By request: Cycling and foodie things

January 25, 2012January 25, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

The FridgeaDog — Leftovers — they're what's for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch. Annnnd dinner. ...

Egad. Eighteen degrees with a high of 57 forecast. That sort of thing is a shock to the system. It’s also SOP in Colorado. The trick is finding the sweet spot for a longish bike ride in that temperature range. That, and trying to stay out of the wind.

I’ve been road testing bikes again — a Pashley Clubman and a Bike Friday New World Tourist — but I feel like riding one of my own machines today, maybe the Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser®.

The thing is a tank but it’s become my go-to bike for some reason. The 700×38 rubber suits pavement, gravel and single-track alike, and the low end of 22×26 means I can climb a tree if being chased by an angry reader.

Speaking of angry readers, James wants “more cycling and foodie things, less politics.” We’ve covered cycling, so let’s move on to foodie things.

I’ve been trying to stretch the food dollar lately, having bid adios to Los Zopilotes de San Diego. And it ain’t easy, because I dearly love to commit eating.

Pork chops are a fave, and the other day I pulled a pound and a half of same from the freezer to thaw. But I got to thinking that a pork chop disappears pretty damn’ fast, as in during one meal, unless you’re a nibbler, which I am not.

Enchiladas, beans and posole — Leftover enchiladas, beans and posole. Much more of this sort of eating and Tom Tancredo will demand that I produce a birth certificate or be deported. Hah! Slipped some politics in there, didn't I?

So I diced a pound of the chops and made a pot of posole, which inspired the cooking of a pot of pintos with chipotle and the assembly of some sausage-and-cheddar enchiladas in red chile sauce. We’re still eating on that mess — in fact, Herself brown-bagged a small container of leftovers to work for lunch.

The remaining red sauce, beans and sausage, meanwhile, will get turned into tonight’s dinner of sausage-and-bean burritos smothered in red with a side of posole and salad.

And that half-pound of pork that didn’t make it into the posole? It was featured in last night’s nuclear kung pao pork with rice. The leftovers from that will be my lunch today.

So there you have it. How to stretch your swine into a fine line, by Chef Dog. Bon appétit.

Parking brake

December 17, 2011December 17, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Palmer Park, 12-16-2011 — The Front Strange as observed from the saddle of a Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser® in Palmer Park, just above the intersection of Union Boulevard and Austin Bluffs Parkway.

That meteorological puta, La Niña, is having her way with our winter here in Bibleburg.

Strictly speaking, it’s not actually winter — the solstice doesn’t arrive until the 22nd — but I mark the arrival of winter not by the calendar, but by when I start wearing long pants both indoors and out. Thus it’s winter here and has been for some time now.

We’ve had next to no snow and only a few wickedly cold days, just one of which forced me aboard the stationary trainer. Yesterday I went for a short trail ride in Palmer Park, and today I took a whack at Sondermann Park, which is a little closer and a lot less crowded on a sunny December day.

In both cases I was aboard my trusty Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser®. But I spent more time in its saddle in Palmer Park than in Sondermann. That sonofabitch has some steep climbs, too steep for even the Nakisi’s triple-chainring setup.

I nearly came to grief on one gravelly stairway to Heaven after the rear wheel came unhitched in its dropouts and jammed against the left chainstay while I was in the lowest of the low gears, my nose practically touching the stem. That I did not go ass-backwards down the hill was pure luck.

Either that or Heaven is full and Hell is afraid I’ll take over.

• Late update: Meanwhile, if you require further proof that it is already winter, I made this Spanish vegetable soup the other day and we’re about to get our third meal out of it. There may be a fourth. Talk about your bang for the buck, even considering that all the ingredients are organic. …

A dirty business

December 30, 2010December 30, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

The Nobilette meets Palmer Park and the park wins — I'da got off and run the sumbitch but I didn't want to stuff my water bottle into my armpit. Yeah, right.

As hard as it is to believe, we’ve nearly completed another lap around the sun. Didn’t we just do the whole New Year’s Eve thing?

Colleagues are writing up the usual best-of, top-10 and “a look back” pieces, but as a perpetual juvenile and occasional Zen student I remain caught up in the moment.

For example, work is particularly vexing lately for reasons that aren’t worth delving into. “At least you have work,” I remind myself, but it doesn’t help. I have something that pisses me off, is what.

Happily, the biggest upside of my gig — besides the monthly paychecks, that is — is its part-time nature. When I find myself composing a vitriolic NastyGram®, the cursor twitching over the “Send” button, I can put the iMac to sleep, grab a bike and go for a ride.

I’ve been riding the Voodoo Nakisi lately, because I plan to write a review for Adventure Cyclist magazine, but yesterday I thought I’d break out my custom Nobilette, which has been idle for a spell due to a rear-brake issue I didn’t feel like troubleshooting.

Problem solved with a little more daylight between pads and rim, I rolled off toward Palmer Park, my go-to spot for flushing out the headgear. Its 730 acres comprise more than 25 miles of trails, from tame to terrifying, and during a dry winter like this one it’s a great place for staying out of the wind and refuting entropy.

Palmer gets quite a bit of use — hikers, cyclists, joggers, dog-walkers and equestrians — and as a consequence many of its trails have deteriorated alongside Bibleburg’s crumbling finances. I had been sticking to the west side of the park because a main eastern trail had been more or less destroyed, but yesterday I thought I’d do a little recon, see what things looked like over there.

The initial idea was to try to ride some moderately technical, steep single-track, replete with switchbacks and water bars, but my legs exercised their veto power. So I rolled over to the playground at Maizeland and Academy and then looped back around to scope out that eastern trail, which parallels the paved road that winds through the park.

Imagine my surprise: Someone, either the parks department, the Guardians of Palmer Park or benefactors unknown had performed a serious feat of engineering on the worst section of trail, a short, steep ascent that takes you to a bend in the road from which several trails fan out. What had been a rocky, rutted mess had been smoothed out, with new water bars installed and the ruts filled in.

Lacking compaction by rain or snow, though, the soft dirt used for the trail’s new surface grabbed my 700×30 Maxxis tires like a troll reaching up from underneath a bridge, and off I came. Bugger. Pushed the bike to the top like a big sissy and took a picture while catching my breath.

Maybe I’ll go back over there today aboard the Voodoo, with its 700×45 tractor tires and 22-tooth granny. Teach that trail a lesson.

I could send it a NastyGram®, but some issues are better raised face to face.

Felines and framesets

November 24, 2010November 24, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

The door into summer? — You can't spell "turkey" without "Turk."

With the holidays bearing down upon us like a doped-up masters racer, a cat’s life is simply overflowing with anticipation.

“When will Jesus bring the pork chops?” wonders Turkish, a.k.a. Turkenstein, The Turkinator, Mighty Whitey the Blue-Eyed Bully of Bibleburg, Big Pussy, et al. He suspects that something wondrous is taking place on the other side of that door and has asked Santa to bring him a pair of opposable thumbs so he can work the knob.

He’s actually pretty damn’ close to getting the door open without thumbs — he certainly doesn’t have any trouble grasping the knob, which sits 36 inches off the ground. Wrap it with something he could sink his claws into and he’d come and go as he pleased.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to see an unwary Turk’ ambling past her grocery-sack spider hole en route to the feed zone so she can whip an ambush on his big white ass. A half hour ago she was merrily flogging him around the house — through the living room and into the bedroom, then through the kitchen and down to the basement. Repeat until naptime, which has just arrived.

Herself is making banking noises out there in the living room, moving money around from one account to another to balance my extravagance as I await delivery of my new Voodoo Nakisi frameset. I’ve found most of what I need to build it up gathering dust in the garage, so naturally the purchase is justified by the crisp sense of order its assembly will bring to a presently cluttered space.

It will use Salsa bars (either flared Bell Laps, Pro Road or Moto Ace); some unlabeled off-brand stem; nine-speed Shimano drivetrain (bar-end shifters, Ultegra derailleurs, XT triple crankset, 11-28 cassette); a pair of moderately scarred Shimano 600 aero brake levers, plus cantis and top-mounted brake levers from Cane Creek; a Thomson seatpost and maybe the old Avenir saddle that came stock on my Nineties road bike.

A sack full of trouble — Miss Mia knows that sooner or later someone will be passing by ... and she's gonna get ’em.

I don’t have an actual 29er wheelset, however, so I’m gonna make do by pulling a pair of wheels off one of the ’cross bikes and slapping some 700×45 Panaracer Fire Cross tires on ’em. That should be burly enough for my mild purposes until I can get Jerry down at Old Town to build me up a set of righteous hoops using a leftover pair of Hügi hubs and maybe some Alex Adventurer rims, which come recommended by tech editor Matt Wiebe of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Matt is the generous gent who is ferrying the frameset from BTI in Santa Fe to Your Humble Narrator in Bibleburg en route to Turkey Day festivities in Denver.

So, yeah. Christmas beats Thanksgiving to the DogHaus this year. But then we were never traditionalists. And if you’re hanging around here, you probably aren’t either. So I’ll leave you with the words of Robert Downey Jr., from “Home for the Holidays”: “That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird.”