Anyone want to place a bet on whether the sumbitch will fit through the back door?

• Late update: It fit. Barely. Like an H2 on a sidewalk. Sucker sure looked smaller on the showroom floor than it did going down the basement stairs.

Hey, Mo’! Nyuk nyuk nyuk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Calling all cats ... calling all cats ... be on the lookout for a red-headed NYT columnist hunting hot word count. That is all.
Calling all cats ... calling all cats ... be on the lookout for a red-headed NYT columnist hunting hot word count. That is all.

The Old Gray Lady’s Old Red Lady, Mo’ Dowd, just got busted lifting lines from Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo. For a nice bit of snark on the crime and and a most unrepentant criminal, see Steve Benen at Political Animal. Dowd’s explanation boils down to “it followed me home and I kept it.” So that’s how you get a Pulitzer for commentary. Note to file.

In the meantime, I’ve posted a couple of sentries just in case Mo’ (or Curly, or Larry) comes slinking around here in search of a bon mot. A guy can’t be too careful these days, what with all these journos desperate to hold onto their vanishing jobs.

Maglias rosa for everyone!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Montessori stage racing at the Giro today. The bunch decided the Milan Show 100 circuit was too dangerous, so they rolled around town for four hours like a pack of cyclo-tourists before deciding to “race” the last of 10 laps. Mark Cavendish was first across the line, but everyone got a cookie and a hug afterward just the same, including maglia rosa Danilo Di Luca, who coasted across the line some two minutes and change in arrears with the rest of the contenders.

Bor-ring. Graham Watson had time to dig up to dig up Michelangelo and snap a few pix of him sculpting a statue of Di Luca before this snoozer ended, more than an hour behind schedule. The stage took so long, Mario Cipollini’s suit went out of fashion. How slow was it? A guy doing a trackstand actually passed Tyler Farrar at one point. I tell ya, it was slow.

The Associated Press says a certain Tour-winning Texan was behind the rolling protest, and race organizer Angelo Zomegnan was not amused. Said Zomegnan: ”This circuit required explosive bursts. It required riders to get their butts up off the seats of their bikes, and some riders who are not so young anymore apparently don’t feel like doing that anymore. Instead, it seems like their legs became shorter and their tongues longer.”

‘Springtime’ in the Rockies

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Weird weather around here lately. Pissed down rain for about 30 seconds yesterday (naturally, I had already watered the lawn), then the waterworks apparently resumed while we slept. Right now it’s partly cloudy and 50-something, but dampish with a chilly wind. If this is May, you can have it. I’m just happy I’m not racing the Iron Horse next weekend. Bring your snowshoes, boys and girls.

Big fun at the Giro today. Levi Leipheimer got into a break with Chris Horner and a few other hard men and they very nearly stole a march on Danilo Di Luca.  The Killer said he wasn’t at all worried, but somebody shit on his saddle. The unpronounceable and unspellable Kanstantsin Sivtsov won the stage, probably because nobody could spread the word that he was off the front. “Sit-soo’s gone away!” “Hah?” “I tell you, Shit-Zu has attacked!” “What’s that y’say?” “Sift-soft has had a go!” “Never heard of him, so I’m not chasing. Piss off.”

The bad news is, Rabobank’s Pedro Horrillo had one of those crashes— straight off a descent, over the guardrail and into a rocky ravine. What isn’t broken is bruised, and he’s apparently in a medically induced coma, damn’ lucky to be alive. Here’s hoping for a complete recovery.