My Man-Crushes, episode 4

Yesterday at the Hall of Fame race, I DNF'ed, which means I "Did Not Finish". You know who didn't DNF? Jay #1.

Jay F'ed, alright. Jay really is an F'er.

Over the past few months, Jay has proven himself to be a tough sonofabitch. When he flatted at Danville and his CO2 cartridge screwed the pooch, he walked to his car to inflate the tire... when his wheel slipped out of the dropout and he had no tools on him, he walked back to his car to fix it... when his front tire flatted, he walked back to his car to change the flat.

The above story is all from the same race. The poor bastard almost doubled the winner's time, finishing dehydrated and hallucinating. If that's not tough, I don't know what is.

Jay chases back after yet another flat
When I finished the Neshaminy race, rolled back to the car, and saw a tube on the ground, I knew immediately what had happened.

"Quit" is just not in this guy's vocabulary... which is not surprising, because he mostly communicates in grunts.

Jay races singlespeed. On a Kona Unit. With a Rigid Fork.

Jay is capable of the Jew-Fro... and has proven it.

Jay has a high-quality sock collection.

Jay's taste in beer in unmatched.

Jay's taste in Jenks' mom is matched only by me.

For these, and other unbloggable reasons, Jay and I have realized that we're pretty much the same person. It's a little unnerving sometimes. So basically, this post boils down to my man-crush on myself.
We coordinate outfits before going out in public
Of course, there are some key differences between us...

One of us is man enough to shave his legs.

One of us has a bike with 3" larger wheels and 300% hotter paint.

One of us had the cojones to liberate the team's beloved mascot MacChouff from a local eatery

One of us went to grad school, and one of us co-owns a lucrative construction company.

Now here's the real story of why Jay has earned my undying man-crush. After the HPCX race in November, we were both pretty knackered. I went to my car and grabbed a bottle of Endurox. Jay rolled over and offered me a swig from a bottle of Pepsi.

"No thanks," I declined, "I've got Endurox." Soda is a good fall-back if there's no Endurox, but I was good to go.

"Well, unless your bottle has Guiness in it, you might want some of this". I could've cried, I was so happy.

...

Oh Jay. I hate your guts, because you keep beating me in races. I hate you because your pickup line is "Hi, I'm Don's friend". I hate you because you know the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere" by heart.

Observe Jay's accessories: Brown-bagged microbrew in one hand, MacChouff the elf in the other. Nice.

But mostly I hate you because no blog post could possibly capture the depth of my man-crush. Jay Number One indeed.

My Man-Crushes, episode 3

This is a post about my good friend Mandloff. It is my hope that the following discourse will simultaneously honor him and irk his girlfriend Mer. It's not that I don't like Mer, it's just that I enjoy getting on her nerves a little.


Mandloff joined Phi Kappa Psi a year after I did. We would frequently have lunch together in the student center with a group of mutual friends while he was pledging. I would make a point of threatening to haze him, and he would promise to haze me right back. Since I still have no idea how to haze, and since he'd graduated from a military boarding school, there was no way I was going to actually follow through on my threats.

During one such lunch, we noticed that a small group had set up a table in the student center to advertise their opinion about the sacrilege and evils of homosexuality. Being snide, holier-than-thou bastards, Mandloff and I responded the only way we knew how: we walked up to the table hand in hand, and satirized their homophobia until they made us leave.

Manloff and I are still in regular contact, thanks to the wonders of the interweb. The best part about our conversations is that they are both cerebral and immature. It's perfectly legitimate to make jokes about genitalia, provided that the jokes have SAT vocabulary, obscure pop culture references, and at least four hundred words.

Truly an innovator, Mandloff is the source of such great terminology as "ass-hat", "MEGAPIXELS!!!", and of course "Big Money Poker! 20 Dollar Buy-in!". I'll go so far as to say that he's the most-plagiarized Phi Psi, as his jokes and catch-phrases are blatantly stolen by the less-funny (I readily confess to this crime... and I'm a repeat offender).

Having graduated, Mandloff has decided to join the army. This act alone is enough to earn the mancrush, and here's why: Knowing the risks and the cost, he is standing up for what he believes in.

Warning: any comments that go up about the legitimacy or merits of the war in Iraq will be promptly deleted. The only thing that matters is that Mandloff believes he will be fighting for America's interests, and for that he has earned my respect.

I think we live in a generally soft society. It seems there was a threshold-crossing sometime between WWII and the Korean war, after which the idea of a military became a bad idea. That a soldier is someone to be pitied, that there is always a diplomatic answer to a martial conflict.

The stress of a soldier's life must surely have increased since the 40s. It used to be that no matter how much was at stake, all parties recognized the rules of war. Civilians are off limits, soldiers must be uniformed, the rights of a POW, etc. The Western World seems to recognize that war is inevitable, but that boundaries can be imposed; our enemies don't seem to recognize those boundaries (although they will scream bloody murder if the West responds in kind... but that's another diatribe entirely). It has become acceptable, even popular, to poo-poo someone who volunteers for the service.

Is Mandloff committing suicide by joining the Army? No, and I'm sure he'll thank you to stop treating him as such.

His preparations for his military career have impressed me. He's gone from a Maru-like sedentary lifestyle to a Dietz-like commitment to fitness (by Dietz-like, I mean that he exercises, but not at the expense of frequent visits to Rally's). He's expressed a great deal of curiosity in exercise physiology, and he retains technical information like a sponge. His political rants are no less ranty than they have been, but they've taken on a more practical hue. I think Mandloff is growing up.

He's going to be a great leader... he's led in the past, but I sincerely doubt that frat presidency will be nearly as trying as the life of a combat officer (then again, I don't think the Iraqis have anyone as obnoxious as Mark Starr on their side. If they do, we don't stand a chance).

Most of us talk the talk. We can speculate about how we'd handle ourselves in extreme circumstances. We can debate the merits of this policy or that. We're intelligent people, for the most part.

Mandloff is one of the few who walks the walk.

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

My Man-Crushes, episode 1

Let me tell you something about my angry vegan friend.

First of all, he's not actually angry. If anything, he's a bit emo, but angry? Nah. He got that name because of this picture...
it was reinforced by this picture...

As for the vegan thing... it turns out he is actually vegan. This has resulted in such hilarity as:

• being told, by a very earnest fan, "you're fast for a vegan"
• HardtailJay and Ted convincing SmilinKyle that this vegan eats bacon
• violent reactions from omnivores who read the recipes on his blog

This dude is enlightened. You can't read that many books and not be. Maybe that's why he's a vegan; All of that reading has elevated him to some higher plane - you know, spiritually - where the animals and peoples and also animal byproducts frolic together. He really does read ungodly amounts of literature, though, and it comes through in conversation.

Sometimes I feel dumb when all I can do is respond "you Kant expect me to believe that!" Then I decide it's clever, not dumb, and I move on.

Have I mentioned that this guy basically runs the Rutgers team?

Also, through the powers of clean living, daily bicycle-pedaling, and possibly devil worship, my boy has lost about 100 lbs. That's 42% of an angry vegan. Photographic evidence:

2001
2006

Respect.

You may be wondering, "who is this magical, manly man?"

I'll tell you who he isn't. He's not the wolverine.