Tag: Herself

Spring, Route 666

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Spring 2025, hold the shorts and sunscreen.

When I awakened my watch read 3:33.

“That’s a half-666,” I thought drowsily, trying to recall the details of a dream I’d been having. Something about needing to be somewhere, late as usual, and rooting through a duffel full of colorful short-sleeve shirts and shorts because of course I was butt-ass nekkid.

Then it came to me. Spring. First day of. I awarded myself a soupçon of spring break and dozed until 5.

When I dragged ass out of the sack to pull on some duds I was not looking for a flowered Paddygucci shirt and shorts, because spring in New Mexico debuted at 22°, which called for pants, long-sleeve shirt, and a light fleece vest.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla had already greeted the vernal equinox by blowing a hairball and carpet-bombing the litter box. Herself was clocked in at work, hoping to cash a few more checks before the X-Man decides Sandia National Labs doesn’t need any librarians to tell his DOGEbags where they might find the owner’s manuals for the Death Ray.

Just wing it, fellas. Hit that big red button on the grip and see what comes out the other end. Probably shouldn’t look down the barrel while you’re doing it. Move fast, break things, etc. Whoops, there goes Paris. Serves ’em right for wanting their statue back.

Yeah, Mr. Whitey! Yeah, science! Political science, anyway. Maybe political science fiction.

Reaching

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
In the pink.

I am a creature of habit.

We all have our little routines. Spontaneity, first thing in the morning? No, thank you, please. Predictability is what’s wanted before coffee.

So I arise at stupid-thirty, since that’s how we roll around here. Dress in the dark, because one day this will not be optional. Visit the bathroom. Greet Herself and Miss Mia Sopaipilla. Tidy up Miss Mia’s bathroom and give her a vigorous massage on The Chair of Love.

“Take me out to the ball game.”

And finally, make coffee.

Thus fortified, I usually scan the headlines to inspect humanity’s latest self-inflicted wounds. But lately that feels like rubbernecking at an inner-city ER. Let’s start with something light, shall we?

Jaysis. Even the weather report is all like, “We have good news and bad news.” The good news is that yesterday Herself and I took an afternoon stroll in shorts and T-shirts. The bad news is that high-temperature records are dropping like staffing levels at USAID and if the current precip trend continues we’re likely to be drinking our own wee-wee by March instead of August.

At this point a second cup of coffee is indicated. Black, hold the wee-wee.

Check the email? No joy there. Evil tidings, in fact. Avert the eyes.

Toast, then. With butter and jam. Also, and too, oatmeal, with banana, pecans, cinnamon, brown sugar, maple syrup. Black tea to give the coffee some backup. Play ball with Miss Mia.

Time for The Times? Y’think? And a-one, and a-two, annnnnd. …

Gods above and below!

Maybe I’ll just go back to bed.

Leaf me alone

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Right, off you go. …

An overly spicy pasta dinner led to a restless night, and by the time I dragged ass out of the sack this morning temps in the teens plus a biting wind out of the north had done a Pythonesque “Meaning of Life” number on our trees.

A veritable blur of activity was Your Humble Narrator back in his days as a cyclocross promoter..

Herself’s mantra is “We can do anything for 30 minutes.” But she wasn’t here, so I gave myself a day off from the usual outdoorsy pasatiempos. Took some pix, downloaded some software, entertained the cat, fed the birds (no, not to the cat), collected the mail (all bullshit), perused the news (likewise), drank tea.

In short, stayed warm.

There’s something deep in the heart of me that remembers those bitter wintry mornings of yesteryear, which saw me hammering barrier stakes into frozen turf at stupid-thirty and wondering if this would finally be the day when nobody but me turned up to race cyclocross.

Heavy metal

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
It’s not about the bicycle, unless of course it is.

During Herself’s recent visit to Aspen she was compelled to endure a bit of the hee and the haw and the ho ho ho directed at her bicycle, a 2006 Soma Double Cross.

My own Soma Double Cross.

As you know, we are not slaves to velo-fashion here at El Rancho Pendejo. Shucks, I have been known to turn up for a road ride aboard my own slightly newer Double Cross, which has cycled through a number of incarnations — cyclocross bike; light touring bike with fenders, rack, and sacks; townie with swept-back bars; you name it.

At present it’s an eight-speed, “all-road,” drop-bar bike with two bottle cages, IRD Cafam cantis, Dura-Ace bar-end shifters, a triple XT crank (46/34/24T) with Ultegra/XT derailleurs and an 11-34T cassette for a low end of 24x34T (19.2 gear inches), bar-end shifters, Shimano 600 brake levers, IRD Cafam cantis, Mavic Open Pro rims (Dura-Ace hub up front, Velo-Orange behind), and 700×36 Donnelly X’Plor MSO adventure knobbies. Just the vehicle for a short dash around the Elena Gallegos Open Space or a rolling road ride through the foothills.

If you’re me, anyway.

Herself rarely leaves pavement and never rides in foul weather, and so a bike’s capacity for fat-tire fun and fenders isn’t even on her radar. Especially when we consider that while her Double Cross is a 42cm and mine a 55, hers actually outweighs mine by (wait for it) three pounds.

Steel is real — real heavy, if you’re a 5-footer and not rocking the lightweight components.

Don’t get me wrong. The Double Cross is a fine frameset, and I’d buy another in a heartbeat if Soma still did a canti version. But we outfitted hers on the cheap.

She’s pushing about 1.2 pounds more rubber than I am with every pedal stroke, and hasn’t got that 24T granny for the steeps. Plus her saddle, handlebar, seat post and wheels are all heavier than mine. Ditto the controls: chunky 105 STI brifters instead of my bar-cons and pre-Ultegra brake levers.

So, even though I’ve been dropped like an empty bidon by dudes rocking raggedy-ass kit and rattle-canned DUI-mobiles, I can see how the “you get the lunch, I’ll buy the bicycles” types might find Herself’s whip a tad plebeian.

In my defense, I will note that at 5 feet tall and under a hundy, she’s hard to fit. Still, since she makes all the money around here while I do … uh … hold on, gimme a sec’, it’ll come to me. …

Shit. Not much, it seems. I should probably do a bit of shopping, hey?

Call it an impulse, if only because I’ve heard one pitch from a friend of a friend of a friend for something along the lines of a Bianchi Impulso GRX 600. Anyone else got a recommendation they’d like to share?

O, booger

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Hm. Time for resupply. Either that or I start using the guest towels instead of Kleenex.

I may be running out of Kleenex and boogers more or less simultaneously, which I call either a miracle of planning or the usual dumb luck.

Something grabbed me by the snout a week ago Monday. I was thinking the allergies had seemed a tad fierce lately, but then Herself seemed to come down with an actual cold, so, uh, no. Not allergies. Or maybe not just allergies.

She took two Bug tests, both negative, and since we had similar symptoms I didn’t bother testing myself.

As Herself is a spry young thing she had a couple rough days, then pretty much bounced right back and soldiered on. But then she’s the type of person who would take a childhood diagnosis of asthma and allergies and be all like, “Hm, probably should stay on top of that so it doesn’t turn into a lifetime of skull-fucking sinus infections.”

Another type of person, by which I mean me, might decide to enhance these pre-existing conditions with a marinade of swimming-pool chlorine, nicotine, marijuana, hashish, cocaine, and popskull in various flavors because why the hell not? What could go wrong?

What goes wrong, in my experience, is that every so often you find yourself feeling slightly unwell, with something oozing out of your beak that looks like a microwave pizza that some cube farmer nuked on Friday, promptly forgot about, and rediscovered on Tuesday after a long, hot Memorial Day weekend.

Back in the Day® the medicos would hit you with some interesting speedy drugs and a Z-Pak, the pharmaceutical equivalent of chucking a grenade into a spider hole. Nowadays the thinking is that this only gives rise to antibiotic-resistant infections like Matt Gaetz.

Today the standard practice is to bill you for the visit and send you home empty-handed, save for some sound medical advice. “Get that shit out of here. Jesus. Makes the snack-room microwave look like a surgical theater.”

So I saved myself the trip. Lots of rest, hot fluids, vitamin C, and a really hot pot of posole. Ride it out, same way you do a White House full of eejits and maniacs. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.