I saw my first Ross mountain bike in the mid-1980s. My man Hal Walter had one, a blue Mt. Rainier acquired from Great Divide in Pueblo, and what a beast it was. A steel burro that never needed hay.
“That was a great bike,” Hal said today via Messages. “It was almost heavy enough to get a workout.”
Oh, indeed. Ishiwata 4130 chromoly tubes, 48/39/28 Sakai crank, Suntour derailleurs, 14-34 freewheel, Dia-Compe cantis, and chromoly Bull Nose bar and stem, a heavy-metal package that tipped the scale at 31 pounds.
It encouraged me to get my own mountain bike, a 1986 Trek Antelope 830, a comparative featherweight at just 28.9 pounds. Light enough for me to throw it into an arroyo on some BLM land outside Española when it failed to climb a loose, steep pitch after several tries. Only as the bike was leaving my fingers did I recall that I would need it to get home.
Of course, this was when men were men, and so were the women, and we all rode rigid steel, with thumbshifters, rim brakes and 26-inch wheels. I will concede, however, that today’s machinery is a whole lot easier to throw when it lets you down. Which it will.
I generally don’t pay much attention to the various Apple announcements. I’ve never been an early adopter, and in any case my basket is always pretty well full up with the old, dried-up fruit of Cupertino’s loins (see G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac, circa 1999).
But I watched today’s hoopla from the Steve Jobs Theater, because my man Hal Walter and his boy Harrison got a little screen time in a short video made to pitch the Apple Watch Series 5.
Regulars here will recall that Harrison is on the autism spectrum and uses music to help him focus while running cross country and track for the Custer County Schools. Since Harrison is an Apple Fanboi First Class, it goes without saying that it’s an Apple Watch feeding the earworms to his headphones.
Hal will have something to say about it all directly over at Hardscrabble Times. But speaking for myself, it was pretty damn’ cool to see the kid’s image splashed all over the screen behind Tim Cook after the video ended. Have a peek.
Harrison Walter inspects the family’s new Maytag top-loader. Photo: Hal Walter
“Man plans, God laughs,” says the Yiddish proverb.
Hal Walter and I had planned an International Donkey Day podcast yesterday, but technical difficulties arose — FaceTime was not cooperating on my end, the mic/earbud setup was untested on his end, and the deliverymen fetching a new clothes washer from Pueblo to Weirdcliffe were at large and incommunicado.
So we said, as one so often does in the Great American West, “Mañana.” We stole that from the Mexicans, along with much of the country hereabouts.
Well, here it is mañana and the podcast remains at large, unlike the deliverymen, who eventually turned up, though they declined to let Hal shoot his defunct Samsung front-loader before dragging it away.
The rain arrived shortly thereafter, followed by the snow, and the mud. And this morning school was canceled, which means Hal has a rambunctious 15-year-old making his own unique contributions to to the sonic environment in a house that must feel about the size of a padded cell without the padding.
Which is the long way around to saying you shouldn’t expect a podcast from us today.
My man Hal Walter and his boy Harrison suited up for a 10K on my old cyclocross course in Bibleburg on Saturday, but it wasn’t exactly a triumph, or even one of those father-son interactions that makes you go “Awwwwwwww. …”
Still, as Hal notes over at Hardscrabble Times: “Sometimes you ‘win.’ Sometimes you learn.”
Maron plays, but not at that level, and noted afterward: “The thing I always seem to learn over and over when I am around real musicians is they have committed their lives to a magical art. I am always amazed and excited at how consistently they nail songs and take you on that journey.”
Hey, I can dig it. Now me, I’m a professional rumormonger, which is to say that I get money to mong rumors, mostly by writing, occasionally by cartooning. And after more than a few decades of practice, practice, practice, which has yet to get me to Carnegie Hall, I can mong a quick rumor with keyboard or pen at the drop of a hat full of cash.
And a very small hat it usually is, too. More of a cap, actually. The sort one might find on a pint of Jameson or a bottle of Advil.
But podcasting? It feels like typing with boxing gloves, or drawing with a banana.
So, yeah, I get it when Maron — who is a podcaster, among other things — says of his hobbyist guitar-playing: “I can show up, and I can play, but I’m gonna clunk up something … that is not my craft, that is not my art, that is not my form. …”
Which is the long way around to saying that yes, we have another episode of the distinctly unprofessional and gratuitously hobbyist Radio Free Dogpatch on tap. It is quite literally an amateur hour, and you might need the Jameson and Advil to get through it.
In this one I chat at some length (and some distance) with my old comrade Hal Walter about his son Harrison, who just wrapped his first year with the high school cross-country team.
It was an up-and-down season for the 14-year-old, and he didn’t qualify as a varsity athlete for the state championship meet, held last Saturday in Bibleburg. But as an autistic athlete it seems he was eligible to race an event for special-needs kids.
Now, Hal prefers to keep Harrison in the mainstream whenever it’s possible and practical. But Harrison had been talking all season about going to states, and while he hadn’t made the varsity cut, he did have a strong finish to the regular season.
This left his dad with a tough call to make. Give it a listen.
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