Slinging in the rain

July 23, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

New Mexico has the *best* clouds, swear to Dog.

Looks like I picked the right day to sleep in.

I woke up way too early — 3 a.m. — then rolled over and went back to sleep until 6. Miss Mia was not amused, and said so, loudly, otherwise I might still be asleep even now.

Except Herself would’ve thundered in eventually to kick me up the hole, because she is a working woman and has a full day ahead involving the making of money, the care and feeding of the 401(k), retention of health insurance, and like that there. Some slacker is in charge of breakfast, which clearly was not making itself.

So up, up, I got, and set about my morning chores, which do not dollar up on the hoof nearly as nicely.

As I was emptying the litter box, making coffee, toasting bread, cooking oatmeal, brewing tea, medicating Miss Mia, and so on, I was thinking in terms of where to ride today. Forecast was for a slight chance of rain after noon, so I was considering a medium-long outing to the Morning Star Grocery and back. Haven’t been out there all year.

And then it started raining.

Well. Shit. Lucky me. If I hadn’t slept in, I’d have been out in that rain, dodging swings of Thor’s hammer instead of kicks from Herself’s tiny sandals.

• • •

Speaking of hard rains a-fallin’, I don’t expect there’s much that could go wrong — cough, cough, “Armageddon,” cough, cough — with helping Saudi Arabia plunge its bloody paws into Pandora’s nuclear box.

Writes Charles P. Pierce:

To the outside observer, there’s no reason to trust either end of this deal. The American side is being run by grifters and incompetents. The Saudi side is being run by people who have settled accounts with bone saws and beheadings and who also are sharper about money than the Americans ever will be. The idea that the current Saudi regime will be able to resist the temptations of enriching uranium without using it to build weapons feels laughable. I wouldn’t trust any government on earth that far, let alone an authoritarian theocracy with murder in its heart.

Alas, Babylon, etc. The Gospel according to Frederic Brown would seem germane here, if young Harry Graham were the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and not a bit slow. I take little solace from any headline that includes the null phrase, “Trump says. …”

Steelmen

July 5, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Cyclocross in July? Is there no Tour de France?

Well, yes and no.

This year’s Tour may be a little too hot to handle, for a couple of stages at least, thanks to fires in the Pyrénées-Orientales area. And anyway, I quit paying attention once the magazines quit paying me money.

Cycling is like … well, like pretty much anything, really. I’d rather do it than watch it.

So this morning, instead of watching UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Tadej Pogačar stomp all comers into a thin paste, I rolled out for a short ride on my favorite Steelman Eurocross, planning to take in the usual mix of asphalt and dirt.

About six miles in, halfway through a circuit of the Elena Gallegos Open Space, the rear tire started going soft. I stopped to add a few psi with a minipump, but what that tire really wanted was a fresh tube.

Well. Shit. What I’m doing here is cyclocross, kinda, sorta. Fuck a fresh tube, I’ll take a fresh bike. Where’s the pit?

About five miles away. In my garage.

So I swoop gingerly down from the EG, along Simms to the Tramway bike path, Comanche, and home, mindful of a rear tire whose tread is getting a little too chummy with its rim.

And I snatch up my second favorite Steelman Eurocross. Boom! Back in the race! Finished first in a field of one on my pit bike, with no further mechanicals. There was an awards banquet, featuring the remnants of Taco Thursday (h/t to stage winner Isaac del Toro) in a flour tortilla with a scattering of arugula, a spoonful of homemade salsa fresca, and a sprinkling of grated Kerrygold Blarney.

The crowd roared.

OK, so maybe that was the vacuum cleaner. Herself has her own race on Sundays, which is all about making El Rancho Pendejo look less like a race pit and more like a home. It’s a much tougher event.

Sallying Fourth

July 4, 2026July 4, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Betsy Ross would like to know who left the lid up, among other things.

Someone up the road a ways is flying the flag upside down.

It’s fair, I thought. Someone across the street had been doing likewise under the previous administration. What’s good for the goose, etc.

I had been debating whether to fly a flag at all on this Fourth of July, right side up or otherwise. Part of me feels that to fly the flag at all hints of complicity with the brigands, featherbedders and toadies who snuggle up to it as though Old Glory were a young girl on Epstein Island.

It’s one of the reasons I never wear the stars-and-stripes jersey some wiseguy at USA Cycling awarded to me for being a National Champion Pain in the Ass, or something very much like that.

Sure, I earned it. But actually wearing it? I dunno.

“Hey, check out the senior citizen in the national-champ kit. He must’ve been something before electricity. I didn’t know Depends made bib shorts. And what’s that thing he’s riding? Steel? Bar-end shifters? Rim brakes? Yo, Rip Van Weinmann! Wake up and smell the future! Haw haw haw!

• • •

So, yeah. When Herself and I rolled out for this morning’s ride I was not wearing the stars-and-stripes. Yet I was rockin’ the red, white, and blue, as hard as I could, for anyone who cared enough to take notice.

Red Steelman Eurocross (USA) and Giro gloves (Vietnam). White Rudy Project helmet (China), cotton headrag (ditto), Patagonia undershirt (USA), and Gore socks (?). Blue Voler jersey (USA), a match for the decals on the Eurocross and the Cane Creek Crono X Cross wheels (?). The bibs were Voler (USA) — not Depends— in basic black, to match my Sidi shoes (Romania) and my aura.

Quite a few of our fellow Americans were getting their heart rates up despite the smoky haze applying a gray filter to the normally beautiful blue skies. Joggers, dog-walkers, e-bikers, you name it. The quail were mostly under cover, but we saw a few bunnies and one deer curled up in a shady spot against a Sandia Heights house for sale.

And what’s with all the crows lately? Could be ravens, I suppose. Quite a conspiracy of them, too. Someone should write a poem.

• • •

When we got home a few of the Spanish-speakers that so frighten the nation’s mismanagement were prepping a neighbor’s place for stucco in the 94-degree heat. Another will be working a checkout lane at a nearby grocery until 10 p.m. I know this because she told me so.

“Gonna miss the barbecue and everything,” she said, ringing up my purchases, mostly the ingredients for that most American of condiments (salsa).

Our post-ride lunch was some Mexican red rice and savory ground beef left over from last night’s dinner, that most American of dishes (tacos), with a couple of scrambled eggs and a sprinking of Irish cheese. The last of the taco filling will be put to use tonight in that most American of meals (pizza).

• • •

But we were talking about flags, yeah? I put ours out, right side up. They’re nothing special, just a couple of cheap promotional items dumped on the property years ago by some long-forgotten real-estate shithead with zero respect for flag etiquette. Nevertheless, Herself and I agreed that we should hew to the gospel preached to us by our late friend and neighbor Marv’ Berkman.

Shortly after we moved in next door to Marv’, once I had gotten the feeling that he wasn’t your standard-brand, hard-right Bibleburger, I asked him why he flew the flag day in and day out.

And the old Chicago saloon picker sez to me he sez (stop me if you’ve heard this one before):

“I just want those guys to know they’re not the only ones who can fly it.”

The cat’s meow

May 29, 2026May 29, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

Miss Mia Sopaipilla once again enjoys a full complement of servants.

We’re finally back to what passes for normal around here.

Herself has returned from Tennessee and Miss Mia Sopaipilla couldn’t be happier. I’m not the person you want to see first thing in the early morning hours, when the Voices are in full throat, roaring for coffee and news, the cacophony just a few decibels short of drowning out the clicking, popping, and squeaking of various OE bits from 1954 announcing their imminent failure. And with the factory warranty long since expired, too.

I lack a certain ruthless efficiency at stupid-thirty. Stack a few extra chores atop my tiny little pile and I am prone to mutter about Sisyphus as the rocks start rolling downhill.

I do manage to achieve some sort of spastic rhythm after a few days catching bad hops in the valley. But it’s not a pretty thing to watch.

Especially for Miss Mia. For openers, I like my coffee black, to match my aura, while Herself will share a dollop of frothy cream from her cuppa. I’ll pour Miss Mia a shot straight from the container, but it’s not the same. So off she goes, stalking from room to room, looking for Herself and that fat mug of cream with just a hint of coffee.

Never you mind that the litter box is cleaned and the water refreshed, food and meds served up, bedding shaken out. These are services, to be expected. It’s the little extras that make the difference between living and merely existing.

Eventually Miss Mia cycles through the Two Stages of Feline Grief: “I want something,” and “Fuck it, I’ll take a nap.”

And then I can finally have my coffee. Black.

36 and counting

May 12, 2026May 12, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

“Is there a bus ticket and some fake I.D. in here somewhere? Goddamnit!”

On this date in 1990 Herself and I embarked on the perilous journey of discovery that puts divorce lawyers in next year’s Maseratis.

They said it would never last, and after she got the LASIK surgery I was certain they’d be proven right.

Nevertheless, here we are, 36 years down that rocky ol’ road of marital blisters and with hardly any scars at all. Visible to the casual observer, that is.

Only half of the happy couple is showing the years and mileage, which is odd, because he’s the one who spent all that time palling around with the Devil. But the dumb sonofabitch was never worth a damn at wealth management — the kind of chump who thought a CD was something by Tom Waits that you slipped into the player of an ’83 Toyota longbed between bumps off the back of one hand and stealthy nips from the bottle in the other while steering with the knees and one bloodshot eye on the rear-view mirror — so whatever he got for that beat-to-shit 1954 soul has long since been pissed away.

And knowing him, chances are it wasn’t eternal youth and beauty anyway. More like another 8-ball and a case of Pacifico. Talk about your cheap dates.

Ol’ Nick probably doesn’t even want to take possession at this point.

“Holy hell, clock the state of Himself, would ye? Looks like the south end of a northbound ghoul. Make a freight train take a dirt road, that would. Shit, he even scares me. Maybe I’ll delay collection on this one, take Stephen Miller for practice.”

So, sorry, Toots. Looks like you’re stuck with me for a while yet. Next time you’re playing blackjack with the gang down at the animal shelter, maybe check your cards before yelping, “Aw, what the hell! Hit me!”