Tag: Charles Pelkey

LUGgers, start your keyboards

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Phantom of the Opera? Naw, just some bald-headed Irish-American unemployable trying to stave off honest work as usual.
The Phantom of the Opera? Naw, just some bald-headed Irish-American unemployable trying to stave off honest work as usual.

The Tour de France starts tomorrow with a 13.8km individual time trial in Utrecht, Netherlands, and Live Update Guy will be there.

Well, not “there” so much as here (Duke City, New Mexico, where Your Humble Narrator whiles away the hours), although there will be some “there” there (mostly Laramie, Wyoming, where Charles Pelkey hangs out his shingle). And there’s MOTS in France, Mons at the Vatican, Larry in Italy, Mbugua in Kenya, Dave in Afghanistan. …

In these days of live streaming video and up-to-the-nanosecond social media it seems odd that a text-based live update like ours still attracts an audience. Still, some folks seem to like it, and we enjoy doing it, so there you have it.

It’s kind of like hanging around a neighborhood sports bar where the innkeeper is always happy to change the channel from golf to cycling, and he never cuts you off and/or throws you out.

So pop on by and say howdy when Le Shew Bigge kicks off tomorrow. It’s a time trial, for god’s sake. We’ll need all the Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah™ we can drum up.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Join Charles Pelkey, the Man On the Scene (MOTS), The Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter, some other old fat bald guy, and the proverbial Cast of Thousands this Sunday when Live Update Guy will follow the 2015 edition of Paris-Roubaix as it happens.

That’s why they call it a “live update,” in case you were wondering.

Paris-Roubaix will be something of a test drive. Consigliere Pelkey, being an attorney and freshly elected legislator, is busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, but he’d still like to keep a toe in what we like to jokingly call “cycling journalism.” If all goes well, we’ll consider doing all three grand tours again, as has been our practice for the past few years.

It’s a public-radio-style deal, dependent upon financial support from the audience, so if free-range, grass-fed, gluten-free, humanely raised, organic-hemp live coverage is something you find marginally valuable, pop round for a heaping helping of our patented Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah (NRRBBB)™ come Sunday and consider dropping a copper or two into our beggars’ bowl as we cover the queen of the cobbled classics.

I would not feel so all alone. Everybody must get stoned!

Shark. Fin.

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 37 Comments

Laptop-OverWhew. Another Tour is in the bin, and just in time, too.

Vinnie “The Shark” Nibbles arrived in Paris with his lead and skin intact, two Frenchies made the podium for the first time since the lads raced with wooden rims, smoking cigarettes, and Charles Pelkey and I called the sumbitch from start to finish at Live Update Guy. Thanks to any and all of yis who popped round to watch us flail. If you enjoy that sort of thing, we’re gonna be doing it again for the Vuelta a España.

Now I can finally relax a bit, if your idea of downtime is immediately banging out a column and cartoon for Bicycle Retailer, shooting and editing a video for Adventure Cyclist, and wrangling a herd of tradespeople — movers, plumbers, arborists, painters, bankers, and Realtors™ — in preparation for our impending move to Albuquerque. Fuck me running, if you’ll pardon my French.

Herself will be southbound directly, taking up temporary quarters in Duke City as she starts the new gig, while I remain behind at Chez Dog, dealing with deadlines, managing the menagerie and assisting the house-hunting process from afar with my usual wit and wisdom.

“Nope. Nope. Nope. Hate it. Ug-ly. Sucks. Nope. Nope. Nope.”

It doesn’t help that we’re out of practice, having stayed put for 12 years. Too, we’ve been extraordinarily lucky as regards house purchases, having dealt exclusively with friends and relatives thus far. Still, eventually we’ll find a place we like, accumulate some soul-crushing debt, and that will be that. We’ll be New Mexicans again.

¡Que triste es la vida loca!