Tag: winter

What is the sound of no snow falling?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
One of the very dry washes on today’s hike.

Dude, we got to bed at midnight, after mildly terrifying descents of both the Eisenhower Tunnel and Fremont Pass in the giant bus sleigh, which . . . barely made it the last miles to the college due to a mechanical issue. Also, it only had one headlight. — Hal Walter, who joined son Harrison for a Colorado Mountain College team bus trip to the NJCAA Region IX Championships Oct. 28 in Beatrice, Neb., after their return to Leadville in the dreaded wintry mix

We may be short of water here in The Duck! City, but we are also light on what state departments of transportation call “winter driving conditions,” a state of transportation that I do not miss in the slightest.

I don’t drive much in any conditions these days. Duck! City motorists lean toward the Four I’s — Inept, Inattentive, Impaired, and Insane — and are reliably unpredictable under sunny skies on dry roads.

So, even in good weather, I tend to limit my happy motoring to the weekly grocery run. That way the odds are 50-50 that I’ll have something to snack on while waiting for the paramedics.

And winter driving?  Cyclocross may have ruined that for me before I ever got to The Duck! City. I always loved racing in mud and snow, because I was a strong runner, but unless I was promoting the event I was at least an hour’s drive from whatever soupy and/or snowy mess awaited me.

If the forecast were particularly dire I might drive up the day before a race, treat myself to a motel room and a restaurant meal. My ass didn’t always get a whuppin’, but my wallet pocket did.

Once, when we were living in Crusty County, I nearly slid off the icy descent of State Highway 96 through Hardscrabble Canyon en route to a race in Pueblo with the Bicycle Racing Association of Colorado’s cyclocross race kit — and my own race kit, including two expensive bicycles — piled high in the bed of my 2WD Toyota truck.

“2WD Toyota truck?” you inquire? Why, yes, it was blindingly pig-ignorant, thickheaded, and just plain stick-ass dumb of me, especially since I also owned a 4WD Toyota truck, and thanks for asking.

But as I recall the BRAC kit was already stacked in the bed of the 2WD truck, moving it over to the 4WD would’ve been a hassle, and surely the extra weight of all those plank barriers, metal stakes, and Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocrosses would help keep the rubber on the road?

Just barely, as it turned out. Somehow I managed to keep the truck out of Washout Creek and the front end pointed downhill and made it to Pueblo in plenty of time to see hardly anyone turn out for the race because … well, it was in Pueblo.

Most of the racing then, as now, was in the Boulder-Denver clusterplex. It’s where I had to go to fetch the race kit. And if you can race twice a weekend just one cup of bespoke java from home, well. …

This was one of the reasons our Bibleburg races drew about half the entrants of a Boulder ’cross. In The Steal City, yet another hour’s drive south in bad weather, the race organizers were lucky to draw flies. Why was I there? Because I was the schmuck with the race kit.

Eventually I wised up. My last race was in Bibleburg, after we gave up on Crusty County. I didn’t promote it. Didn’t fetch the race kit. Rode my bike to the race.

It should go without saying that since I didn’t think to bring a spare bike slung over one shoulder, I flatted about halfway through and chalked up a big fat DNF in my final cyclocross.

After I replaced the punctured tube, I hung around for a while to heckle the Boulder-Denver contingent — “Hey, that looks just like cyclocross, only slower!” — and then pedaled lazily home.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But it was a beautiful day just the same.

Getting wood in Weirdcliffe

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
The fireplace in Weirdcliffe, before we installed a Lopi woodstove insert.

When Texas sank back into the Ice Age, I was reminded of the good old days on our wind-scoured rockpile outside Weirdcliffe, Colorado.

There, the power only went out whenever it was inconvenient. And it usually would stay off for an hour or two at minimum, which was the time it took for a utility guy from Cañon City to flip a switch somewhere.

We learned early on that not much works during winter at 8,800 feet in the ass-end of nowhere if you don’t have power. No water, no cooking, and most important, no heat.

I remembered the joys of a heat-free home from my stint in a 9×40 singlewide trailer in Greeley back in 1974. Its oil furnace was forever seizing up in the middle of a winter night, and there’s nothing that clarifies the mind for higher education quite as well as the backsplash from a frozen toilet when you get up at stupid-thirty to offload a sixer of the long-neck Falstaffs you enjoyed for dinner.

Our private road. I went backwards on this stretch in 4WD one evening. I wasn’t scared or nothin’, but somebody shit on my seat. | Photo: Hal Walter

So on our hillside, we kept ourselves prepared. There were canned goods and jerrycans of water in the hall closet, along with a Coleman two-burner and several 1-pound propane bottles for emergency cookery. And we had several candle lanterns and flashlights at the ready because this shit never happens in broad daylight on a weekday.

But the smartest thing we did was have a Lopi woodstove insert installed in our fireplace, along with buying a chainsaw and ax. When you heat with wood, it warms you twice — while you’re cutting it, and while you’re burning it.

And speaking of getting wood, yes, yes, yes, it’s time for the latest episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: I recorded this one in the Comedy Closet, using a Shure MV7 mic and Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music by Infernal Hound Sound; sound effects courtesy of Zapsplat. Special guest appearance by Shel Silverstein.

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Red sky at morning, Mad Dogs take warning.

So much for the days of knickers and short sleeves.

I’ve gotten out every day this week, including two short trail rides — the first on a Steelman cyclocross bike, the second on the DBR hardtail — and one short but luxurious hike on a day so warm I could roll up my sleeves and go bareheaded, get a little vitamin D into the old chrome-dome.

A fella has to make hay while the sun shines, don’t you know. The weather wizards predict a wintry one-two punch this weekend, with the Duke City getting the worst of it on Sunday.

In the meantime, we were treated to a colorful sunrise this morning. A warning if ever I saw one.

 

White-line fever

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Base camp at the overflow area in McDowell Mountain Regional Park, circa 2004.

It’s been a chilly, damp winter in Albuquerque, which isn’t saying much.

Still, it grates after a while, and never more so than during February, a month that is simultaneously too short and too long.

Herself has been to Costa Rica, the neighbors just fled to Mexico, and some other friends beat feet all the way to France.

And yet here I sit (no, this is not a poem, and it is specifically not that poem), rattling the bars on my window of opportunity and losing arguments with the voices in my head.

I’ve written often and at length about my irrational hatred for February, and I was getting set to do it again when I realized, “Hey, I’ve written often and at length about my irrational hatred for February. Why don’t I turn it into a podcast?”

Which I did. This is it. You’re welcome. Now hand me the snow shovel on your way out, would you? I want to smack myself in the head with it.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Editorial notes: The “Mad Dog Unleashed” column headlined “On the Road Again: Frown Lines Search for a Few Tan Lines,” which is my onion at the bottom of this bitter pot of bitch stew, first appeared in the February 2004 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. My line about February having roots in the French “febrile” is, as you may already know, complete and utter bullshit. The Cactus Cup has returned to McDowell Mountain Regional Park since that 2004 column — this year’s edition is slated for March 8-10. And finally, did you know that Peter “Sneaky Pete” Kleinow, pedal steel player for The Flying Burrito Brothers, was also a visual-effects artist and stop-motion animator who worked on “Gumby?” Neither did I.

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited in Apple’s GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro, adding audio acquired through fair means and foul via Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack (no profit was taken in an admittedly casual approach to various copyrights). Speaking of which, the pedal steel riff that closes the episode is from Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever,” as performed by The Flying Burrito Brothers on their eponymous 1971 album. The background music is “Trapped” from Zapsplat.com. And the rewind sound is courtesy of TasmanianPower at Freesound.org.

Videocy: O, the weather outside, etc.

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Why, yes, we are frightfully bored, thanks for asking. Hence the short video depicting conditions as we found them upon arising far too early this morning at El Rancho Pendejo.

These things always start as “short” projects, but by the time I’ve shot a little footage, tacked the bits together, tarted it up a tad, and then handed it over to CenturyLink and YouTube for the traditional hourlong upload — seriously, I can see every friggin’ pixel as it goes “bloop” through the pipeline — why, what we have is a couple billable hours down the loo.

Still, it beats going outside. It’s not actually all that bad out there, unless you’re a cardboard-placard engineer with offices at the corner of Windchill and Frostbite. Still, if I’m going to fall down anywhere today, I plan to do it indoors, where it’s warm.