It was chores, chores, chores today — a full shift’s worth of my usual stock in trade, which is to say bicycles and bullshit — and I didn’t pay much attention to the Black Forest fire until it was about time for Herself to motor on home from her gig in Denver.
And then, holy shit! The friggin’ thing is spreading like a head cold at Interbike and more evacuations are ordered, this time in Bibleburg proper.
“Traffic nightmare in northern Colorado Springs,” quoth the Gazette.
“I-25 is completely congested. Avoid traveling if not necessary,” added the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.
El clusterfucko, bucko, as we say south of the border (Monument Hill). I’m thinking she’s gonna be idling at Baptist Road for the better part of quite some time. And you know how those Baptists are.
So I propose going long — E-470 to Interstate 70 to Highway 24 and home. Or maybe C-470 to Highway 285, then jink down through Pine and Deckers to Woodland Park and thence back to the ranch.
Nope. She blazes right on down the Big I to home and hearth — and with hardly a bobble, too. Go figure.
Ride the Rockies is not so fortunate. Thanks to the Royal Gorge fire, they’re getting rerouted through our old stomping grounds of Weirdcliffe, which adds some 33 miles to their ride from Salida to Cañon City, many of them uphill.
I know all of them well, having ridden them as a Crusty County resident and as an entrant in several editions of the late, lamented Hardscrabble Century, which tackled Weirdcliffe from the other direction, from Florence through Wetmore and up Hardscrabble Cañon.
The riding is easier the way the Rockies types are doing it, once they’re past Bear Basin Ranch. From there, it’s mostly downhill to Graybar City. Whip a power salute on H. Rap Brown as you roll past Supermax Florence, kiddos.
Yesterday a neighbor came home from visiting a friend to find a surprised burglar in his house, pointing his own .38 Special at him. I’d call that a Monday times, oh, ’bout a thousand.
So we had cops out the wazoo for a spell, in cars, astride motorcycles, on foot, with dogs. Bupkis. The scumbag got away, as scumbags often do.
I went through our house, checking to make sure that all our various smokepoles were unloaded and the bullets stashed elsewhere, so that I can surprise anyone who points one at me by clocking him with a skillet.
Which once again raises the question: “Why the fuck do I have all these goddamn things in my house if I’m gonna draw down on a baddie with a skillet instead?”
Good question. One of these days I intend to answer it.
Meanwhile, Herself celebrated her (mumble-mumble)th birthday today. I sang her “Happy Birthday” twice and got her a new MacBook Pro to replace the abacus she had been using. She says I can live here for another year if I don’t get shot accidentally on purpose with one of my own guns.
Pu’uhonua O Honaunau (“Place of Refuge”) was one of the spots that took a beating from the tsunami. Hunter S. Thompson wrote of it in “The Curse of Lono,” describing another of his “Fear and Loathing” outings.
Editor’s note: In honor of Daylight Saving Time, something that serves no useful purpose, here’s a column that never ran. It wasn’t rejected, exactly; I gave the editor two choices and he picked the other one. Maybe he didn’t get the Klingon gag in the second subhed.
Son of a beach! Why am I not in Hawaii?
I am no day at the beach. — Richard Pryor, “Richard Pryor: Live On the Sunset Strip”
At the first cold snap of autumn 2012 my wife fled to Hawaii, tormenting me with photos of snorkeling, videos of playing bikini-clad footsie with the Pacific, and audio recollections of the freshest of fish, guacamole descended from homegrown avocados, and — oh, the unspeakable agony — free drinks.
Confined to the mainland, packed like a pallid sequence of overstuffed Irish bangers into sweatpants, socks and long-sleeved T-shirt, I passed the chilly days wrangling our critters, burning my brand onto some wandering word count and pushing a passel of pixels in the service of what passes for bicycle journalism along the Front Strange.
Here there were deadlines, dreary weather and other irritants that make sand in your Speedo feel like a quick pat on the pistol pocket from Rosario Dawson. There was little time for splashing about in the deep blue ocean that does not surround Colorado or for the consumption of delicacies that the Centennial State does not produce.
And the only person picking up my bar tabs was me.
I don’t need this … well, you know. This wouldn’t be so much of a much, were it not that whenever my wife gets a hankering for an ocean view, she tends to leave a wake around the dock upon departure.
Last year Herself’s vacations coincided with bowel disorders afflicting two-thirds of the family herd. The first struck down Bouncing Buddy Boo the Spinning Japanese Wonder Chin; the second, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment). Only Miss Mia Sopaipilla, an unruffled Russian blue, remained blessedly continent.
The Boo is a fragile flower of an alleged dog, yet bore up without complaint under post-poop cleanups. The Turk, on the other hand — well, let’s just say that scrubbing the hind end of an outraged 16-pound male cat, with fangs Nosferatu would have envied and paws like tennis balls studded with surgical implements, is right up there with trying to squeegee buzzard guts off a turbofan jet engine while the sumbitch is running. At 30,000 feet. Over the Big Island.
Qu’vatlh! Dor’sho’gha! Herself’s final holiday excursion of the year provided the occasion for the demise of our 10-year-old audio-video receiver, which snuffed it with a home-theatrical snap, crackle and pop just moments after wheels up.
I dashed out to buy a replacement only to discover that the setup instructions were in the original Klingon, which is not one of my languages (I am fluent only in American and Gutter).
Nevertheless, after spending a maddeningly unproductive day or two staring blankly at the Klingon-English dictionary on my iPad, fists full of HDMI, PC and audio cables like some feeble-minded snake-handler flunking out of Elmer Gantry Elementary, my increasingly profane prayers finally caused this unholy trinity — Sony, Toshiba and Yamaha — to smile beatifically upon me in all its high-definition glory.
It was only then, of course, that I remembered there was nothing I really wanted to watch.
Ain’t nothing to it but a Job. “Why does the Lord want me to serve him in this way?” That’s novelist Thomas McGuane, speaking through a leathery 60-year-old rancher in his novel “Nothing But Blue Skies.”
The answer is, as always: Who knows? The Lord works in mysterious ways, or so I’m told. So do I, although the mystery lies mostly in why any sane person would offer me a position as a cycling journalist—or as a husband, for that matter. Like the late, lamented Richard Pryor, I am no day at the beach, especially when the beach is there and I am here.
There is sand in the immediate vicinity, however. And before I reapply nose to grindstone this morning I will go out and run on it, or ride in it.
You needn’t fear that I’ll be doing this in a Speedo, either. I’m not a triathlete, and this definitely isn’t Hawaii. The only body of water within eyeshot is surrounded by porcelain. It has a seat, a lid and a handle, and I consider it fit only for an extremely limited range of water sports.
Oh, to be a son of a beach instead of the other thing.
Banzai Buddy Boo and the Islamic terrorist holding him hostage.
Check this strange beverage that falls out from the sky, as Tom Waits once growled. Snow, and in winter, too. Who knew?
Mister Boo loves the stuff. Herself took him out for a quick trip around the block and “quick” is the operative word here. The Boo took four corners a sight faster than Davis Phinney ever did, and maybe Danica Patrick, too. His Nipponese ancestors must have hailed from the top of Mount Fuji. He looked like a bug-eyed little snowplow bounding up the sidewalk.
Not so Miss Mia Sopaipilla. The little minx slipped through the open door as I was taking a picture and instantly thought better of it, hanging a 180 and jetting back inside to criticize my weather-management skills.
Being a Russian blue, Mia’s family tree may be rooted in Stalingrad, or perhaps Siberia. But just ’cause you’re from there doesn’t mean you have to like it. You don’t see me hanging around Annapolis, after all.
This Tavel rosé pairs well with food. It’s also pretty damn’ nice all by its lonesome.
We shipped Herself the Elder back to Tennessee this morning, or so we thought.
Her flight out of Bibleburg, slated for 10:45 a.m., didn’t go wheels up until 12:30 p.m. And her connector in Dallas was canceled, so she’s camped in the Dallas airport awaiting another. If she’s lucky she’ll be back in the loving bosom of her cats at midnight.
Meanwhile, Herself the Younger is driving home from Denver in a light snow and cursing like a sailor, because she (a) hates driving in the dark, (2) hates driving in the snow, and (iii) hates driving in the snow in the dark.
Only I am left unscathed to tell the tale, because I have the great good fortune to be unemployable and thus possessed of abundant leisure to motor hither and thither in the daylight, when it is not snowing. Thus did I hie me to the grog shop, fortified by a largish check for making things up, thence to restock the wine rack stripped bare by our Yuletide revelry.
Now I’m sipping a tart Tavel rosé and sifting mentally through the available leftovers: quite a bit of posole; the makings for a short round of tacos de papas con chorizo; some pintos in chipotle chile; the underpinnings for a second round of beef enchiladas on red chile, save the sauce.
Posole, tacos and beans it is. Even a slacker deserves a day off.
Mad Blog Media 