Time of the season

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Herself’s Soma Double Cross, ready for its 2024 debut.

The surest sign that spring has sprung is Herself telling me to grease up her old two-wheeler ’cause she’s ready to ride.

That this announcement coincides with temperatures in the upper 70s is not, well, a coincidence.

Herself rides a Soma Double Cross. I bought the frameset back in 2006, and Old Town Bike Shop in Bibleburg tricked it out smartly with bits of this and that, some of them mine, some of them theirs. The drivetrain is a mix of Sugino, FSA, and Shimano 105/LX, yielding a low end of 34×32, which probably should be 34×34, or even 30×34, but I haven’t gone there yet.

Not on her bike, anyway. I love me some 30×34 on my New Albion Privateer and Soma Saga (the disc-brake version).

But then I’m a señor citizen, not some spry young tomato like Herself. She can tough it out. I’ll wheelsuck her and provide helpful hints from her slipstream.

Seasonal prep this year was pretty basic. I checked that everything shifted (105 brifters) and braked (Suntour cantis) as it should, lubed the chain, and replaced the 700×32 Vittoria Randonneur Cross Pros with a pair of Schwalbe Little Big Bens. Run those 38mm fatties down around 35-40 psi and they buff some of the rough spots off The Duck! City roads. I’ve got ’em on both Sagas and they appear to have eternal life. They’re easy on, easy off, too, which is handy in goathead country.

She could use some new handlebar tape, but that can wait, as can a spit-shine for her brass Crane bell, which she rarely uses. That thing could wake the dead. Even the self-deafened AirPlodders dive for the ditches when they hear it tolling for them.

I’ve been giving a little love to neglected bikes this week — the Rivendell Sam Hillborne and DBR Axis TT have both gotten out in the fresh air — but tomorrow I’ll be riding my own Soma Double Cross. Now, you wanna talk about a low low end? How’s 24×34 sound to you? Gimme a tailwind and I can climb a telephone pole.

Don’t tell Herself. If she senses the slightest weakness she’ll put me in The Home.

Wheel estate

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Irish Space Travellers docking at The Duck! City Vortex? Nah, just our weather station.

Some vortexes suck more than others, I guess.

The Guardian has picked up on a story I saw earlier in The Washington Post, basically the same ol’, same ol’, about how some of The Beautiful People in Sedona would rather that the Help did not share their ZIP code.

It seems Sedona, like Santa Fe, Taos, Aspen, et al., is a few rooftops short of affordable housing for the worker bees who keep their fauxdobe hives filled with organic, free-range, GMO-free honey. Thus, some of the folks who fluff Swiss chard at Whole Foods or pillows at resorts keep getting rousted from local parking lots, state parks, or the national forest, where they live in their cars between shifts in the barrel(s).

One short-term solution being considered is a “safe place to park” program that would accommodate 40 vehicles (belonging to Sedona’s unhoused workforce, not itinerant bands of Travellers, meth cooks, and hookers). The idea is to provide bathrooms, showers, and a fixed location for workers who are already living in their autos wherever they can find a place to park them. A social-services organization would vet the “tenants” to make sure no Irish were sneaking in.

Jodi Jackson, who lives in an RV and works at a local coin laundry, told The Guardian: “We may not be housed and living in town, but we’re the ones who are doing your laundry, working at your gas stations, working at your restaurants — all of the lower-wage jobs – delivering your pizza, for God’s sake. We’re not bad people. We just need a little bit of help.”

Don’t we all, at some time or another? When I was a pup I occasionally brushed up against the rough edges of capitalism, newspaper style. It’s why I declined an offer of “casual labor” on the copy desk of the San Jose Mercury News — “casual labor” meaning “We don’t know exactly when we’ll need you, but it won’t be 40 hours a week with the usual bennies.” It’s why I decided to settle in Española instead of Santa Fe when I got the gig at The New Mexican.

As regulars here know, I don’t mind kipping in my auto now and then. But all the time? It was grating enough to watch the People of Money (© Ed Quillen) strutting around the Plaza when I had a roof over my head that didn’t come with wheels under me arse.

As I noted above, Sedona’s a familiar story: tourist town, short on affordable housing, long on Airbnbs, rising rents, and exploding home-sale prices, possibly overstocked with POM© and the sort of self-satisfied simp who muses over his venti green tea frappucino with a strawberry smoothie base, two pumps of caramel, three espresso shots, whipped cream and a caramel drizzle about how nobody wants to work anymore.

They want to work, all right; they just want homes to go to when the shift’s over, like everyone else.

• Editor’s note: The headline is lifted from “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat-Moon, who during a stretch of personal and professional difficulty kipped in a 1975 Ford Econoline while motoring around the country to see how other people were getting along.

Flights of fancy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
A glider pilot prepares for touchdown near the Menaul trailhead.

I was running trail yesterday, pulling a leisurely U near the Menaul trailhead before heading home, when a shadow fell across my path.

“Holy hell,” I thought. “A buzzard? I’m not dead yet. …”

Then I looked up and saw the glider, tacking this way and that above the spiky foothills, before finally dropping in for a gentle landing.

Good argument for keeping your eyes and ears open, I thought as I snapped a few pix and then got back to my jogging. You never know what you’re going to see up there, or down here.

On Sunday I nearly stepped on my first snake of the new year as I legged it up a sandy arroyo not far from where the glider pilot touched down. He was a little fella and disappeared into the underbrush. The snake, not the glider pilot.

Some folks get their kicks from sticks, if you believe The New York Times. And in this instance I see no reason for doubt. The story wasn’t datelined April 1, and is just ridiculous enough to be true.

The Shart-Timer

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
“I gotta start wearing rubber undies.” Photograph doctored after being poached from Jim Lo Scalzo | EPA

Well, it seems Will D. Defendant won one and lost one today. He found a sucker to bond him out of some deep doo-doo in one case, but his relentless punching down at the Little People got a gag order expanded in another.

As The New York Times is fond of reminding us (those teases): “If Mr. Trump violates the order, the judge could impose fines, and in extraordinary circumstances, throw him behind bars.” Be still, my heart.

Meanwhile, is it just me, or does the latest Squeaker of the House always look like he’s fighting off a wicked shart? I’d be doubling up on my Kevlar Depends, too, if the Redneck Baroness was piloting her Fokker pickup with its twin Spandaus trained on my six.