Tag: Live Update Guy

LUGgers, start your keyboards

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Phantom of the Opera? Naw, just some bald-headed Irish-American unemployable trying to stave off honest work as usual.
The Phantom of the Opera? Naw, just some bald-headed Irish-American unemployable trying to stave off honest work as usual.

The Tour de France starts tomorrow with a 13.8km individual time trial in Utrecht, Netherlands, and Live Update Guy will be there.

Well, not “there” so much as here (Duke City, New Mexico, where Your Humble Narrator whiles away the hours), although there will be some “there” there (mostly Laramie, Wyoming, where Charles Pelkey hangs out his shingle). And there’s MOTS in France, Mons at the Vatican, Larry in Italy, Mbugua in Kenya, Dave in Afghanistan. …

In these days of live streaming video and up-to-the-nanosecond social media it seems odd that a text-based live update like ours still attracts an audience. Still, some folks seem to like it, and we enjoy doing it, so there you have it.

It’s kind of like hanging around a neighborhood sports bar where the innkeeper is always happy to change the channel from golf to cycling, and he never cuts you off and/or throws you out.

So pop on by and say howdy when Le Shew Bigge kicks off tomorrow. It’s a time trial, for god’s sake. We’ll need all the Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah™ we can drum up.

Nearly there now. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

 

On the road again. ...
On the road again. …

It’s July, and you know what that means — Le Homme Gros is getting set to start the Tour de France with Live Update Guy.

All the usual suspects will be on hand as Le Shew Bigge gets under way starting Saturday in the Netherlands — Charles Pelkey, The Man On the Scene (MOTS), the Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter (new kit coming soon), and the LUG Nuts Mystery Theatre & Monty Python Spam Spam Spam Eggs Spam Sausage & Spam Appreciation Society, clogging Teh Innertubes with content-free gobbets of Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah® and the occasional myopic glimpse of what might be going on in the actual race (now where the hell’s my start list and what the hell stage is this, anyway? Is that a roundabout or a maelstrom? Jesus Christ!)

We’re not exactly Phil & Paul, but then they’re not exactly us, either (for starters, they don’t work for tips).

But we do, and we’ll be your servers at Live Update Guy starting Saturday. Would you like to see a menu or do you plan to drink your dinner like everyone else in the joint?

An .85 Magnum Opus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
The Opus Legato and I on the way back to El Rancho Pendejo from the bosque.
The Opus Legato and Your Humble Narrator on the way back to El Rancho Pendejo from the bosque.

That was a long three weeks. Know how I can tell? Because I just absentmindedly hand-coded the italics for “That,” the way we have to while posting at Live Update Guy during the grand tours, the first of which finally skidded to a halt on Sunday.

Don’t gotta do that shit here, yo. Got buttons for that italics shit here.

Anyway, with the Giro d’Italia finally in the can, no deadlines of any sort barking at me like a double Hound of the Baskervilles, and Herself finally (!) done with road-tripping for a while, I enjoyed a nice quiet morning for a change, one in which I didn’t have to be funny and/or focused before breakfast. It’s a far cry from ditch-digging, but some days it’s definitely harder than it looks.

Around 10 I got out for a spin on the Opus Legato, one of three review bikes on deck for Adventure Cyclist. It started out as a fairly standard out-and-back but at some point mutated into a “let’s see where this road goes” kind of ride. I found a scenic new alternative to 4th Street (Guadalupe Trail) when heading down Tramway with the bosque in mind, and on the way home checked out a couple of bike routes that were new to me.

By this time it was noonish and in the mid-80s, which added a degree of difficulty to the climb back up to El Rancho Pendejo. And then I remembered we have air conditioning. So, yeah, bonus. Now I seem to be hungry for some reason, so I’m gonna whip up a mess of Rick Bayless’s tacos de chorizo con salsa de aguacate.

Seems the recipe is no longer on his website, but there are plenty of others. Pick one and use it to take the taste of a Lindsey Graham presidential campaign out of your mouth.

Live, from San Lorenzo al Mare, it’s Saturday morning!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Pretty in pink? Well, not so much.
Pretty in pink? Well, not so much.

Didja miss Live Update Guy’s coverage of Paris-Roubaix? Of course you didn’t.

So, naturally, you’ll want to follow along as Charles Pelkey, the Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter, the Man On the Scene (MOTS), an otherwise-idle Irish-American ne’er-do-well and the rest of the LUG Nuts Repertory Theatre and Monty Python Appreciation Society call the Giro d’Italia live, as it happens, starting with tomorrow’s team time trial.

In addition to the usual ploddingly tedious race coverage your servers will pile your plate to the rafters with plenty of the old Non-Race-Related-Blah-Blah-Blah®, topped with a nice marinara and maybe a little grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mangia, mangia, eat up awready. You look skinny.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Join Charles Pelkey, the Man On the Scene (MOTS), The Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter, some other old fat bald guy, and the proverbial Cast of Thousands this Sunday when Live Update Guy will follow the 2015 edition of Paris-Roubaix as it happens.

That’s why they call it a “live update,” in case you were wondering.

Paris-Roubaix will be something of a test drive. Consigliere Pelkey, being an attorney and freshly elected legislator, is busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, but he’d still like to keep a toe in what we like to jokingly call “cycling journalism.” If all goes well, we’ll consider doing all three grand tours again, as has been our practice for the past few years.

It’s a public-radio-style deal, dependent upon financial support from the audience, so if free-range, grass-fed, gluten-free, humanely raised, organic-hemp live coverage is something you find marginally valuable, pop round for a heaping helping of our patented Non-Race-Related Blah-Blah-Blah (NRRBBB)™ come Sunday and consider dropping a copper or two into our beggars’ bowl as we cover the queen of the cobbled classics.

I would not feel so all alone. Everybody must get stoned!