Suit Up!

I'm still not ready for weddings. I'd say that I've only been to three weddings since becoming an adult - the Nutsy-Clarissa wedding, the Diak-Kristen wedding, and now the Sparks-DU wedding... however, that would be a lie, because I don't really think of myself as an adult yet.

Perhaps the best barometer for all of this is my history with wedding gifts...

There was Nutsy's wedding, my sophomore year, when I gave Rob $20 to be able to add my name to the gift he'd remembered to buy. I don't know what the gift was. I only remember being terribly uncomfortable during the ceremony, then having a bunch of Phi Psis and Alpha Phis taking pity on Hammad and me, the 20 year olds who got carded at the reception, by giving us way-too-many drinks.

Then there was the Diak wedding. This was in December 2006, so it was more recent. Was I more prepared? Not really. There were about 8 of us running around Target at 8pm the night before the wedding, scrambling like highly-motivated, headless chickens. With a dozen items left on the registry, eight of us, and a not-yet-restocked Target, it was quite an adventure. I was terribly uncomfortable during the ceremony, but the reception was a big Phi Psi reunion and I had a blast.
Don and GI Mark at Diak's reception
Saturday was the Diaks' 6mo anniversary
This past Saturday, I went to Sparks' (now the Archers') wedding as my friend Liz's plus-one. Once again, we waited until 24 hours to go (i wanna be sedated) to buy a gift. Once again, I was terribly uncomfortable during the ceremony... has anyone else noticed that the infamous Corinthians 13:4-8 ("Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful...") sounds like a Pat Benatar song? Love is a battlefield!

My biggest concern, though, was which tie to wear.
You'll be glad to know that I went with the boring tie. I'm getting old.

These are my sisters. Little Sister (aka Shoshi) is on the left. Big Sister (aka Peggy) is on the right.
Can't you see the family resemblance?
Liz and I have been close friends since 2002. We shared an apartment with Meyer and Ed (the latter, by the way, is married and in Arizona now) our senior year. There are exactly two pictures of the two of us. The first was taken in 2004. The second was taken on Saturday.

So, no more weddings for a while, thankyouvery much. However, I may have to Suit Up! in the near future, if only because I look damn good in formalwear.

Doppleganger

I am blogging from a Panera. I came here to get some work done, but the blogosphere is a cruel mistress, and this story must be relayed to you.

The cashier is an Asian girl whose nametag reads Ninja. "That's my nickname too!" said I.

"Okay, my fellow Ninja, what name should I put on your order?"

"Don"

"No way. Let me see your ID." It's true, my name is Don.

"No way! I'm Ninja Dawn!!!"

Secret Identity: REVEALED!

On a few occasions, I've referred to a friend of mine as "His Majesty, King of the Hermes", or some variation thereof. Why not call him by a play on his real name, like I do with SpikyHairWill, the Jenksster, and others? Because he asked.


For whatever reason, His Royal Yellow-and-Green Highness has expressed his interest in remaining anonymous. Apparently he considers himself "professional" and "responsible" and "respectable"...

Poppycock and balderdash! I'm hereby outing you, My Liege (-Bastogne-Liege).

For the true identity of King Hermes, click here!!!

New Hobby

For reasons that I cannot explain, I have developed a new habit. I wish I could not have this habit, but it has pretty well ingrained itself in my psyche. Stupid goddamn psyche.

When I encounter a girl, I picture her without any hair. Her head is shaved. She is completely hairless from the neck up. I can't stop. Please make it stop.

Look. Zip. Shoot.

I'm in Ohio for a week, so I decided to do a training race on the West side of town. I'd done the same race series in May of 2005, back when I was racing for Case... and this is using a loose interpretation of the word "racing". Actually, during the one race of the series that I managed to finish, I got 5th... of 10... and 3 of the other 5 had dropped out.

It was about 95 degrees when we rolled out (that's 35 Celcius, Jenksy), and there were about 30 starters (that's 30 in metric). The race was 20 laps of a 2 mile course, consisting entirely of pancake-flat roads - this being Cleveland, the roads were choppy, potholed, and gravelly... seriously, my right hand is still numb, 24 hours later.

So, the whole field was on Zipp wheels. Half of them were too-rich-for-their-own-good racers with bling-bling bikes, and the other half (including me!) got to use Zipp demo wheels. I'll tell you what, they accelerate like all get-out, but I am not cool with cornering on tires that I've never used before.

After a mile, I felt the need to stretch my legs, so I attacked and stayed away for a while. A few laps of surfing the front of the field went by, and I watched prime after prime go by, waiting for the right conditions to emerge.

And emerge they did! With 24 miles to go, a small group got off the front during the sprint for another minor prime (this time for a Zipp hat). I bridged up, shouted "we have a gap, work it!", and then took as hard a pull as I could. Within about 3 minutes of 20sec pulls, everyone had been dropped except myself and a guy from SnakeBite... his team had about 6 guys in the race, so I took advantage of their teamwork and enjoyed the blocking.

We swapped pulls and primes for the rest of the race... I wanted cash, and he wanted little Zipp trinkets, so it worked out well. I ran out of water with 5 laps to go, which was fun.

Not wanting to get caught, we kept digging deep. I asked the police officer marshalling a turn to clock our gap. The next time we came by, he shouted "20 or 30 seconds!" Oh, shit. Fortunately, this was actually our gap to the P/1/2/3 field, who were about to lap us. In the end, we took about 3 or so minutes out of the field.

I stopped pulling with about 600m to go, then jumped at 200m. I looked back, and seeing that I had a few lengths of room, I then zipped the jersey and faked a jump-shot... this will probably only make sense if you're a Rutgers racer.

DK demonstrates
Some notes from the race:

• It is NOT COOL to hitch a ride from the passing P/1/2/3 field and move from the 4/5 field to the 4/5 break. Thank you, random unattached d-bag, for at least owning up to it and dropping back to the field.
• The Zipp tires on the Zipp wheels were designed with unidirectional speed in mind. They might not be particularly grippy in the corners, but damned if the dimpled rubber didn't save me 0.07 Watts.
• Zipp gave the winners some nice schwag. That's all I've got to say.
• Big thanks to SpikyHairWill, whose "let's take turns leading each other out" sprint workouts prepared me for the 2-up sprint very nicely.
• Racing is not the same without teammates. I'm not talking about in-race tactics, it's the pre- and post-race comraderie that was lacking yesterday. Whether we're commisserating about frustrating anecdotes or celebrating exciting results, having teammates is a vital part of being a racer.
  

So, I won some stuff, and I got some cash, but mostly I FINALLY WON AN F'IN BIKE RACE!!!

Motor Control Summer School

The conference was intense. There was just sooo much stuff to learn, and on top of that the faculty amused themselves by debating philosophical points while the students struggled to grasp the talking points. For example: "Is Principal Component Analysis really the best way of estabilishing the dimensionality of the Uncontrolled Manifold, or does its assumption of linearity limit the interpretation of experimental data?" Yeesh.

So, rather than talk about that sort of jibba-jabba, I'll give you a simple experiment to perform on yourself.

Say "AbCd", where the capital letters are emphasized. Now say "AbCdAbCdAbCd"... you can say it pretty fast, right?

Now say "AbaBabAbaBab". There are only two letters to repeat, but it's so much harder to say them quickly, isn't it?

The difference is that AbCd is repeated exactly every cycle, but the emphases on A and B are constantly being remapped. This has implications on the blah-dee-blah-dee-blah, but don't even worry about that.

On Sunday I played soccer for a couple of hours. I was one of two Americans, the rest were Brazilian, Argentinian, French, Dutch, and Russian. On Monday I couldn't walk. Fun, though!

Uneventful Drive and Birthday Workout

Uneventful Drive

Normally, an uneventful drive would not be worth writing about. However, en route to the same location a year ago, my car started shimmying so violently when braking that it became hard to control. My advisor was taking the train into town, and I had to pick him up, so a scramble ensued. I rented a car at an airport 30 miles away (rather, my labmate did, as I am still but a wee lad), took my car to a local-yokel mechanic, then hustled to pick up my advisor at the train station. Everything worked out okay, but man oh man was I freaked out.

This year... completely uneventful. Phew.

Birthday Workout

So today is my birthday. Huzzah! Luckily, this conference includes a 6 hour break between the first and second sessions, which is perfect for meals and workouts. I knew from last year that the roads here are too narrow and busy for running, let alone riding, so there would be no birthday ride.

Still, I wanted to do something special for myself during today's break. So here's what I did:

• 240 1-legged squats (per leg)
• 240 crunches
• 240 back extensions
• 240 sec of wall-sits
• 240 pushups

I did everything in multiples of 12. To be perfectly honest, the pushups were not so great. Even done 12 at a time, my arms were shot after 100. After 200, not even cheating worked. The last 40 were just about the ugliest "pushups" I've ever done, but by god I did 'em!

Tomorrow I'll run for 24 minutes. Maybe if I was still a triathlete I'd run 24k, but that's just silly. Next year, I'd like to ride 250k. Who's in?

You know what? I think that tonight, I'll drink 2.4 beers. If you know me, you know that's all I need.

Wipe off the dust...

It's back! And updated for accuracy. Enjoy:

Poor little Donnie, and poor little Will
Left their apartment to ride up a hill.
The Spiky One led, clearly out of his mind,
The Ninja kid sneakily hiding behind.

Towards Watchung our two brave bicyclists did leave,
In weather a camel would nary believe.
How epic! How moving! But I should rebuke,
This ride didn't cause either cyclist to puke.

They struggled up River, then up Mountain Ave
Knowing their goal was what they would soon have,
The chance to ascend that deplorable run,
Known to the people as the road of Washington.

First up, and then down, nine times over again,
'Tween pickup trucks shouting "in spandex? not men!"
Up switchbacks and kickups and false-flats galore
'Till neither could stand to ascend any more.

Now back towards New Brunswick these two did attack
The wind now an aide, pushing them from the back.
They checked their cyclometers, quite pleased to discover
The high speeds well known to any tail-wind lover.

First 20, then 40, then 60 did they see,
(this is a literary device known as 'hyperbole'.
Ask angry-faced Mark, he'll surely attest,
for he's an English dude, and one of the best!)

Upon contemplation, they knew they had shown
Something every roadie ever has always just known
A truth that's been known since ancient rides past,
It can't be the tailwind, you're just fit and fast!

Birthday Postponed

For the second year in a row, my birthday will coincide with a conference. Last year, my labmates surprised me in Florida with a cake in our suite...
...a chocolate cake

This year I'll be at the Motor Control Summer School in PA, and I won't be back in NJ until July.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm looking for attendance.

My new birthday will be Thursday, July 5. Harvest Moon. Dinner at 8, Karaoke at 10. It is on. You will participate.

Neshaminy

The trash-talk began early. When I peer-pressured HardtailJay (Jay #1? JayNasty?) into updating his blog for the first time in a month, he responded with this little gem, which included the phrase "Sunday is Neshaminy. Gotta beat Don."

At French Creek, Jay beat me by about 90 seconds. At Granogue, he beat me by a heart-breaking 14 seconds.

Now, Jay and I are good friends, don't get me wrong. It's just understood that in our circle of friends, it's perfectly acceptable to be competitive to a fault, so long as the rivalry stays on the road or the trail. And in the blogosphere.

So, we started pretty well, entering the singletrack in 7th and 8th, respectively. And then somebody (who shall remain nameless, although you can guess who it is, can't you?) bobbled at the base of the first little climb, at which point I scrambled by on foot to maintain my position.

I never saw Jay again. Near the beginning of the third lap, I heard the screeching sounds of ready-to-be-replaced brakepads... was Jay coming back? My pace lifted, and I began mentally preparing for a sprint finish. However, he never caught me, and I outpaced Jay on a MTB for the first time ever.

So yesterday was the best I've ever ridden a mountain bike. I was smooth on every climb (except one, but I was tired, shut up!), I dove through the turns, I even rode the descents like someone who isn't terrified of anything that isn't paved. There is nothing about how I raced yesterday that I regret, which is a first for me.

This is why it was so disappointing to me that Jay cheapened my victory over him. Selfish prick! Knowing that he was doomed to lose to me for the first time in the history of Don-vs-Jay MTBing, Jay made the conscious decision to get a flat tire in the middle of the woods. Jerk!

Here are some photos. I hate you, Jay.

Poor Chaz had his 3rd flat in 2 races
It's not unusual for me to take on a heavenly glow
Jay makes up ground after his 1st-lap flat
(l to r) Jay, Ricardo, Don, Don's 'nice ass'