By Patrick O'Grady
maddogmedia at gmail dot com

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Slipstream in the pink

  Props to the boys from Slipstream-Chipotle, who won the team time trial to kick off the 2008 Giro d'Italia. Christian Vande Velde will wear the maglia rosa, the first Yank since Andy Hampsten to do so. The team was drilling it so hard they shelled 2001 U-23 TT champ Danny Pate, reformed doping champ David "Nutter" Millar and a couple other dudes en route to the podium.

  Meanwhile, Turkish — a.k.a. Mighty Whitey, Big Pussy, Turkenstein, The Turkinator and other names as well — could give a shit. He's all about climbing trees. Or he would be, if it weren't raining again. That shot is from yesterday when the universe was in better alignment, cat-wise. It rained most of last May, too, when the Turk' was but a mighty acorn instead of a giant white oak, so the big guy may be in for a serious bout of cabin fever.

  In grocery news, there's a new Vitamin Cottage down on South Nevada at Cheyenne Mountain, across the street from Par Avion, which is in dire need of a website makeover. The Vitamin Cottage, while slightly off the beaten path in a former Walgreens buried in a nondescript shopping plaza surrounded by crackhead-infested fleabag motels, is slightly more accessible to downtown Bibleburgers than either the Whole Paycheck on North Academy or the Wild Oats on Powers (which is being rebranded as a WP as we speak). And it's a damn' sight cheaper, too, if you don't get mugged in the parking lot. The cashier urged me to spread the word, so consider it spread.

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Tom Waits for no one

  For those of you sick to death of bullshit press conferences, I have three words: Best. Press conference. Ever. OK, so that's four. You got one of them for free. A tip of the Mad Dog stingy-brim goes out to East Coast Bub for unearthing this one:

  Meanwhile, it's pretty clear who'd be answering that 3 a.m. phone call in a Clinton White House: David Duke. Sez Miz Clinton:

"Sen. Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on."

  In other political news, Mr. Strait Jacket — pardon me, Mr. Straight Talk — has a storied history of helping wealthy contributors with lucrative real-estate deals, according to The Washington Post. Steve Benen breaks it all down for you.

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April showers (May edition)

  Those fabled flower-feeders are a little late, this being May 7, but welcome nonetheless as Bibleburg has been drier than a popcorn fart. I just finished drastically pruning our ailing apple trees and am hoping the moisture doesn't trigger a resurgence of the fire blight that turned them into something out of a Tim Burton movie last year.

  Big bicycle doin's here this morning. Kristin Bennett, senior transportation planner for the city, advises that Mayor Lionel Rivera and USA Cycling will be making a pair of announcements at America the Beautiful Park, adjacent to the scenic hobo village alongside Fountain Creek. I'm guessing one has to do with the League of American Bicyclists finally designating Bibleburg a Bicycle Friendly Community. The other probably concerns USA Cycling deciding it won't move to Ogden after all due to a massive influx of free shit from concerned Bibleburgers. That's my best guess, anyway. Hit the park at 10:30 this morning for the real scoop. And don't forget the Gore-Tex and a bumbershoot.

  Late update: I was right. USAC CEO Steve Johnson (pictured) says the feds have a stylish new (and free) place twice the size of the old digs over on Delmonico Drive, thanks to Nor'Wood Development, El Pomar Foundation, the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation and a cast of thousands. I popped by and chewed the fat with SJ, ace shooter Casey Gibson, USAC communications guy Andy Lee, Nor'Wood's Fred Veitch and Pikes Peak Area Bikeways Coalition mainstay Al "You Can Call Me Al" Brody. Stay tuned to VeloNews.com — maybe come dinnertime they'll get around to posting the story and photos I e-mailed 'em noonish.

  Meanwhile, The Aristocrats weigh in on Obama's gradual whittling-down of Billary as the armless, legless candidate uses her oh-so-blue-collar nose to punch the ATM buttons for another $6 million in loans to her own campaign. This is like watching a Vegas bluehair grimly feeding the slots, chasing a jackpot that just ain't there. Only funnier.

  And finally, a tip of the Mad Dog newsboy cap goes out to the editorial staff of The Peeblow Cheapdone, the Steel City's finest daily newspaper (otherwise known as Bob Rawlings' water newsletter). My spies tell me The Daily Dog has developed a devoted if deranged readership there, which astounds me as I didn't think anyone at the Cheapdone could read*, especially on the copy desk, where I spent many a long, dark night of the soul acting the fool for fun and profit. Some nights the sound of editors' lips moving drowns out the dull thudding of artillery practice at Fort Cartoon. Haw.

* Just kidding. Jesus. Don't send a Pueblo copper up here to tase me, bro.

  This just in: From our Forward Into the Past Department comes the news that steampunk is The Next Big Thing in Noo Yawk City. Another good reason to live in Flyover Country. I particularly like the enhancement of plastic with polished brass, something we never considered when I was a young fashionista. We favored thrift-store suspenders, vests, fedoras, pocket watches and walking sticks to complement the hair, granny glasses and dungarees, a blend of the Roaring Twenties and Boring Seventies. So it goes.

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Downtime is uptime

  After a tiring week of committing cycling journalism, I stepped away from the keyboard on Sunday to do a nice long ride (for me, anyway) to the north boundary of the Air Force Academy and back. The trip takes about two and a half hours in the saddle for your average 54-year-old fat bastard, especially when the trail is stuffed curb to curb with sun-splashed simpletons lacking any concept of trail etiquette. Whatever. Pushing pedals for free will always beat the shit out of pushing pixels for money.

  I ran into Big Bill McBeef and Miss Vicky on the homebound leg. The Beefy One has not been on a bike for the better part of quite some time, having added working for a living to his habit of gaming and tippling late into the night, so it was good to see his pale Morlockesque ass with an actual living woman of the female persuasion and astride a two-wheeler, an elderly DBR ti' mountain bike that was part of the fleet the Mad Dogs bought back in 1994 or thereabouts.

  Today I managed to squeeze in a 90-minute ride between a flurry of household chores demanded by the imminent return of Herself from her own very long week at some library clusterfuck in Denver. And I hate to admit it, as a member in good standing of the Ancient and Honorable Society of Retro-Grouches, but I'm very much enjoying riding some newish technology. My Jamis Supernova with its scandium and carbon tubes, its SRAM 10-speed, its Easton wheelset and carbon fork, is a very lively ride indeed. I thought carbon seat stays were so much marketing horseshit when I first saw them, but this bike does seem less jarring than other aluminum 'cross bikes I've ridden, even without a suspension seat post — and I have suspension posts on everything, barring the road and time-trial bikes. And the Bianchi Castro Valley. That fucker is heavy enough already, thanks all the same.

  Anyway, chapeau to the Jamis folks. I still have doubts about 10-speed corncobs in evil weather, but what with me being a retired cyclo-crosser it's unlikely to see any unless I forget to put it back in the garage some October evening.

  Meanwhile, it's probably Bike Month where you are, unless you're in Colorado. We prefer June for that sort of thing. Why? Ask anyone who's ever raced the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic on Memorial Day. Last year I sidelined the Subaru for most of June, and I'm thinking about tacking on another couple of weeks this year, as gas prices inch up toward that magical $4-per-gallon number Mr. There Will Be Blood just heard about. I've lightened up and tightened up for '08 — my Soma Double Cross now sports a rack and panniers — so doing business on the bike should be a good bit easier, what with the lower weight and gearing. Fitness will be an issue, as always; some things Visa just won't cover.

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Happy International Workers Day

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Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
— Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, Bourgeois Blues

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  OK, lemme see if I've got this right. Americans are tightening their belts as their incomes flatline while food and energy prices skyrocket, yet Exxon Mobil's first-quarter net income of $10.9 billlion, up 17 percent, is disappointing. Hand me my hammer and sickle, honey. Somebody needs an ass-whuppin'.

  Elsewhere, from Ezra Klein at The American Prospect via Kevin Drum comes this:

Somewhere in the house, a phone is ringing. It's your old insurance company, the one you had before your employer decided to make you a contractor rather than a full-time employee. Sorry, they say, but your family just doesn't fit their risk profile. They've got nothing in your price range. What if we pay a little more, you ask, rapidly weighing the consequences of taking out another mortgage or shifting more purchases to credit. Sorry, the even-voiced representative says, this time more firmly, they really don't have anything for you at all.

It is a call — or, sometimes, merely a letter — that millions of Americans have received, particularly those not covered by large employers or the federal government. These Americans are rejected for health insurance because they were sick once, or because they're too old now, or for no apparent reason at all.

(I)t is not a call that John McCain has ever received.... Born the son of a Navy admiral, he was cared for by Navy physicians during his childhood. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy, and the military's care continued until he retired from the service in 1981. In 1982, he won a seat in Congress, ushering him into the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, and in 2001, he qualified for Medicare. When he says, "we have the highest quality of health care in the world in America," he is speaking as a man who has enjoyed a lifetime of government-run care.

  This I like. My dad pulled the full 30 in the U.S. Air Force, and a damn' good thing, too, 'cause we were a sickly bunch. Especially me. I had allergies, asthma, migraines, you name it. I toured dispensaries at Randolph AFB and Fort Sam Houston in San Antone, Fitzsimmons in Denver, and Peterson Field and Ent AFB in Bibleburg. It wasn't exactly the sort of medical care you see on TV, but it kept me from exploding in a pink cloud of hives, snot and erratic brain waves. And it was free — one of the perks of the old man's job, just like buying $2 cartons of humps at the commissary.

  People who say the gummint couldn't pour piss out of a boot with directions printed on the heel when it comes to health care should take a look at how it treats its active-duty troops and retirees. I'd love to see a study of the two bureaucracies, both private and public sectors, and who's really better off in terms of dollars spent for care received.

  And this is not to say that folks in the military are getting something for nothing just because I have to pay a bazillion dollars for an albuterol inhaler, asthma being a pre-existing condition and all. When a clot of draft-dodgers with flag lapel pins offhandedly chucks the grunts into a meat grinder somewhere just because there's a shitload of oil under the sand, they deserve everything we can give them — including better civilian leadership.

  Late update: Tim Jackson, a.k.a. Masiguy, laid it down at high speed on the San Diego velodrome on Tuesday and didn't leap right back up again — word is concussion, three cracked vertebrae in his neck, banged-up left eye, fractured right knee, a cracked rib and a bruised lung, plus surgery to reattach a nearly severed right thumb. We're talking about more than a shredded skinsuit here, is what. You can get the rest of the bad news here. The good news is, Tim is in fine spirits and should be out of the hospital by Friday. If you have some spare Dead President Trading Cards lying about the joint, Blue Squirrel has set up a fund to help the Masiguy guy fill in the gaps around his insurance policy. Stars for your crown in heaven, don't you know.

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