Fall, in

September 23, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

That was the forecast for the first day of fall: rain, and plenty of it, starting around noon.

Perfect, I thought. I usually run on Tuesdays anyway, so I’d have plenty of time to do the morning chores, then bang out an unimpressive 5K on the trails, and be safely indoors before Thor started taking batting practice.

But as the morning unfolded the skies actually seemed to be clearing. So I thought, hmmm: First day of fall, cyclocross season with actual cyclocross weather … maybe push the run to Wednesday, when the forecast is even less velo-friendly, and take a quick spin on a Steelman today.

Bingo.

About 45 minutes in, which in cool weather is when most of the bits of me have finally reported for duty, I slalomed off a trail in the Elena Gallegos Open Space and into a parking lot to see a friend wrapping up a walk with his dogs, and we took five for a chat about Irish literature and Japanese automobiles.

Then … drip … drop. ...

“Feels like it’s starting to sprinkle,” I said.

He had a squint at the windshield of his Honda Element, which like my Subaru Forester — and, if we’re speaking frankly here, like the two of us, and many a character in Irish literature — has more than a few hard miles on it.

“So it is,” he confirmed.

Well. A fine soft day on tap and here I am, miles from home and dressed for another class of party altogether. Caught with my knickers not only down, but in a drawer, with the rest of my foul-weather kit. I said my goodbyes and took off, hoping to get home before droplets turned to deluge. Skip the lovely trails, they’re already awash in eejits with earbuds and the rain will bring out the snakes. St. Patrick I am not. Ask anyone.

But as I barreled down Simms Road toward Tramway once again the weather shifted gears on me. I caught a few fat drops in the gob on the descent and then nada. Niente. Bupkis.

Well, then. I’d been hoping for a quick hour, but if the gods were leaning on their shovels with hoses coiled I’d stay out for a while longer. The 20-mile, mixed-terrain ride is the foundation of my “training program,” such as it is, and I was halfway there as I passed Comanche headed south. Onward.

I generally log more mileage north of Comanche, but the south has its attractions as well. I stuck to the Tramway bike path for a while, Tramway itself seeming to have more traffic than normal, probably hoarders hellbent on cornering the chips, bean dip, and buttwipe markets before the Apocalypse struck. I needed to do some of that myself. But not until I got my 20 in.

Every time I got a dampish puck in the gob I swung north and east, toward home. If it was more of a love tap than a lashing, I turned south and west, one eye on the cyclometer. Bike paths, low-traffic foothills streets, a bit of dirt as it presented itself, and hey presto! I got my 20. 20.3 miles, to be precise, and 1,481 feet of vertical gain. Not bad for a rain day.

Which it was not, still.

The fuck? I thought. Must have the A.I. on the job down to the National Weather Service. More of a focus on mass murder than meteorology? If it fights as well as it forecasts we’ll all of us live to a ripe old age so. “Terminator” me bollocks.

So I ate the last of a pot of Pierre Franey’s turkey chili, jumped into the Subie, and rattled off to the grocery to collect a few delicacies. Herself is in Tennessee with her sisters, at a celebration of life for our late brother-in-law, William F. White Jr., so I was seizing the opportunity to minimize cooking and cleaning up afterward.

And so it was that I was sprawled comfortably on the couch, nibbling on shrimp, fresh bread with butter, and a green salad, watching a bit of standup on Netflix (Joe DeRosa, “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” not bad), when it finally started raining. At around 6 p.m.

But man — did it ever make up for lost time. It still hasn’t stopped and I just finished breakfast on Wednesday morning. A quarter inch since 4 this morning and 0.64 inch total.

Maybe I better take back some of that shit I said about A.I. Like me, it may be slow, but it gets there eventually.

Marvel-ous

August 7, 2026August 7, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

Why is a Steelman Eurocross better than a BMW 7 Series?

Well, for openers, it’s a Steelman Eurocross. And you can’t just slide on down to your local Steelman dealer and drive one off the lot, because Brent Steelman isn’t making them any longer.

Even if you could, its touchscreen wouldn’t be showing you an ad for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” the instant you climbed aboard, which BMWs are doing. My Steelman Eurocrosses ain’t got no steekeeng touchscreens. Oh, sure, they share an ancient Cateye Velo 8, but it doesn’t say shit to me because it saw what I did to Herself’s sportswatch with a claw hammer when the fucker started beeping and wouldn’t shut the hell up.

I knew this day was coming the first time I pulled into a gas station for a tank of the cheap stuff and the pump started shrieking advertising bullshit at me. I nearly drove off right then and there, but I was running on fumes, and figured that if one station was doing it, they all were.

And they all are.

The Eurocross “touchscreen.” One button, no Spider-Men.

So, guess what? If six-figure BMW 7 Series sedans are inflicting advertisements upon their owners — and nobody at BMW gets fed feet first into a wood chipper over it — your $24K Kia Shitbox will soon be pitching Happy Meals, weight-loss programs, and boner pills at you.

My 2005 Subaru Forester? Not so much. The only screen in that sucker is the windscreen, as the Brits call it. The clear one I look through to see where in the hell is it that I’m going.

John Gruber sums up the whole deal nicely at Daring Fireball:

This is absolutely insane, especially for cars that people own. If you own a car and an ad is shown in your car, you should get paid for the ad. And you should need to agree to it first. BMW is supposed to be a luxury brand, and one meant for driving enthusiasts. This is so absurd it’s hard to believe it’s real.

Ho ho ho. What isn’t?

Take the highway that’s the best

July 30, 2026July 30, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

This morning I was getting my kicks on Route 66.

I’ve been trying to mix things up a bit lately, do something out of the ordinary at least one day per week, and today it was a spin along a local stretch of John Steinbeck’s “Mother Road.”

Come fall, which it very much is not, the Geezers usually have a go at the climb to the Morning Star Grocery. This is an out-and-back ride, and mileage varies because not all of us start in the same place. Some, me among them, ride from home; others start from the Smith’s parking lot at Tramway and Central.

All of us get the same seven rolling miles of Mama to Tijeras, where the actual climbing starts as we turn right onto NM 337 and gear down for the 9.7-mile climb to the grocery. There we take five, patronize the shop, have a wee, and assign Manly Points, using a sliding scale that factors in the number of laps around the sun a rider has logged before the day’s exertions.

For me the ride winds up being a 45-mile round trip, more or less, with about 2,500 feet of vertical. A nice day in the saddle.

Today, I had planned to ride solo. No real purpose, beyond doing something other than roll around in the Sandia foothills, and before it got too hot, too; the NWS had issued another heat advisory for any and all mad dogs out in the noonday sun. So eight-ish I pulled the mango Steelman Eurocross from its hook and off we flew down Tramway, the idea being to ride to Tijeras and then … whatever.

From left, *Gazette* veterans Chris Coursey, Merrill Oliver, and Your Humble Narrator kit up for a California trip.

This would seem an odd choice of bike for anyone who didn’t know my habits. It’s a cyclocross bike, dates to 1998 or thereabouts, and in its present incarnation sports bar-end shifters, an eight-speed drivetrain, Dura-Ace hubs laced to Mavic Open Pro hoops, Paul’s cantis, just the one bottle cage, and a mixed pair of majorly old ’cross knobbies, MXPs from Clément (front) and Donnelly (rear). In 2006, I rode it from Santa Rosa to Hopland for a wedding, but not with those tires.

Mostly I ride it on trails, and so I forget what a great road bike the Eurocross is, especially on shitty roads. So I was having a high old time as we rolled into Tijeras, where on impulse I hung a right on NM 337 and started climbing because why the hell not?

Well, the answer to that was I only had one water bottle, one tube of Clif Blox, and no money, I probably felt swell because I’d had a tailwind pushing me to Tijeras, and sure it’s all downhill from the grocery except for where it isn’t and that headwind ain’t gonna eat itself.

So — believe it or not — I actually did the smart thing for once. I decided to ride to the Otero Trailhead and then turn around, which gave me a 30-mile ride with 1,600 feet of vert’ and nary a bit of bonk or heatstroke.

No Manly Points, though. I’m harsh but fair.

Speaking of which, when we finally hound the brigands out of the government and into prison cells or boneyards, I propose that we seize their fleet of 250 Cadillac Escalades in The Name of the People and use these bloated pimpmobiles to give hungry poor folks free lifts to the grocery. Not everyone has the bike and can make the climb, especially since the swine started croaking the bike lanes.

“DEI” me bollocks. If we’re talking about the bozos these land yachts are intended for it should stand for “Douchebags, Eejits, and Idlers.”

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.

May Day parade

May 2, 2026May 2, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

O ride, ye prisoners from your slumbers. …

There was a May Day gathering at Civic Plaza yesterday but we gave it a miss. Instead I formed a rolling rally of one, equipped and clad to suit the occasion (in red) and the weather (brisk).

A quarter inch of rain is a whole lot better than none at all.

A quarter inch of rain fell overnight, and at high speed, too. The wind and water blew us out of a sound sleep shortly after 2 a.m., and while the rain stopped the wind was still with us at 11:30 when I took the red Steelman off its hook and rolled out to spend 90 minutes trying to find shelter from it.

We did honor the general strike. We bought nothing and did no paid work; I’ve gotten pretty good at that since retiring in 2022. To feed the starving masses I made three meals out of fridge and pantry: toast, tea, oatmeal, and fruit for breakfast; grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch; and pasta with a sauce of tomatoes, onions, jalapeño, garlic, black olives, red pepper flakes (there’s that red again) and chicken sausage for dinner.

This morning as I arose at 5 a.m. the furnace ticked on, which really lets you know it’s May. Forty-two, said the weather widget. We get summer in March and winter in May and if we’re lucky a little rain sneaks in there somewhere.

Today I will have to re-engage with capitalism in a fairly significant fashion. The pantry is bare, and the People’s Army, like any other, marches on its stomach.