Sallying Fourth

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Betsy Ross would like to know who left the lid up, among other things.

Someone up the road a ways is flying the flag upside down.

It’s fair, I thought. Someone across the street had been doing likewise under the previous administration. What’s good for the goose, etc.

I had been debating whether to fly a flag at all on this Fourth of July, right side up or otherwise. Part of me feels that to fly the flag at all hints of complicity with the brigands, featherbedders and toadies who snuggle up to it as though Old Glory were a young girl on Epstein Island.

It’s one of the reasons I never wear the stars-and-stripes jersey some wiseguy at USA Cycling awarded to me for being a National Champion Pain in the Ass, or something very much like that.

Sure, I earned it. But actually wearing it? I dunno.

“Hey, check out the senior citizen in the national-champ kit. He must’ve been something before electricity. I didn’t know Depends made bib shorts. And what’s that thing he’s riding? Steel? Bar-end shifters? Rim brakes? Yo, Rip Van Weinmann! Wake up and smell the future! Haw haw haw!

• • •

Your Humble Narrator and Herself.

So, yeah. When Herself and I rolled out for this morning’s ride I was not wearing the stars-and-stripes. Yet I was rockin’ the red, white, and blue, as hard as I could, for anyone who cared enough to take notice.

Red Steelman Eurocross (USA) and Giro gloves (Vietnam). White Rudy Project helmet (China), cotton headrag (ditto), Patagonia undershirt (USA), and Gore socks (?). Blue Voler jersey (USA), a match for the decals on the Eurocross and the Cane Creek Crono X Cross wheels (?). The bibs were Voler (USA) — not Depends— in basic black, to match my Sidi shoes (Romania) and my aura.

Quite a few of our fellow Americans were getting their heart rates up despite the smoky haze applying a gray filter to the normally beautiful blue skies. Joggers, dog-walkers, e-bikers, you name it. The quail were mostly under cover, but we saw a few bunnies and one deer curled up in a shady spot against a Sandia Heights house for sale.

And what’s with all the crows lately? Could be ravens, I suppose. Quite a conspiracy of them, too. Someone should write a poem.

• • •

When we got home a few of the Spanish-speakers that so frighten the nation’s mismanagement were prepping a neighbor’s place for stucco in the 94-degree heat. Another will be working a checkout lane at a nearby grocery until 10 p.m. I know this because she told me so.

“Gonna miss the barbecue and everything,” she said, ringing up my purchases, mostly the ingredients for that most American of condiments (salsa).

Our post-ride lunch was some Mexican red rice and savory ground beef left over from last night’s dinner, that most American of dishes (tacos), with a couple of scrambled eggs and a sprinking of Irish cheese. The last of the taco filling will be put to use tonight in that most American of meals (pizza).

• • •

The star-spangled banner yet waves.

But we were talking about flags, yeah? I put ours out, right side up. They’re nothing special, just a couple of cheap promotional items dumped on the property years ago by some long-forgotten real-estate shithead with zero respect for flag etiquette. Nevertheless, Herself and I agreed that we should hew to the gospel preached to us by our late friend and neighbor Marv’ Berkman.

Shortly after we moved in next door to Marv’, once I had gotten the feeling that he wasn’t your standard-brand, hard-right Bibleburger, I asked him why he flew the flag day in and day out.

And the old Chicago saloon picker sez to me he sez (stop me if you’ve heard this one before):

“I just want those guys to know they’re not the only ones who can fly it.”

Fire on the mountain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
The Aspen Acres fire, as seen from my old stomping grounds. Photo: Hal Walter

Long distance runner, what you standin’ there for? 
Get up, get out, get out of the door. — “Fire On the Mountain,” The Grateful Dead

Caught between a rock and a hard place. Or a hot place.

That’s my man Hal Walter, who is dealing with not one, but two fires up in Colorado.

The big one — the Aspen Acres fire, presently the No. 1 priority blaze in the country — is reportedly at more than 48,000 acres, with zero containment and evacuations ordered in Hal’s old hometown of Wetmore, plus San Isabel, Rye, and Colorado City.

Hal’s rancheroo is miles west of the road closure at Mackenzie Junction atop Hardscrabble Canyon, at highways 96 and 165, but a fire with that much reach and attitude isn’t the sort of beast you want running loose anywhere near your area of operations.

Especially when your wife and son are up in Leadville, where another no-containment blaze— the much-smaller Willow Fire — is giving folks the jitters.

Harrison Walter went to school at Colorado Mountain College, and since graduating has been dividing his time between the family home and an apartment in DisneyLead, where he works a couple-three part-time jobs while Hal and his wife, Mary, tag-team supervisory duties. Harrison is neurodiverse and can be a tad sensitive to stress, though things that would dissolve your average normie into a puddle of pee and tears — such as running the 2026 Leadville Trail Marathon, where he placed third in his age group — don’t seem to bother him much.

Harrison and Mary were supposed to be headed home today, the Fourth of July festivities in DisneyLead having gotten a big thumb’s down, but I haven’t heard from Hal yet this morning.

Here’s hoping he’s not loading up the truck with the devil on his tail. In addition to the usual family heirlooms Hal has a pasture full of burros and a book under construction.

Happy 100th birthday, Mel Brooks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
1974 was a very good year.

A very happy 100th birthday to Mel Brooks, who was making me laugh my ass off decades before I knew who the hell he was.

I think I first laid eyes on him when Mel and his old buddy Carl Reiner introduced “The 2000 Year Old Man” to the world (they’d been doing bits at parties, George Burns threatened to steal the material if they didn’t do something with it, and finally Steve Allen persuaded them to record the act for an album).

But he wasn’t a rookie. Mel had been doing standup in the Borscht Belt; went on to write for Sid Caesar with the likes of Woody Allen and Neil Simon; and created “Get Smart!” with Buck Henry.

And then, the movies. Holy underwear! In 1974 Mel released “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein.” In the same year. I was pretending to study journalism at the University of Northern Colorado that year, and my bros and I lost what remained of our minds watching those flicks.

Mine never returned. But Mel’s just keeps hopping along like some furshlugginer Energizer Bunny. I’m retired, but he’s still working.

And The New York Times has 100 reasons why this should excite you. There are more, I’m certain. Give us yours in comments.

The grand Wazoo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The old Wazoo.

The weatherperson’s Magic 8-Ball must’ve been on the fritz yesterday.

Every time s/he shook the sumbitch a new alert popped up. Heat warning. Thunderstorm warning. Dust-storm warning.

Herself had things to do, people to see, and places to go, so she cast a critical eye at the sky and went out for a run. Almost immediately the rain began to fall.

Lacking any pressing engagements, I waited awhile, dithering. Run? Ride? Throw in the towel and spend the morning swapping SSDs in the 2014 MacBook Pro?

Then the rain took five, so I thought I’d try to squeeze in a short trail ride, just to get outdoors and mix things up a bit. Mostly I’ve been riding the road. But I was tired of that itchy feeling between the shoulder blades one gets riding the shoulder of Tramway Boulevard, where the 50-mph speed limit is considered the minimum rather than the max.

I didn’t plan to be out long, so I pulled down a bike that would make me work for it: the Voodoo Wazoo.

The Wazoo in cyclocross-bike mode.

When I snagged this frame with its Reynolds 853 main tubes back in 2005 I set it up pretty much in my typical cyclocross style, based on what was on hand and what I could scrounge: drop bar, XT double crank (48/36T), Shimano 600 derailleurs with bar-end shifters, 600 brake levers and some Avid cantis that had to date to 1995 or even earlier, and — just because I had ’em — a Rock Shox suspension post and Flite saddle, a True Temper Alpha Q carbon fork, and a set of Dura-Ace weirdo wheels, probably wearing Michelin Jets.

As I wrote back then:

Haven’t had it on a scale yet, but I suspect it’s the lightest bike in the bunch. The top tube is a centimeter shorter than my (Steelman) Eurocrosses, and the stem sits a tad higher, so I’ve a nice upright position on this rascal, which is nice when you’re riding something that says “Voodoo” in a town full of Bible-thumpers. You want to be able to see ’em coming.

Four years later what I didn’t see coming was a patch of ice hiding under a puddle on a Bibleburg bike path. Down I went, dislocating my left communications digit, leaving me wearing a splint and unable to handle a road bar and its various levers, STI or otherwise, with a multiday bike tour of southern Arizona coming up, my first gig for Mike Deme and Adventure Cyclist magazine.

Well. Shit.

I had to train, and I didn’t want to do it on a 26-inch-wheeled mountain bike, so I got the gang at Old Town Bike Shop to redo my Voodoo as a flat-bar, single-ring, thumb-shifting, seven-speed. The weirdo wheels went away, replaced by a mismatched set of Mavic hoops laced to Hügi Compact hubs cannibalized from an old set of MTB wheels. The cantis went unchanged, but got a pair of Real levers operable by two of the fingers that still functioned on that left hand.

Bingo.

And 17 years down the road that’s pretty much how the bike remains, with a few changes to accommodate failure and/or necessity.

The rear Avid brake finally croaked, so I swapped in a Dia-Compe 986. The Flite got moved to another bike and after a few candidates auditioned only to be found wanting the Wazoo now sports an Ergon SMC4-M atop an old Control Tech post. The tires are Continental CrossRides in 700×42. A Tange Infinity fork replaced the carbon model. When the Shimano 600 rear derailleur was needed elsewhere I plugged in a 105, with a tab extender that lets me run an 11-34T cassette with that 38T chainring.

I hadn’t ridden it since February. And that “short” ride I had planned turned into two hours of giggles on the trails, from El Rancho Pendejo south past Copper and then back north to the Elena Gallegos.

When it really started getting good to me I thought, “Maybe I should turn this back into a drop-bar cyclocross bike. I’ve got the parts. Who knows? I might spend more time riding it if it were a ’cross bike again.”

And then I thought again. The Wazoo is perfect just the way it is.

For now, anyway. …