It’s quiet out there … too quiet

“Tweet of the day,” notes a colleague, forwarding this:

lancearmstrong Happy hour w/ the whole @LIVESTRONG team here at the house. For those who think we’ll be distracted, think again. We’re here to serve.

The old Million Pound Yellow Shithammer of Denial just ain’t what it used to be, hey? Not as long as Big George Hincapie may be one of the moles in need of a stout whacking. This shot will require some finesse, muses Big Tex, consulting his caddy: “What club do I use here, do y’think?” All the anticipation makes one’s putter flutter.

I get a feeling we’re on a rest day here on the Tour de Lance. But sometime soon it’s gonna be game on and Big Tex will have to start taking some very long pulls indeed, with the Devil running alongside him. And I ain’t talking Didi Senft here.

Meanwhile, I awakened to the sound of rain, thunder and hail at Chez Dog. I think I’ll sell all the bikes and buy a submarine. A yellow one. I bet I know where I can get one cheap, and all the rats should be out of there momentarily, if they haven’t all leaped overboard already.

May showers bring what, exactly?

All hands on deck? Not today: Today I need an office with a lid on it.

Jeebus. More water on the deck this morning. Just because I have fenders and neoprene doesn’t mean I enjoy using them.

Oh, well. I’m signed up for an extra-credit day in the VeloBarrel today, helping cover stage five of the Amgen Tour as our boots on the ground rotate in and out. It’s supposed to start at 10:15 a.m. Bibleburg time, but since we don’t do live updates anymore (just a Twitter feed, which is like passing out bullhorns to the voices in Sarah Palin’s head) the heavy lifting won’t start until much later in the day, when the streaming video kicks in.

One thing’s for sure: I won’t be using the open-air office this afternoon. It’s plenty soggy already, and there’s more rain in the forecast. No point in getting electrocuted in advance of Saturday’s Rapture. I want to stick around long enough to see who the real Christians are. I have a feeling the Tower will not approve some of the self-righteous flight plans on His desk.

Well, at least it’s not snowing. …

Ah, it's the old "trees reflected in the puddle" shot again.

The poor bastards at the Amgen Tour of California are facing weather that the Chamber of Commerce would be cheering — if this were a ski race.

Alas, it’s a bike race, and with cyclo-cross season behind us it’s looking like the lads will face a shortened course. No word whether they’ll be running the Emerald Bay KOM.

Here in Bibleburg, meanwhile, it’s rain with temps just above freezing. Good for the trees, but also bad for cycling, if you’re a sissified geezer like me, anyway. I’m almost jealous of Herself, who is off to my old hometown of Alamosa this morning, where temps should hit the 70s by afternoon. She and a colleague have some work to do with the local biblioteca and plan a visit to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

Me, I’m sentenced to rumormongery without parole today, with both the Giro and the AToC going on. Oh, well — it beats shoveling snow. Or racing in it.

• Late update: As you know already, organizers pulled the plug on the Amgen kickoff after the weather got ridiculous. My friend, colleague and fellow Bibleburger Casey B. Gibson, who’s shooting the race for VeloNews, says six motos went down 20 minutes after the race was canceled, so it seems organizers made the right call. So the racers got a day off, but I didn’t. You’d be astounded how much crap there is to post about a race that never was.

Gloom and doom

Sure am glad I watered the lawn yesterday.

This is May? What, did the GOP manage to privatize the weather, hand it off to Halliburton or Goldman Sachs? It rained last night, the wind is flat barreling out of the northwest at 24 mph and there is the usual chance of snow “with little to no accumulation,” which means, “Just enough to kill anyone who thinks 4WD helps you stop.”

It’s just as well, I suppose. I had work to do this morning, and were it not so dismal outside I might have said piss on it and gone for a ride instead.

Speaking of rude awakenings, it seems the mainstream media have finally sniffed the java where Punkinhead Boehner is concerned. Bloomberg News reports that the House speaker’s economic “theories” depend upon “several assertions that are contraindicated by market indicators and government reports.” The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus cuts to the chase and calls him a lying sack of runny orange shit.

Careful, now, Ruthie ol’ scout. You’re liable to set off Weepy John’s sprinkler system bringing that kind of heat. Thanks to Steve Benen at Political Animal for the tip.

April flowers bring May showers

Shorts weather down here, not so much up there.

May is lurking around the corner like a thug with a fistful of pipe. I rode in shorts and short sleeves today, watered the trees fore and aft, even mowed what passes for a lawn in Dog Country. It was 75 degrees and sunnier than the smile on the face of someone who hasn’t been paying attention.

Naturally, tomorrow the temps will drop like an elevator full of fat bastards and there’s rain, snow, and rain mixed with snow in the forecast.

Whatever. I don’t care. Our Canadian red cherry is showing some blossoms, and I had a wonderful ride today, just goofing around in Palmer Park, trying to stay out of the wind. I was on the Voodoo Nakisi drop-bar 29er and rode like I knew what I was doing for a change, kinda sorta, even cleaning a couple rocky bits that have been setting me afoot. Plus I stumbled across an entire gym class of young folks riding mountain bikes at the behest of their teacher, which as an industry observer I call good news.

One, on a loaner bike, was having trouble with parts of the Grandview Overlook trail and just a tiny bit lost. “It gets easier,” I promised, lying shamelessly through an encouraging smile, and showed her the way to the paved road that leads to the overlook parking lot.

I took a shortcut and advised teach’ that one of his students once was lost, but now was found, and then got the hell out of there while things were still going good. I’m not greedy, and I’d already had more than my share of good news.

• Late update: I capped the day off with a simple new recipe, ale-braised sausages with bell peppers, from Williams-Sonoma. I dicked around with it a bit, having neither apple cider (I used organic cranberry-pomegranate juice instead) nor fresh thyme (due to a persistent case of brain damage I have three or four jars of the dried stuff cluttering up the kitchen). And surprise, surprise, it turned out just fine. I used Deschutes Brewery’s Red Chair NW Pale Ale and Niman Ranch bratwurst, for anyone tracking my movements. The mashed spuds were your basic organic russets with chives, parsley, butter, heavy whipping cream, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Tulips and Tea Baggers

The tulips seem to be saying, "If this is spring, you can have it."

This is the second day lately we’ve awakened to a light, slightly crunchy frosting on the ground.

I don’t know whether it’s a light snow or a heavy frost. I do know the lawn drinks it like Birthers chug Insane-O-Tea®. You want a solid argument against evolution, these folks are your poster children. Chimps look at these asshats, shake their heads and say, “I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.”

On the water(y)front

The Universe is amusing itself at my expense again.

I sez to Herself, I sez, “Watch it start snowing as soon as I get all kitted up for a ride.” And what happens?

I shoulda gone into meteorology, is what. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.

Blow me

Turkish, who also loathes the wind, gives the hairy eyeball to one of his toys shortly before kicking its ass.

Jeebus. I say this every April, I know, but still, damn — this wind is insane. Right now it’s barreling out of the south-southwest at 29 mph with gusts to 48.

Sucker flat pile-drives the pollen up the snotlocker, let me tell you. Feels like some evil plumber is ratcheting down an extra-large hose clamp on my brainpan. I should be out logging miles on the Jamis for review purposes, but I’ve been wrestling this accursed wind all week and I’m kind of over it. For now, anyway.

Still, could be worse — Flagstaff is under about a foot of snow, I-17 is closed, and the white stuff is still coming down. This is why we keep cross-country skis and snowshoes around. April showers, don’t you know.

At play in the fields of the Lord

Finally, a little help with the lawn-watering program around here.

We got a very welcome spring rain last night. The sound of the lawn, shrubs and trees cheering (“Yaaaaayyyy!!!) kept us up all night long.

Or perhaps that was the shit monsoon, which continues unabated in DeeCee, where the Tinfoil Beanie Party continues to hone its management philosophy, taken from the manifesto “Everything I Know About Getting My Way I Learned in Kindergarten.” What a shower of bastards we have sent to the nation’s capital.

And how God must chuckle when He looks down to see His monkeys at play, screeching and flinging dung at one another. Kind of makes You wish You hadn’t taken that seventh day off, eh, Big Fella? You could’ve used it to perform a little quality-control check on your most famous product.

A blustery day

Just 'cause it's spring where you are doesn't mean it's spring at 14,110 feet.

Typical oddball Colorado weather today. Twenty degrees cooler than yesterday, a brief spell of popcorn snow from an otherwise blue sky, actual snow atop Pikes Peak, more of the winds from hell, and about umpty-ump pounds of tree pollen blasted straight up my snoot. Blaugh.

In other Bibleburg news, USA Cycling assumed the position — pardon me, assumed the UCI position — on race radios after initially deciding to allow squawk boxes in NRC events. That NastyGram® Paddy McQuaid sent must’ve really read out the old riot act, as in “IOC spank.” Don’t want to throw away your bucket while all that money is still spewing from the five-ringed faucet in downtown Bibleburg, don’t you know.

Who’da thunk race radios would end up being Dire Portents of the End Times, cycling-wise? Silly sods have been gobbling enough dope to bring Hunter S. Thompson back from the dead, mainlining each others’ blood bags and fleeing drug raids through hotel windows, and what finally does the job is Thor Hushovd’s inability to hear Jonathan Vaughters’ sideburns flapping in the breeze from an open window in the team Volvo.