Radio Free Dogpatch

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.

Being on lockdown is like watching a bad movie. Sure, it sucks, but if you bail early, you might miss something. Or catch something.

Why not just lean back, put your feet up, and enjoy (hating) the show? The credits will roll soon enough. And we know who's not getting a best-director Oscar for this hot mess.

Say, is it just me, or does this soda taste like bleach?

Patience, like yeast, beans, and toilet paper, is just one more thing that people are running short of as the lockdown drags on. Patrick O'Grady tapped his supply to get through eight weeks with a broken ankle, but thinks he has a little bit left over to deal with The Bug.

It's tough to take baby steps with 66-year-old feet. Especially when one of ’em doesn't work all that well. But jolly old Doc O'Grady feels it's prudent to hobble out to check society's temperature now and then, especially when cabin fever is starting to feel as deadly as any other bug.

Staying at home, social distancing — these practices aren't jailin', but they're not exactly living' large, either. Sure, your cell is a little bigger, the guards a little less present, the food better. It's just that you'd rather be on the streets. But listen to an old con — let that time do itself.

Anyone who says "three's a crowd" didn't see the antisocially undistant hordes infesting some Duke City's trailheads on Sunday, a day before New Mexico's governor went on TV to holler, "Don't make me stop this state and come back there!" As a consequence we must endure Potrick calling various kettles black.

Working from home isn't for everyone. But weirdos like Patrick O'Grady wouldn't be remotely employable if they couldn't be employed remotely. Sure, he takes a lot of really loud meetings with the voices in his head. But they never complain to HR, so it's all good.

The Plague is upon us, we're quaking under the comforter, and someone is bringing us a plastic bowl of industrial soup and some dried-up old white crackers. Say, who is that wearing Mom's apron, anyway?

Nursing a broken ankle and crazed on antihistamines, Patrick O'Grady tries to make sense of Super Tuesday a day late and a peso short, and as usual, fails utterly. Lo siento mucho.

Patrick O'Grady has a bad habit of rolling ... ankles. He gave up rolling the other stuff ages ago. Which is too bad, really, because if he'd been rolling a blunt last Friday morning he wouldn't have been rolling an ankle during a trail run. And some other poor sap would have gotten this low-tech pair of crutches, and this podcast wouldn't be two days late and more than a dollar short. Just say no, kids.

You got your AM, and over here, you also got your FM. And over there, you got your fat boys wanting to take it away from you. Longtime listener-member Patrick O'Grady deejays a brief, one-man pledge drive for NPR.

A discussion at maddogmedia.com about distraction-packed land yachts causes Patrick O'Grady to recall (and resurrect) a 2014 Bicycle Retailer and Industry News column about the auto industry's drive to make cars smarter than their drivers.

Republicans want a king. Democrats want a messiah. And Patrick O'Grady just wants to get through his 30th podcast without being struck by lightning (or Lee Trevino).

Riding trails when they're muddy, like encountering an unguided SUV drifting into the bike lane, is gonna leave a mark. Just ask Patrick O'Grady, who will tell you all about it even if you don't ask.

"Comparisons are odorous," as Dogberry declares in "Much Ado About Nothing." Small wonder, then, that a Mad Dog is stinking up the Innertubes with his comparisons of Il Douche's impeachment trial to a Christmas gone wrong, school "pep" assemblies, and the nuance- and nutrition-free nothingburgers pitched at us by Mickey D and Mickey M.

For a cyclist, fixing a flat is part of the price of admission to the game. And a garrulous potato-eater like Patrick O'Grady occasionally finds a tale in the travail. Or a podcast. ...

Patrick O'Grady still keeps a training diary, though he's not training for anything other than being Patrick O'Grady. You'd think he'd have that down by now.

Winter seems colder than usual this year. We've already seen a White Walker in Albuquerque, and he's looking for his Social Security check.

The trouble with being your own IT guy is that you're being your own IT guy when you should be being whatever the hell it is that you really are. Just ask Patrick O'Grady. Then move over.

What can society do to punish some well-heeled, ne'er-do-well swell deemed too big to fail into jail? How about a stint in the stocks? To paraphrase Marsellus Wallace from "Pulp Fiction," let's get medieval on their ass. Patrick O'Grady is already pitching.

Patrick O'Grady muses on a few close calls en route to turning 65, including one right before The Big Day.

Patrick O'Grady nearly bought a Honda Element. Twice. The second time he had the book thrown at him. The Kelley Blue Book, that is.

In this special Shut-Ins Edition of Radio Free Dogpatch, a snowbound Patrick O'Grady revisits a February 2004 escape to McDowell Mountain Regional Park in sunny Arizona.

Where's the bike business headed? Anyone seen magnetic north lately? Maybe it's going south like everything else. Patrick O'Grady swaps his GPS for a Magic 8-Ball, but it keeps telling him "Reply hazy, try again."

Wilbur Ross, the Man in the $600 Embroidered Slippers, doesn't understand why furloughed federal workers visit food banks instead of the other sort. Maybe it's because they're pretty certain they won't see him there anytime soon.

Recorded using a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder and Shure SM58 mic. Edited on a 2014 MacBook Pro using Apple's Garageband. "Ahoy, polloi," lifted from "Caddyshack" using Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack. The background music, "Stay Away," comes from www.zapsplat.com. Dog eating from peridactyloptrix via www.freesound.org.

Remember, Wilbur, the Big Dog always eats last.

The pestilence of the Benighted States, Wally O'Steele, a.k.a. Art O. DeDeal, wants a Big, Beautiful Wall at the nation's southern borders to keep brown people from crossing the border to work anywhere other than at his hotels or golf courses. Unable to pry loose funding for same, he has walled off the feddle gummint from its own citizens, idling more than a few of them in the process and forcing others to work without pay. It's a hard reign, and the water — if that's what it is — just keeps rising.

We're off on another lap around the sun, but we're flying blind — the big yellow ball is nowhere to be seen, though we seem to have plenty of ice and snow for anyone who likes that sort of thing.

Our winter weather is a mouse fart compared to the shit monsoon swamping the nation's capital, though, and with the Chinese more interested in exploring the moon than the wowie-zowies of Apple's latest and greatest black monolith, Patrick O'Grady wonders how much longer it'll be before we're all clubbing each other around the water hole again. Ook ook ook.

• Show notes: Recorded on a 2012 MacBook Air using an Audio-Technica AT2035 mic, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack. Edited on a 2014 MacBook Pro using Apple's GarageBand, with voiceovers run through an Audio-Technica 2100-USB mic and a Behringer Xenyx 1204USB mixer. Doc Strangelove and his backup band, Monkey and the Monolith, courtesy Stan Kubrick, who's dead and won't ever know. Car wheels spinning on the ice from Freesound.org. Blizzard and snow shoveling recorded with a Sony ICD-UX533.

With the 2018 cyclocross nats going on in Louisville and some very un-’crosslike weather going on in Albuquerque, Patrick O'Grady is reminded of one dusty pre-season in 2002 when it seemed that both sides of the street were sunny, and a little too much so.

Recorded using a Shure SM-58 mic, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack and a 2009 iMac. Background music is "Newborn," a jingle lifted from Apple's iMovie, which also supplied the "Medal Ceremony" opener.

“Science finds, industry applies, man conforms.” That was the subtitle to the guidebook for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and 85 years later it seems to hold up.  It brings to mind change, my reflexive resistance to same, and a 2013 "Mad Dog Unleashed" column from Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone, Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack, and the old 2009 iMac. Cap'n Whitebeard used an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic. I edited the audio using Apple's GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The  background music is "Into the Sunset" from Audio Hero via ZapSplat.com, and the sounds of the sea come from Freesound.org. 

It's probably not what Anheuser-Busch had in mind with the tagline, "This Bud's for you." But nevertheless, craft breweries — and a few bigger outfits, too — are finding creative ways of working weed into their beverages, which could bring a whole new meaning to the term "skunky beer."

These kids today. Before long nobody under 65 will know how to roll a joint.

Recorded using an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic and Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack. Edited using Apple's GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The opener is a few bars from "Don't Bogart That Joint," by the Fraternity of Man, played by Your Humble Narrator on a Tony Dixon DX006 soprano tin whistle and an Art & Lutherie Roadhouse acoustic guitar.

Sound effects from Freesound.org. Background music is "Departure Lounge" by Keshco, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) via the Free Music Archive.

Marc Sani's "Through the Grapevine" column about legislation to permit mountain bikes in wilderness, and the Republicans who support it, squeezed the grapes of many a reader of the trade magazine Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. 

Patrick O'Grady never could resist kicking someone who's down, especially if someone else did the hard work of actually putting them down, so he jumps in with his latest edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.

Recorded using an Audio-Technica AT2100-USB microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Edited in Apple's GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. Background music is "Looking Back Over the Hill" by David-Gwyn Jones, from ZapSplat.com. Other sounds from Freesound.org and Patrick O'Grady | Mad Dog Media.

Remember how it feels to lose? Keep that in mind when you win. A mediation on the midterms.

Recorded using an Audio-Technica AT2100-USB microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Edited in Apple's GarageBand.

The National Emblem March, composed in 1902 by Edwin Eugene Bagley, was performed by the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band.

"Tiny Town" from ZapSplat.com.

"You lose it, buddy," lifted from the fabulous "Caddyshack."

No neighbors were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Patrick O'Grady chats with his old friend and colleague Hal Walter about the running career of Hal's son, Harrison.

Patrick's father was a ball-sports kind of guy, and the two never connected on that level. But Harrison has grown up sharing his father's love of running, and he just completed his first season with the high-school cross-country team.

This might be unremarkable if Harrison were not autistic. But he is, and it adds what gymnasts, divers and equestrians call "a degree of difficulty" to the basic activity.

After some ups and downs during the regular season Harrison failed to qualify as a varsity athlete for the 2018 Colorado cross-country championships. But it turned out that he was eligible to run states in an event for special-needs kids.

He wanted to run, but his dad had some concerns, and Hal shares the story with us in this episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

Background music is "The Matador's Entry" from ZapSplat.

Audio clip from the Colorado state championship meet supplied by Hal Walter.

Interview recorded using FaceTime with a Shure SM58 microphone, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface, and Ecamm's Call Recorder for FaceTime, which apparently will not survive Apple's transition to Mojave. Edited in Apple's GarageBand.

After reading a New Yorker essay about aging, complacency and a risk-management program gone all pear-shaped, Patrick O'Grady recalls a few painful damage-control miscues of his own, and argues that an overabundance of caution can be as perilous as throwing it to the wind.

Recorded with an Audio-Technica ATR2100 USB microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Edited in Apple's GarageBand. Sound effects from Freesound. Blues loop from fredsonic at Freesound.

Read the essay by Daniel J. Levitin at The New Yorker.

Patrick O'Grady used to hate running, and some days he still does. But it helps keep his inner fat bastard too winded to scream for seconds from the dessert cart.

Mister Boo, God's gift to veterinary medicine, is trying on canine cognitive dysfunction on for size in his Golden Years. But he rediscovers his inner puppy from time to time.

George Carlin clip lifted from "40 Years of Comedy."

Flute from kerri at freesound.org via a Creative Commons license.

All the other bad noise comes from Patrick O'Grady | Mad Dog Media.

Mister Boo goes under the knife, but it's the Mad Dog who feels stuck.

Patrick O'Grady and his old friend Hal Walter team up for an impromptu Two Dudes Mystery Theatre podcast, discussing a pair of late poets — Jim Harrison and Merle Haggard — as well as journalism, cooking and a couple of pet projects. For more information on the topics discussed, see www.maddogmedia.com.

Our Samsung top-loading washer has just enjoyed its seventh service call in slightly more than a year of light use.

Bibleburg is getting its own bush-league pro soccer franchise, and all it asks is a million-dollar public kiss on its private lips.

It's OK to sleep on the sidewalk in the Land of the Free, as long as you're planning to buy something. And in recent years, that "something" is likely to be for yourself. But is a Scrooge-like change a-coming? Depends upon whom you ask.

The U.S. Air Force Academy's neighbors complain about (wait for it) the sound of aircraft.