My Man-Crushes, episode 2

'If this was Ithaca, it'd be snowing already!'
Here's the thing about SpikyHairWill. I hate him. And yet I also have a man-crush on him. I find myself compelled to write about him, even though I've never wanted to slash my first man-crush's tires as much as I've wanted to slash Will's.

He's a good kid. I met him at a Biomedical Engineering department recruitment weekend. He saw the USACycling sticker on my laptop and asked if I was at the Rutgers race the previous weekend. He even let me babble about it for a while before letting me know that he's an A racer. I shut up and listened after that.

I spend way too much time with Will. Our other BME roommate, Aaron, is also great, and we spend a lot of time together, but Will and I have ridden together, sat through seminar together, and attended Karaoke together enough that if he was less cool, I'd probably despise him.

How cool is Will? He is an amateur freestyle rapper... especially while riding. I don't even know how many times we've been out in the middle of nowhere and he's started rhyming nonsensically. It's not even limited to rap. A Capella, 20mph renditions of "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, "Come on Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners, and so on, quickly evolve into improvised odes to my mother (sorry, Mom, it's nothing personal) or melodic trashtalking.
The Accidental Century was full of BikeCapella
You may be wondering, where does the name SpikyHairWill come from? The legend of Willis tells of his Epic solo bike ride from his home in Pennsyltucky to the Mystical Oil Refineries of Nova Scotia, where he dipped his head in a vat of crude... his body from the forehead down became his proverbial Achilles heel, but his hair became an impenetrable helmet of Spiky Impenetrability.

The legend, my friends, is false. In truth, Will simply uses enough hair gel to drown a full-grown horse. The SpikyHair prefix originated on a bus-ride back from Karaoke night. I was sober enough to remember this story, but only just... Some obnoxious undergrad, drunk out of her mind, was running up and down the aisle, encouraging people to sing. She called out to Will, imploring him to contribute to the cacophony, "Hey! You! With the spiky hair! And the Devil eyes! Sing Journey!" Given the FatMarc/Rutgers naming convention, it was easy to properly rename him.

Will is creative. Like an imaginative 6 year old with a bucket of legos, or perhaps like a schizophrenic with crayons, he uses what he has around him to make life more interesting. For example, he and Aaron created Lounge Volleyball, much to the dismay of our downstairs neighbors, using only a volleyball and a coffee table. He turned the campus map in our hallway into a canvas for explicit, inappropriate illustrations. When our androgenous 5th roommate Pat moved into the bathroom, Will was kind enough to teach him/her Biosignals Processing.
Will and Pat share a love for Learning and Bathrooms
He's also creative enough to wear ankle weights while riding in the offseason. In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, and in the face of mysterious, inexplicable knee pain (which started soon after the weights became part of training and ended soon after he retired them for the season), Will is truly an innovator in the field of bicycle practice.

Then again, maybe I should shut up. Maybe knee pain is a small price to pay for Will's unbridled power. Will is just plain stronger than technology. I've already written about the Battle of Will vs Trainer, wherein Will overcame the locking mechanism mid-sprint and melted the plastic housing.
Photographic Evidence that Will's sprint can melt plastic

More recently, Will was doing an outdoor sprint workout. For the rest of the story, please examine the following picture.
Will's Rear Hub
Will 2, technology 0

So the long and short of it is this: SpikyHairWill has cojones. Chutzpah. l'Esprit de la Guerre. Again, I could describe his behavior, but I'll let him do all the talking, if indirectly. From his latest race report:

"Awesome race, feeling great. Last lap, good position, crash in front of me. Come to complete stop. Race over. 5 laps for nothing.

So tired of cycling spitting in my face. Tomorrow I am going to go berserk and [bleep] demolish all the [bleep] brats with their [bleep] zipps and their [bleep] attitudes. I felt like [bleep] vomiting as I rode through the line today and all the people gave me the dropped-rider pity applause.

[bleep] the ACCC. [bleep] Zipp wheels. [bleep] UVM. [bleep] Army. [bleep] Navy."

The next day, Will went a little crazy on the front, putting the hurt on 2 entire conferences...
'No" says Will to the attacks
So, if Will is such a good guy, why do I hate him? Mostly because he has such an affinity for confetti-traps
Goddamnit, Will