The Element of Surprise

Spring isn't a date on the calendar. It's more of a feeling. A warm one, if you're lucky.

For me, the vernal equinox is rarely the starter's pistol. I don't hear that big bang until Herself asks whether her Soma Double Cross is ready to ride after a long winter's nap on its hook in the garage.

By that reckoning, spring arrived in The Duck! City on April 9, Easter Sunday.

It was a few degrees short of ideal — I like to think of spring as that time when I can unsheath the arms and knees, charge those solar batteries, collect a little free vitamin D.

But if we had to roll out in arm and knee warmers, so what? As you know, you go to ride with the spring you have, not the spring you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Music and sound effects are courtesy of Zapsplat (shoutout to David-Gwyn Jones for "Looking Back Over the Hill"); the Free Music Archive (a snappy salute to the U.S. Army Blues for "Walk That Dog"), from "Live at Blues Alley"); Freesound; and Your Humble Narrator.

Birthdays. Some of us get overserved, others get 86'd with the cork barely out of the bottle.

Whoever's in charge of this party seems a bit random. Can't tell the top shelf from the well, the class from the dross. Proper ladies and gents given the shove while the most appalling tossers have the run o' the place.

Herself is back east with family and friends to raise a belated parting glass to a lifelong friend felled by COVID last fall.

I'm right here, having charge of the cat. But recently I spoke with my old comrade Charles "Live Update Guy" Pelkey, who has taken a few sucker punches since a cancer diagnosis a dozen years ago but is still on his feet in Laramie, all bouncers be damned.

It may be my birthday that's on tap come Monday, but I'd buy Charles a round to celebrate his most recent lap around the sun, may it not be his last. 

And I wish I could give Herself's pal Sue a few more birthdays. I've had more of them than I expected, certainly more than I deserve, and her candle was blown out far too soon.

The bitter economic headwinds prove too much for some in the peloton of cycling journalism.

It's a rough old road, especially when you ride it on the rivet in the bloody gutter of vulture capitalism.

The sport is pricey to do, and to cover. Advertising is a hard sell. Memberships and subscriptions can only take you so far. Old pros lose the wheel; newcomers hope to find some form.

Above the course floats the vulture capitalist, riding the ill wind, never missing a musette. It's all feed zone for that scavenger, from the grand depart to the finish line. 

Give a thought to your favorite former cycling scribe the next time you can't find any of that information that wants to be free. There's ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Unless you're a buzzard.

The Voices and I have been having a meeting of the minds as to exactly why we want to belly-flop back into this sonic kiddie pool, a shallow backwater that drains feebly and sporadically into the Great Audio River.

But apparently we're at least one mind short.

However, we do not lack for Voices. And they all have their own microphones because somebody around here got a little acquisitive a couple years back. If we don't pipe them into your heads, they'll keep hanging around in ours. Sorry about that.

The zombie podcast Radio Free Dogpatch awakens after a two-year dirt nap, scuttles out from beneath its filthy blanket of mulch, litter, and snow, and shambles about looking for something (or someone) to eat. Or at least listen.

Patrick O'Grady used to wheelsuck the bike magazines to spring break in Arizona or California. Then the biz wised up and he had to stick his own snoot into the breeze.

Until last year, when like many of us, he enjoyed all the travel of a rigid aluminum fork.

And now, in Year Two of the Plague, he's stuck — because he hasn't been stuck.

When Texas sank back into the Ice Age, Patrick O'Grady was reminded of the good old days on a wind-scoured rockpile outside Weirdcliffe, Colorado, where the power shut off whenever it was most inconvenient, the candle lanterns and Coleman two-burner were close at hand, and a Lopi fireplace insert and a tall woodpile kept the toilets from exploding like a bottle of beer left overlong in the freezer.

Trucks with beds and friends with couches saw Patrick O'Grady through his rambling, gambling years, as he rolled the dice with one newspaper after another. He eventually came up winners by leaving the business altogether. Marrying well didn't hurt, either.

The citizens of "Nomadland" have traveled a rougher road.  And they're still on it. This stray dog was struck by Jessica Bruder's book, and he can't wait to see Chloé Zhao's film.

There's something about February that's guaranteed to set a Mad Dog to howling. This time it's Impeachy the Clown as the opening act for our local bozos and their buses. Did everyone forget to lock their wigs before their moment of simulated exhilaration, or what?

Lockup got you down? Fortress of Solitude starting to smell like feet, fast food, and farts? Well, Clark, turn off that Zoom cam, take off the glasses, and see if you can still clear your top tube in a single bound.