Radio Free Dogpatch

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...

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 Am...

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...