Tag: Interbike

(Not) leaving Las Vegas

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Seems a full house trumps the Mouse — Interbike has reconsidered its decision to shift the show from Las Vegas to Anaheim for 2011.

I couldn’t care less, as I haven’t been to Sin City in four years and was not anticipating an invitation to Interbike Disneyland. The last time I was there, back in 1997, I was pretty much describing Anaheim the way I would Vegas, and BRAIN’s publisher has long since grown weary of the word “sucks” when it appears under my byline.

So, yeah — good news, guys! Come September 2011 you can look forward to another week’s worth of watered whisky, secondhand smoke and steel-toed kicks to the nuts from the Sands unions. The people have spoken. And as usual, the voice was coming from below the belt and well behind the buckle.

SLA means ‘So Long, Asshole’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Herself and Your Humble Narrator (Bizarro World versions).
Herself and Your Humble Narrator (Bizarro World versions).

Well, Herself ran away from home today, bound for New Orleans. She claims to be attending a librarians conference, something called “The SLA 2010 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO,” but Momma O’Grady didn’t raise no fools. I mean, what kind of library outfit would hire James Carville and Mary Matalin as its keynote speakers? Puh-leeze.

I practically invented that really-honey-I’m-working dodge, telling her for years that I was going to Vegas to spend a week covering a bicycle-industry trade show called “Interbike.” And she bought it. Ho, ho. There’s one born every minute, but I ain’t one of ’em, Toots.

So it’s just me and the cats here, enjoying some of the filthiest June weather in recent memory. If it’s not pissing down rain, it’s blowing 40 mph or thereabouts, and sometimes it’s doing both, causing the furnace to click on.

These conditions are not limited to Colorado, by the way — the poor saps racing the Dauphiné Libéré and the Tour de Suisse have had to break out the rain capes. Happily, I do my little bit of business indoors, where’s it’s dry.

Meanwhile, Herself just rang me up and said she can’t find red beans and rice, jambalaya or gumbo at the restaurant she’s supposedly at. Just sushi. She’s not nearly as good at lying through her teeth as I am. Hell, I bet she’s not even in The Big Easy. She’s probably in Vegas.

• Quick, all you librarians — from which work of popular fiction did I steal the headline on this post?