Mardi blahs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

I should be in New Orleans, drunk as a monkey, draped in cheap beads and screaming, “Show us your tits!” But nooooo, here I am in Bibleburg, gulping non-alcoholic java and grappling with various calamities on this last day before Lent.

The Devil is very much with us going into this season of prayer, penitence, fasting and almsgiving. The basement remains in disarray two weeks after its dousing in doo, awaiting the arrival of sheetrockers, painters and carpet/vinyl flooring layers. My 2-year-old MacBook gurgled and died in the middle of editing a tech report for VeloNews.com. The dishwasher croaked after a manufacturer-mandated replacement of its wiring harness. And adding insult to these various injuries and fatalities, our sole remaining toilet has developed a hiccup that causes it to run like Niagara if the handle isn’t delicately jiggled.

The dishwasher was the most recent casualty. The tech who replaced the wiring harness returned to examine it, found a blown wash impeller, and said dolefully, “I dunno … I can call ’em and ask if they’ll cover it, but I don’t think they’re gonna.” He didn’t have a dollar figure in his head, but said he’d get back to us in a day or so once he’d settled on the bass boat he wanted to buy.

O woe. A season of almsgiving indeed, to Apple and Maytag and Christ knows who else. Our own local version of the federal bailout. Line up, boys, hold out those golden bowls, plenty of nutritious greenback soup for everyone.

And then the dishwasher dude rang us up, bright and early this morning. I hadn’t had my coffee yet and so eyeballed the whiskey as caller ID tipped me as to who was on the line. Good news, says he. The parts are ordered, he’ll pop ’round in a few days and Maytag is paying the tab.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Late update: Even more good news. A tech at the Apple Store confirmed my diagnosis regarding the MacBook: hard drive, RIP. When I mentioned the ‘Book’s longtime, low-level processor buzz (rotten HDs and buzzing ‘Books have been discussed at length on many a Mac forum for three years), he suggested shipping it to the Apple depot, where they will fix anything and everything, from a bum HD to bad RAM to a defunct logic board, for a flat fee of $288. Beats spending a G on a new ‘Book.

Hinterbike

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
USA Cycling and Sand Creek Sports, together at last.
USA Cycling and Sand Creek Sports, together at last.

Kelli Lusk, mountain bike events and program director for USA Cycling, and Sand Creek Sports honcho Andy Bohlmann were among the exhibitors at the inaugural Peak Region Cyclist Bicycle Show, held Saturday at the Norris Penrose Center in beautiful metropolitan Bibleburg.

Among the other outfits in attendance were Carmichael Training Systems, Moots, Angletech and Alison Dunlap Adventure Camps. I popped by for a quick peek between errands and it looked as though the Peak Region Cyclist folks had drawn a respectable crowd. Props to publisher David Pico, assistant publisher Jon Severson and everyone else involved.

I didn’t do any journalism, because I’ve been doing far too much of that sort of thing lately, but I kicked in my $5 admission fee, chatted up a few pals, snapped a few pix and then beat it for home, where Herself and I squeaked in a quick run that felt more like a slow march with full pack.

Velo snooze

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Got a day off from helping VeloNews.com cover the Amgen Tour of California. Naturally, the wind is blowing a thousand miles an hour, confused grasses and weeds are spewing pollen, and I am suffering from an occlusion of the snotlocker and eyeballs that apparently were sandblasted while I slept.

But enough about me. The inaugural Peak Region Cyclist Bicycle Show is slated to run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow at the Norris Penrose Event Center right here in scenic cosmopolitan Bibleburg. If you’re in the neighborhood, slide on by and check it out. My fave local shop, Old Town Bike Shop, is taking part, as are a bunch of other local and regional cycling outfits. And a portion of the $5 admission fee goes to the Pikes Peak Area Bikeways Coalition.

It’s not exactly Interbike, but look on the bright side — you don’t have to go to Vegas to see it.

Splish splash, I was takin’ a bath

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

If there are any Okies in the Tour of California peloton, the Dust Bowl days must be looking pretty damn’ fine to them after three days of soaking rain.

Astana and OUCH might want to think about swapping sponsors, seeing as it’s the boys in blue and yellow who are spending all the time on the deck and in need of medical attention.

Lance Armstrong, uncharacteristically, has sampled the California asphalt a couple of times now — once after T-boning his own photographer’s motorcycle — and today race leader Levi Leipheimer had a brain fart and found himself tumbling along the tarmac after a touch of wheels with Big Tex.

Meanwhile, the VeloNews.com mob is frantically cranking out the online love, slapping up live updates, race reports, photo galleries, video and the occasional pointless comment from Your Humble Narrator, so you should probably be over there instead of here. I don’t make a dime on this thing.

Floored

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Aw, crap.
Aw, crap.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I can give you both. Here’s a shot of the basement a week after a sewer crew fountained Herself’s crapper, ruining carpet, vinyl flooring, drywall and my sunny disposition. The outfit hired to handle the cleanup and restoration is on the job, and God willing (and the toilet don’t rise) we should have a functional garden-level basement once again sometime by, oh, I dunno, the 2010 Tour de France. Maybe.

This is a small house, just 1,300 square feet, and it gets a lot smaller when you don’t have full use of that basement, which housed Herself’s office, bathroom and walk-in closet, the washer-dryer combo’ and the cats’ litter box. We’re both working upstairs now — Herself on a Dell Latitude at the kitchen table, and me on a MacBook in the living room, because the dehumidifiers kept tripping breakers and crashing my office. We’re doing a load of laundry for the first time in a week. And we’re down to one toilet, which makes mornings interesting:

“I need to take a shower!”

“Well, I need to take a shit!”

And so on.

We kept the cats upstairs while things dried out downstairs, which was an exercise in sleep deprivation. After a couple too many early risings I took to waking up Turk’ and Mia whenever I caught them napping during the day, purely out of vengeance. “Big Man don’t sleep, don’t nobody sleep!” I’d growl. Everyone got cranky, even Herself, who is ordinarily the acme of sunniness. Finally we settled on locking the cats up in my office at night. What the hell, I thought, if I can’t use it as an office, it might as well serve as a feline penitentiary.

Throw in a couple extra shifts at VeloNews.com during the Amgen Tour of California, a wine rack full of bottles and a closet full of firearms and you have a recipe for headlines. Happily, so far we’ve avoided the mainstream media. But the wind is howling like a banshee now and my skull is throbbing like a Harley Fat Boy, so all bets are off.