It’s … ‘sprinter?’

February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments

Mostly winter, with a hint of spring at lower right.

The weather is a tad confused. Is it spring? Winter?

Maybe we should call this between-times season “Sprinter.” I’ve been seeing a lot of its four-wheeled namesakes lately.

And while ordinarily this would lead me to reflect that this violates O’Grady’s First Law of Economics — “Anybody who makes more money than me makes too fucking much!” — I don’t really care.

I don’t have lust in my heart for a Sprinter. Even if I did, I have no place to park one. Anyway, I live in New Mexico, where nobody knows how to drive but plenty of people know how to steal.

Maybe once a Sprinter collects a few whiskey dents, parking-lot sidewipes, and improvised cardboard windows it becomes a less attractive target? Who knows?

Not me, Skeeter. My RV is a scratched-and-scraped 18-year-old ’Roo with a tent, sleeping bag, and two-burner Coleman in the back. Also, and too, AWD for when the weather finally makes up its mind and decides it’s winter again.

Which it was, on Wednesday and Thursday. And I only went outdoors to broom snow and buy soup fixin’s. No cycling, not even running.

But on Friday Herself and I managed a couple miles of jogging along the foothills trails — not too cold, but squishy underfoot — and yesterday I sacked up, dragged out a bike with fat tires and fenders, and went for a 90-minute spin.

I’m always amused to see The Duck! City’s response to a few inches of snow. God love ’em, the road crews spread more sand on one day than Bibleburg has used since my family moved there in 1967.

And of course it all winds up on the shoulder, in the bike lane. Hence the fat tires and fenders.

It must be frustrating, trying to save Burqueños from themselves. The road crews know these people can’t drive a straight line on dry roads at high noon on a sunny day. Building speed humps and roundabouts, installing traffic cameras and radar trailers, spreading sand over ice and snow … this is like trying to teach a bullfrog to sing “Ave Maria.”

Burqueños have better things to do. And they will do them while they are driving.

Some leadfoot passed me at warp factor five or so on Juan Tabo the other day. In the right lane. The right turn lane, to be precise.

I saw him coming up fast in the passenger-side mirror and thought, “OK, here we go. …” And sure enough, my man rocketed straight through the intersection at Montgomery and just kept on keepin’ on. I kept the mirror on, but only just.

No idea what the rush was. The liquor stores weren’t about to close, and nobody was chasing him that I could see. No sirens, no gunfire. Maybe he’d just stolen the SUV from the Lowe’s parking lot and wanted to see what it could do.

One hopes he got a chance to test-drive the air bags and found them inadequate. And by “one,” I mean “me.”

So, yeah. No Sprinter for Your Humble Narrator. I know in my heart of hearts that as I was driving the shiny beast off the lot with the dealer plates still on I would hear a thunderous bang at the rear, pull over and stop to see what the actual fuck, and find a stolen Honda Civic parked on my sofa bed, leaking oil all over the Pendleton White Sands quilt.

The driver would be polishing off a tallboy and a text while his lady friend had a wee in the toilet-shower combo. Tugging a Sig Sauer from his waistband, he would mumble, “Shit, out of beer. Take us to the liquor store. There’s something wrong with this car.”

Retracing my steps

February 10, 2023February 10, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

This is what a juniper dusted with snow looks like at 5:14 in the ayem.

I meant to post this pic the other day and completely spaced it whilst mumbling on and on about podcasting and whatnot.

We woke on Wednesday to a measurable amount of precip’, not enough to resolve the megadrought, but just enough to keep me off a bicycle. Instead I went for a short run once the temps rose a bit.

I have no idea what made these tracks in the backyard. Fox? Coyote? La Llorona of Hobbiton?

Ten years ago I would come to The Duck! City from Bibleburg in February to get away from winter.

I’d check into the Hampton at Carlisle and I-40 and ride the bike all the doo-dah day, and in shorts and short sleeves, too.

Hit the Mexican restaurants, or fetch a sack of tasty treats from the Wholeazon Amafoods across the interstate from the motel. Binge-watch HBO in the room come evening.

I had no idea that in a year we’d be living down here. Zee-ro. If you’da told me I’da laughed in your face.

“Herself is going to get a job at Sandia National Labs that pays more money in one year than I’ve made in my entire life? We’re moving to Albuquerque? Ho, ho. Pull the other leg so I’ll be even when I go out to run in the snow. Albuquerque. Hee, and also haw.”

Well, she did, and we did, and here I am, running in February on the New Mexican snow.

Rode hard and put away wet

October 17, 2022October 17, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

Can a weekend be both long and short at the same time?

The answer is yes, if you’re driving from The Duck! City to Manitou Springs and back again to join some old comrades in honoring the spirit of one who’s gone west.

The friends and family of John O’Neill crowded into Mansions Park in Manitou on Saturday to eat, drink, and swap tales of a grumpy old sumbitch who loved his wife Cindy, dogs, running, the Three Stooges, mountain biking, and margaritas, and who left the party far too early at 69.

Herself and I had to think fast to arrange the 400-mile trip north. Do we drive up the day of the celebration, spend the night, and come back on Sunday? Or the day before, spend the night, and then race home right after the gathering on Saturday? Who’s going to keep an eye on Miss Mia Sopaipilla now that she’s an only cat? We’re short a couple of neighbors, one who’s off with the family on her own road trip and another who just had knee-replacement surgery. Decisions, decisions. …

In the end we arranged a room, engaged a pro pet-sitter to check in on Mia, got up at stupid-thirty on Saturday, and roared north in the recently reconditioned Fearsome Furster, making it to Bibleburg with just enough time to spare for a detour down Memory Lane, which in this case led to Bear Creek Regional Park, where John and I and the rest of the Mad Dogs put on so many cyclocrosses Back in the Day®.

From there we drove straight to Manitou, grabbed a parking spot across the street from the park, puzzled out the robo-meter (Is everything smart these days except me?) and did a quick bit of recon.

The uniform of the day was to be flannel shirts and jeans, and we soon saw one, then another, and another. Many, many of them, as the hour approached. We helped shift a few picnic tables and folding chairs around, but there were not nearly enough of either to accommodate the swelling flannel-and-denim herd, which spilled over the designated parking spots and onto the lawn.

There were tales and tears, laughter and applause, a slideshow and still photos, food and drink. We paid our respects to Cindy and to John’s Colorado Running Company partner Jeff Tarbert, and caught up with a smattering of cycling and running buddies from The Before-Time, when the Mad Dogs had a good deal less gray in their muzzles and more glide in their stride.

Time is a toll road, and the longer your journey, the more descansos you pass.

We couldn’t find a way to attend a remembrance for our B-burg bro’ Steve Milligan, a sharp wit felled by an aggressive cancer in 2020, at age 73, just as he and his wife were preparing to enjoy their retirement.

I was able to make it to Denver this past July to say a belated adios to my first editor in the cycling racket, Tim Johnson, who worked long and hard to help build VeloNews into the preeminent bike-racing mag’ it became after Inside Communications acquired the title and moved it from Brattleboro to Boulder in 1989. Early-onset Alzheimer’s devoured what remained of Tim in November 2021, at 63, after gnawing away at him for years.

Now, I am not a believer in the Next World. I’m not certain I believe in this one. But I found solace in these remembrances and the sheer number of celebrants they drew. One person can make a difference. The ripples from their passage through our lives spread far and wide, lifting many a lesser vessel.

They say you’re not supposed to make a big wake by the dock, “they” being the slackers bronzing their buns on the boards. The only time those posers get their feet wet is when they piss on their flip-flops.

The big boys jump right the hell off that dock. Make a huge splash, the sort of cannonball into the deeps that will have people talking and laughing and toasting your memory long after you’re gone.

Rise and shine

January 8, 2022January 8, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

If you sleep in, you miss stuff like this.

Marriage, freelancing, and New Mexico gradually turned me into a morning person, kinda sorta.

I spent the bulk of my newspaper career working nights on various copy desks scattered around the West. Clock in around 3 or 4 in the p.m., clock out when the presses start running at stupid-thirty. If you’re lucky, there’s a bar still open somewhere.

But when Herself hitched her little red wagon to my jackass in Fanta Se there were accommodations to be made. I was on the usual night shift at The New Mexican, but she worked like normal people, running the B. Dalton Bookseller in the DeVargas Center.

She was asleep when I came home; I was asleep when she went to work. We saw each other at dinner and sometimes on the weekends, if I wasn’t chasing commas or racing bikes. Our wedding vows may have included the endearment, “Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to sleepI”

In case you’re wondering, kids, this is how you make a marriage work.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla insists on sunlight as soon as it becomes available, if not sooner.

In 1991, when my mom developed a hitch in her gitalong and we moved to Bibleburg to deal with it, my routine went out the window. Herself found more retail work, but I was trying to freelance, and the first thing you learn in that racket is fear. You fear that the last dollar you earned will be the last dollar you earn.

So I said yes to every job, worked a lot, and all the time, not just from afternoons into the dark of the night. In point of fact, I was compelled to embrace the early morning hours.

It wasn’t awful. Not nearly as bad as I remembered from having a paper route. For starters, I was working indoors, and I was writing the news, not sidearming it onto stoops.

Nor was I restricted to a copy desk, where the routine is … well, routine. Daily editorial meeting, editing copy, writing headlines, sizing photos, writing cutlines, laying out pages, drinking dinner, overseeing pasteup, proofing pages, taking a quick look at the paper hot off the presses as they began rumbling up to speed, and going home.

Going freelance took me off that daily merry-go-round. When the deadline was every other week, or once a month, I found I could squeeze the work into my life instead of my life into the work.

Yeah, I worked almost every day, and at all hours of every day, but I did it in bite-sized pieces and a lot of different flavors. Cover an early morning Tour stage for VN.com, go for a ride. Write a column for Bicycle Retailer, do the grocery shopping. Edit some copy for Inside Triathlon, drink a beer (editing triathlon copy would make a stewbum of a Seventh-day Adventist). Draw a cartoon for VeloNews. And so on.

True, I was not always at my best in the early morning hours. Old habits die hard. And Mom had her own routines, which included wandering the house at night while chatting with the voices in her head (yeah, that shit runs in the family). But you get used to it, or at least learn to manage it.

Eventually she passed, leaving only one of us to argue with his invisible friends. And the mornings got a little easier, whether sunup came in Weirdcliffe, Bibleburg, or The Duck! City.

My paying chores have drifted away one by one, but the mornings have not. Herself rises earlier than ever, working four 10-hour shifts as a librarian for Sandia National Lab. But I insist on sleeping in, until 6 a.m. if I can manage it, before dragging the old bag of bone splinters and bad ideas out of the sack and into the kitchen.

Somebody has to make breakfast and inspect the sunrise, make sure God’s on the job. Some days one wonders.

Early morning watermelon at the foot of the Sandias.

Mall rats

December 19, 2020December 19, 2020 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

Remember shopping malls?

They were becoming a Thing about the same time that I was. Bibleburg being behind the curve on pretty much everything (“a cemetery with lights,” as one newspaper colleague would come to call it), my town didn’t get a proper enclosed mall until 1972, when I had relocated to Alamosa to lower academic standards at Adams State College.

In the late Sixties our “mall” out east of Constitution and Academy was the Rustic Hills Shopping Center, which had a small enclosed area with a typical strip mall attached on the west side, with a liquor store, a pinball arcade, Tandy’s, 7-Eleven, and like that there. Major tenants were (I think) a Gibson’s on the eastern corner and a Safeway on the western end. In between was … well, not much that I can recall. I got there by bike, via a dirt path paralleling a drainage ditch.

There was a Duckwall’s. A Roffler’s Sculpture-Kut shop where a Mexican barber told me he could cut my hair in such a way that my parents, teachers, and swim coach would never know I was turning into a faux hippie unless they took a whiff of my personal fragrance (Eau de Ditch Weed). A western-wear shop where I acquired through dubious means a black, flat-crown Resistol a la Lee “Liberty Valance” Marvin that, with the addition of a band of silver conchos, went nicely with the rest of my Woodstock-wannabe garb. No, don’t ask; just thank Cthulhu that no photographs survive.

Until 1972, when the Citadel Mall sprang to hideous life, with its acres and acres of parking that in the first heavy rain flooded residential basements for miles around, anyone wanting to experience an actual enclosed mall had to motor up to Denver, where Cinderella City was the Big Kahuna. Not just a whim, a destination, particularly around Christmastime.

The Citadel and the Chapel Hills Mall, which opened a decade later, arguably helped croak what little downtown Bibleburg had. Now, neither is exactly crushing it, the pack rats are stripping malls’ carcasses nationwide, and “everybody knows” that you can’t have a vibrant modern city without a thriving downtown. So it goes.