Pick me! Or not. …

Housekeeping! (knock knock knock) Housekeeping!

Ho, ho. USA Cycling would like it known far and wide that four who served the Dark Lord on U.S. Postal/Discovery asked pretty please could they be removed from consideration for sentencing to the U.S. team bound for LimeyLand and the 2012 Watney’s Red Barrel Memorial Olympic Hide and Seek.

And who can blame them? My paternal granda fled the English for Canada and then the Benighted States, and none of his descendants has exactly been in a hurry to retrace his flight in bass-ackward fashion.

I don’t even have a passport, as if that would make any difference in my travel plans. I can’t even manage to get out of this fucking town, much less the country, both of which would probably be happy to see me go, if only for a little while so they could catch their breath.

I don’t suppose this has anything to do with Texus Maximus getting his Band-Aided triathlon titties sucked up into USADA’s wringer. Naw. Y’think? Naw.

Meanwhile, the furnishing of the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Crooked House® continues apace. After locating a bargain queen-size bed on Craiglist Herself surfed today’s Old North End garage sale and came up with a stylin’ Ethan Allen Mission-style frame, plus some bedding and towels that look better than similar items that we use our own bad selves. I contributed, too, shifting an espresso machine, a bean grinder and some other kitchenware across the way between paying chores.

Sheeeeeee-yit. If we just installed a bimbo with a taste for the bizarre over there we’d have the mortgage covered before you could say, “Hel-lo, sailor.”

Where’s the beef?

Burgers and T-bones and chuck, O my!

This is what a steer looks like after the people who know its people get hungry and descend upon it, brandishing checkbooks.

Herself and I were share owners in this steer, along with a few other folks who were better acquainted with him, and after a quick out-and-back to Crusty County one-eighth of him resides in our freezer alongside a half-dozen quart bags of Pueblo chile. I foresee a synergy between the two in the very near future.*

Thinking about, acquiring, preparing and consuming food helps keep my mind off the ongoing clown show that is American presidential politics. Rick Sanctimonious is getting wiggier by the minute, practically a character in a Monty Python skit about the Spanish Inquisition. And don’t get me started on the RomneyBot 2012. Last machine I saw perform this erratically was a 1996 Ford F-150. It wound up in a ditch, and I wound up back in a Toyota.

* I actually started this post yesterday and didn’t get around to slapping it up until today. Thus the Larga Vista Ranch chile has already become acquainted with the Crusty County beef in the form of a very tasty pot of chili con carne.

Missed the VN.com TdF Round Table?

Here’s an instant replay (it’s only a model):

I tried to get my colleague Charles Pelkey to kick off today’s round table with this YouTube clip but he wasn’t having any of it. Something about a wife, two kids and a mortgage. I didn’t get it. Not the two-kids part, anyway.

John Versus the Volcano

Call me a cab! All right, you're a cab.

It’s a gray day in Bibleburg. We had some rain last night and the forecast calls for more of the same over the next week. Maybe it’ll tamp down the tree pollen a bit. Herself and I are going through boxes of Kleenex at an alarming rate. An entire rain forest soaked in snot and flushed down the loo to Pueblo.

At least we don’t have any active volcanos in the neighborhood. That Icelandic rascal is dumping hot ash over many a traveler’s itinerary, including Monty Python’s John Cleese. According to The New York Times, Cleese found himself stranded in Oslo and hired a Mercedes taxi to drive more than 900 miles to Brussels, where he hoped to get a train to London. Three drivers took turns at the wheel and the fare came to about $5,000, said one of his agents, Dean Whitbread. Rather too far for a silly walk, don’t you know. Right, off you go.

Meanwhile, expect a reduced field at Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race thanks to air-travel restrictions. Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, Cervélo’s Carlos Sastre and Volodymyr Gustov, and Caisse d’Epargne’s Alejandro Valverde, Luis Leon Sanchez and Luis Pasamontes are among the riders who apparently can’t raise the cabfare.