Letter to a Middle-Aged Cyclist - Buy New Wheels NOW!

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog. And check this out: if you launch the video and then close your eyes, it magically becomes a podcast! Naturally, the traditional text-O-rama blog format follows below.

Introduction

I’m not much of a consumer, but recently a friend bullied me into buying new wheels for my road bike. Based on the outcome, and with all the zeal of a convert, I exhorted another friend, who complained about broken spokes, to buy these wheels as well. Seeing an opportunity to expand my beneficence, I hereby entreat all middle-aged road cyclists to buy new wheels too. Here are my top five reasons, followed by a handy Q&A.

Reason #1 – You’re not getting any younger

Okay, right off the bat you can find some pretty badass looking wheels nowadays. Case in point, these Dura-Ace C40s I just picked up. Have a gander at these bad boys.

Now, if you were 70 years old, would I be recommending these to you? Of course not. You’d be a geezer, unlikely to get much use out of them. When my dad was like 70, and had suffered some shoulder injury he thought to be permanent, he decided he needed a recumbent, because it was closer to the ground. “If I crash on a regular bicycle and land on my shoulder, it is done,” he explained sternly. Alas, he was too old a dog to master the recumbent bicycle, so then he bought a recumbent tricycle. Now he no longer needed to balance, but the supine riding position, he complained, gave him terrible neck pain. Well hell, I could have predicted that!

The awkwardness of the recumbent is not just a physical problem. There’s also the aesthetic consideration. Nobody should ride recumbents, any more than any tortoise should be flipped over on its back and laughed at. Fortunately, after giving up on the trike, my dad decided his shoulder was okay after all and bought a sensible Fuji hybrid/commuter bike. Not bad, except he never rode it either; apparently after his hip replacement he couldn’t swing his leg over the bike. So he asked me what I thought about him trading it in for a women’s model, with no top tube.

My instant reaction was, “What, are you crazy? What’s next, you gonna start drinking rosé? Dude, it’s time to man up, do some damn physical therapy, and ride the bike you got!” But if course there was no point in saying this. By the time a guy is asking you if it’s okay to ride a women’s bike, it’s too late to help him. “Sounds like a great plan,” I told him, “and I’m sure Performance would gladly swap your bike for a women’s model at no charge. After all, you’ve never ridden it.” This was a gamble, of course; would he take my advice, and if so, whose demise was approaching faster—his or Performance’s? (In the end it was a dead heat.)

I hope I’ve made it clear we need to put off the geezer years for as long as possible and hang on to youthful stuff with all our might. In this battle, aesthetics are important. If you’re over 50, you’re heading toward the years when you wouldn’t necessarily carry off those badass new wheels very well. Similarly, there’s something sad about a 65-year-old in a distressed-looking leather jacket and that’s where we’re headed. At some point that jacket would need to be traded in on a cardigan sweater because who the hell are we kidding? As Anthony Bourdain once said, “There’s nothing cool about ‘used to be cool.’”

[Above: my brother Max and I when we were younger and cooler (even if we weren’t, strictly speaking, cool). Can I still wear that jacket? Yes, I think … but not forever.]

Don’t even get me started on all the super-cool sports cars you see in the Bay Area—the Porsches, the McLarens, the Audi R8s, even your occasional Lambo—that inevitably have some 60-plus douche behind the wheel (driving responsibly, of course). Seeing this grotesque pairing of speed-obsessed engineering and delusional, over-moneyed, existential Viagra, I fantasize about the guy’s irresponsible 18-year-old grandson stealing the car and taking it out for a joy ride, maybe even leading the cops in a stupidity-and-adrenaline-fueled high-speed pursuit.

At least bikes provide a healthy outlet for midlife-crisis ya-yas. So we should all be using high-end, kickass gear while we still can. If we can still put the hurt on younger riders, and we can still make our racing bikes go jolly fast, we’re not too old to deserve really awesome machines. Yet. So you need to snap up and enjoy these wheels while you still have the mettle, the minerals, the sound & the fury to put them to good use. Seize the day!

Reason #2 – The price is right

I hear anecdotally that everything is cheaper now because of the COVID-19 shelter-in-place and the low price of oil. New cars, as described here, are still being shipped over here and there’s no place to put them because the dealers aren’t making a dent in their current inventory. It’s kind of a consumer’s market in general, apparently.

So when I broke my third spoke in under 500 miles on my current rear wheel, and complained to my friend Pete, he immediately urged me to buy new ones. He even sent me a link to where the wheels he recommended were on sale for $350 off. Within a few minutes I found them on closeout at another place for $600 off. DAAAAAAMN!

There’s also the price of not buying those wheels. Look, your gear is going to wear out at some point. Why wait until then, when the economy may well be booming again, and you’ll have to pay what the market will bear? And why run the risk of finding out the hard way that your hubs and/or rims are approaching wear-related catastrophic structural failure, like my crankarm back in 2011?

With my new wheels the cost analysis included the crap I’d have had to put up with from Pete if I’d stuck to my penny-pinching ways. He wrote, and I quote, “Do it do it do it do it. Don’t be scared.” I hemmed and hawed and he pointed out, “It’s not like you’re gonna go on some expensive vacation any time soon.” I acknowledged this point and he replied: “See, you’re practically making money on the deal!”

Not a bad argument, but the “don’t be scared” was even more powerful. Did you catch that? How he was, albeit subtly, impugning my confidence? Like I’m too scared to throw money around? I went silent for a bit and he texted me, “I assume your silence means you bought them!” He basically rim-shamed me into the purchase, and I hope I’m doing the same with you. If not, read on because I’m not done yet.

Reason #3 – Aero wheels actually will make you go faster

By “modern” I mean the truly aerodynamic ones. No, not like those super deep-dish time trial wheels, which is frankly overkill, but something a bit more aggressive than what you might have on your bike. In my case, I had been rocking the HED Ardennes, which claim to be aerodynamic but aren’t very deep (and frankly aren’t very durable—long, dull story). I’m talking something at least 35mm deep, from the edge of the rim where the tire sidewall begins to where the spokes go in. And the wheels need to have a relative paucity of spokes—not a mere 16 front and rear, like the early Shimano wheels I swore off of, but not your old-school 28- or 32-spoke build either. And bladed spokes, needless to say. Why on earth did my replacement HED wheel, which I just bought late last year to replace the defective one I bought in 2014, have non-bladed spokes? What, did they forget? What’s next, toothpaste without fluoride? Leaded gasoline? CRT televisions? Dial-up Internet?

Now, the bicycle industry has a long history of total BS when it comes to aerodynamics. I give you the aero water bottle, which led to famous victories by nobody ever.

They’re just hideous. I doubt anybody would use them even if they did confer a real advantage. Aesthetics, remember?

And you think the placement of these shifters, and the internal cabling, led to any actual benefit?

To some degree the bicycle industry pretended that making something needlessly ugly would automatically lead to aerodynamic improvement:

So I’ve been skeptical about aero wheels too (other than, obviously, disk wheels, tri-spokes, etc.). When I was pondering my last new wheel purchase in 2014, I incredulously emailed my teammate Sean (a legit bike maven), “It’s crazy ... the more expensive Dura-Ace wheels are heavier than the C24s … could that be right? Is the idea that the aerodynamics are so much better, it’s worth it? The order of the universe seems out of whack all of a sudden.” Sean replied, “Yes, that is correct. I too have trouble accepting the idea that heavier wheels can be faster, but apparently the aerodynamics more than make up for the weight gain, unless you are doing major climbing.”

So is he right? In a word, yes. There really is a big difference with these Dura-Ace C40s (35mm deep in the rim-brake version). It’s not subtle. Consider this: there’s a little downhill on Wildcat Canyon Road, where I try to get as much speed as I can to carry me up the next rise. I’m accustomed to hitting a little over 30 mph on that if I pedal fairly hard. With these wheels, putting out about the same perceived effort, I hit 37 mph! Digging extra deep yesterday, I reached almost 40. Going down South Park Drive, without pedaling, I can feel the bike picking up speed like it never has before, as though gravity had gotten stronger. (In a sense its effect is stronger, as it’s impeded less by wind drag.) Descending with these wheels is the difference between paddling your little canoe out on the lake vs. feeling a giant wave pick up your surf kayak and hurl it toward the beach.

Now, I know just what you’re thinking: your decisions these days are data-driven. You don’t want this mealy-mouthed, feel-good subjective nonsense clouding your AI-like judgment. So here are the cold, hard facts about my first two rides with these wheels.

My first ride was one of my favorite loops, 19.3 miles with about 2,500 feet of climbing. My previous best time of the year was 1:19:02, an average speed of 14.7 mph. On this route with the new wheels (their maiden voyage), I clocked a 1:16:26, averaging 15.5 mph. Pretty staggering improvement, eh?

Now, there’s a such thing as “new bike syndrome” where you automatically go faster because a) you’re excited about the new bike, and b) you’re frightened into riding harder by the looming specter of buyer’s remorse. Does new bike syndrome extend to wheels? Anecdotally I wouldn’t say so, and anyway we can account for that effect, to some extent, by looking at average heart rate across the two rides.

For the ride that produced my former best time, my average heart rate was 131 bpm, and I was in Zone 3 (>144 bpm) for 0:17:49. On the new wheels, my record-breaking ride was at an average HR of 132, with only 0:15:55 in zone 3 (and no time in or above zone 4 for either ride). In other words, the level of effort was comparable, one ride to the next. So, yeah—it was the fricking wheels! They actually made me faster!

Of course I can’t base this conclusion on a single ride. But the next ride corroborated this; it’s a bit shorter at 16.7 miles, with just over 2,000 feet of climbing, and I beat my 2020 PR of 1:07:43 handily, completing the ride in just 1:04:45 (15.5 mph vs. 14.8). This year I’ve done one or the other of these loops 17 times on the old wheels, and never averaged above 15 mph. With the new wheels, I’ve broken the coveted 15 mph average all three times on the longer loop plus the one time on the shorter loop. Four for four!

Moreover, factoring in longer rides (with more flat sections), my highest average speed of the year on the old wheels was 16.3 mph (on a 33-mile ride with 2,900 feet of climbing). On the new wheels yesterday, I averaged 17.6 mph (on a 39.4-mile ride with 3,300 feet of climbing). That’s an 8% improvement … stunning.

Reason #4 – New wheels will actually make you ride harder

Okay, I’ll confess that comparing my average heart rate across rides is somewhat specious, given the slippery nature of the term “average.” After all, the average person has one breast and one testicle. Coasting on downhills will lower the average heart rate figure inconsistently, etc. Meanwhile, by looking closely at some of my climbs, it’s clear I’ve been going harder lately. On the old wheels I recently clocked a non-stellar 8:13 up Pinehurst Road, whereas with the new wheels yesterday I managed a much better 7:39. My average heart rate over the slower ascent was a mere 140 bpm. Yesterday, my average for this climb was 148 bpm. Across the whole ride, I’d averaged 122 bpm for the first ride, and 133 yesterday.

So does this deconstruct my whole argument, suggesting that greater effort, not greater efficiency, explains the improvement in speed? First of all, no—the difference is too great, and too consistent, and I do have the pair of rides with very similar heart rate yet dissimilar speed & time. Second, it kind of doesn’t really matter if I could have gone as fast, or as hard, on the old wheels. The fact is, I didn’t. I’m going faster and harder now, clearly. When better equipment puts better performance within our reach, we’re much more likely to stretch ourselves.

There’s also the matter of momentum. The parts of my rides that aren’t big climbs or descents are still lumpy, and with the new wheels I find myself carrying more speed from a downhill into the next uphill, such that if I go a bit harder I can stay in the big chainring for longer stretches (in my case, from Summit Reservoir all the way to Inspiration Point), which inspires and enthuses me. It’s a virtuous cycle.

[Google Maps says it takes 23 minutes to ride the above route. With my old wheels I did as well as 12:58. My new PR with the aero wheels is 11:35.]

Reason #5 – COVID-19

Let’s face it, if we’re smart during this pandemic we’ll all be riding alone for the foreseeable future, with nobody to draft, so we need to be as aerodynamic as possible or we’ll a) get too frustrated to continue, meaning we’ll give up cycling, launching a downward slide into sloth and depression, or b) we’ll be unable to resist drafting others, meaning we’re one snot rocket away from bringing the coronavirus home and killing our entire family.

Meanwhile, returning to the fiscal discussion I started earlier, during shelter-in-place it’s harder to spend money. My credit card bill hasn’t been this low in years, and for the first time in forever all the transactions fit on one page. Why not splurge a little? Besides, there’s a good chance we’ll all be dead soon, along with our would-be heirs, so what’s the point in saving? It’s time to buy! Buy buy buy!

Questions and answers

Q. Why not just get a whole new bike, since there have been so many improvements in technology, such as disc brakes?

A. How can you even contemplate such a major purchase when the global economy is melting the fuck down?! I can’t believe you’re thinking so irresponsibly. Besides, better brakes will not make you go faster. Aren’t we slowing down enough as we head into middle age? Meanwhile, it might be pretty hard finding a new bike anyway ... the pandemic has caused a major bike shortage, as described here.

Q. Why wouldn’t I upgrade my mountain bike wheels instead? Maybe with some sweet carbon rims?

A. With the vast hordes of hikers I’m seeing in the regional parks, I don’t consider mountain biking safe whatsoever right now, or even fun. How are you supposed to socially distance on single track? I can’t imagine spending money on a bike I might not get to even ride in the foreseeable future.

Q. What about crosswinds?

A. Whaddya mean, crosswinds? What the hell are you even talking about? Listen to this guy … crosswinds.

Q. In your previous post about selecting bike wheels you touted the benefits of wider rims and claimed that “the HEDs really do ride better” and “the ride is really plush.” Now you’re pushing Dura-Ace wheels with a narrower rim profile. What gives?

A. You know what else is really plush? Your bed. Or we could ride around on beach cruisers. Look, we’re heading toward old age, infirmity, and death … this isn’t the time to make ourselves comfortable. To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, “The grave’s a fine and restful place/ But no one there is fit to race.”

Q. You seem to assume that all your readers are still gainfully employed right now, even though unemployment in the U.S. is now at historic levels, with more than 20 million people out of work. How can you callously pretend we’re all in a position to spend money on nonessentials?

A. Just buy the damn wheels.

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From the Archives – The Crystal Ball

Introduction

One of the unfortunate habits of the middle-aged is our tendency to bemoan the decay of our minds and bodies.  It’s like picking a scab that, rather than healing over, grows all the time.  We can’t remember things, we’re always tired, we’re putting on weight, and blah, blah, blah.

How refreshing, then, to look back at my prime, almost thirty years ago, and see that I was bitching and moaning about my decline even then.  Since I was obviously possessed of a fine mind and body in those days, but didn’t’ want to admit it, I now have hope that my current complaints are similarly exaggerated.

Better yet, looking back at the story below, I can’t help but admit that my writing has improved over time.  Join with me as I mock my younger self.

Letter from UCSB – “The Crystal Ball” – ca. November, 1988         

Well, I took a good, hard look at myself today and I’m not too pleased.  I got my French midterm back:  84%.  Had it been a hard test, I would have still been miffed, but might have cut myself some slack.  But this was a really easy test; I’d made every dumb mistake in the book.  I wasn’t worried about the grade, but only about what it might mean:  I’m obviously losing my ability to think clearly.

And now that I think about it, my mind isn’t the only part of me in decline.  My gut has been getting awfully big this year.  No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get the weight off.  When I went back home last summer, I got a lot of crap for my spare tire.  I tried to deny it, but it is obviously becoming a problem.  Even my cycling has suffered lately.  I didn’t ride much at all last week.  The only thing I’m getting better at is making excuses.  What could be the root cause of my descent toward mental and physical decrepitude?  Probably a bad attitude and low motivation.

I figured maybe a shrink could help me with this.  But psychiatrists charge too much, and besides, so many people who go into therapy never make it back out.  But I heard about this medium named Wanda who is supposedly very insightful.  For something like 20 bucks, she has helped lots of college kids, according to this tall goony guy I ran into in the University Center.  I was looking at the bulletin board and caught the guy looking at me looking at the bulletin board, which was kind of creepy, but he did hone right in on my mental/emotional distress, which showed more insight than my friends had.  So I decided to check out this medium for myself.

The goony guy drew me a map, or I’d never have found her tent.  It was a greasy, frail, ratty old thing in the middle of a field west of campus.  Every so often, it was said, the cops go and bust her for vagrancy, so she has had to move quite a bit.  This hadn’t done wonders for her tent, but I wasn’t there to pick up tips on interior decorating.  The medium herself was more like a large.  She seemed like a pretty wretched old woman, with long, grey, stringy hair that fell in front of her eyes.  “Wanda?” I asked.  She gave a little nod, as if to say, “Who else?”

I mumbled a question about personal coaching and insight into my soul, etc.  She just stared at me, as if she were truly sad that I’d shown up in her tent.  Finally she spoke:  “I don’t do anything but show you the future.  You wanna see it, great—you’re a client.”  She chewed on her hair as she spoke.  Her voice was low and gravelly, as if she had smoked a pack a day for the last ten years.  I knew, however, that she wasn’t a smoker, since cigarettes would have covered up her hideous breath, which smelled a bit like mold and a bit like the thick, mustard-colored ointment my dad uses.

Wanda gestured to a card table flanked on one side by a little wooden stool and the other by a lawn chair.  I sat on the stool.  On the table was a lump covered by a black, oily cloth.  With a practiced, but half-assed, flourish, Wanda snapped back the cloth, exposing a crystal ball the size of a grapefruit.  Wanda intoned, “My crystal ball can tell you all, how high you climb, how low you fall.”  I couldn’t suppress a little snort.  Dropping into the lawn chair, she continued, “Fine, I’ll spare you the incantations.  Five bucks for the first minute.  A buck a minute after that.  Just look at the ball and if you like what you see, keep the green energy flowing in my direction.”

I handed her my five spot.  I’d been clutching it, all wadded up, in my hand and it was damp with sweat.  Wanda stuffed it down the front of her gown, but she wasn’t wearing a bra, so it continued southward.  Reflexively, I watched its descent.  It stopped around her belly, which I didn’t want to linger on, so I kept dropping my gaze until it reached the edge of her dress, which was almost black from dragging on the dirt floor of her tent.

I raised my gaze to Wanda’s face.  “Don’t look at me—you’re on the clock!” she said.  “The ball!  Look at the ball!”  For half a minute, I stared at the ball and saw nothing.  I decided I’d been had.  There was nothing happening on the surface of the “crystal,” which looked like nothing more than frosted glass.  Closer observation revealed a crude seam and a tiny “Made in Taiwan” label.  I glared at Wanda.  “Fifteen seconds,” she growled.  I was about to protest, but then a faint glimmer appeared on the ball.  It resolved into a clear image of myself, sitting in my French classroom.  I slipped Wanda another five-spot and stared intently, in disbelief.  The vision in the ball was like magic.

The ball showed me sitting in my French classroom, drumming my fingers nervously on the table.  The teacher was passing back exams.  “I know I failed this final,” said Molly, the blond girl next to me.  “I didn’t study at all.”  She snapped her gum.  I was in love with her.  This was not important, though, in the moment.  The teacher handed her her test.  Molly had scored a 92%.  The teacher handed me my test.  It was a 68%.

I jumped in my seat.  It’s true!  My life is unraveling!  I returned my attention to the ball, staring until my eyes watered.

I was riding in a bike race.  I seemed to be keeping up, but I was with obviously riding with a group of beginners.  As we rode into the mountains, my breathing became faster and heavier.  The entire group rode away from me.  I stared remorsefully at my stomach.  It sagged lower than I had ever seen before.  The elastic waistband on my shorts was so tight it was digging in.  I took both hands off the handlebars, seized the waistband, and ripped it in two.  Now my belly was liberated, but my shorts began falling down in back.  I reached back to pull them up, and realized to my horror that the crack between my buttocks had climbed at least an inch up my back since the night before.

My heart skipped a beat and I looked up from the ball.  Wanda removed her index finger from her ear and stared at the fingernail, which was long, chipped, and dirty.  “I want to see farther ahead!” I cried.  She pointed indifferently towards a button on the base of the ball, labeled “>>.”  Fast Forward.  I pressed it for a few seconds and released. 

I was in a bike shop, trying to remove a crank from a wretched old Peugeot.  My physique was somewhere between E.T. and Moomintroll.  My jaw hung slack, as I’d become a mouth-breather.  My legs were somehow thin and flabby at the same time.  I grunted slightly as I shoved on a crank extractor.  The threads in the crank I was trying to pull were stripping rapidly.  Realizing my catastrophic failure to have removed the fixing bolt, I flung my wrench across the shop, cursed, and spat on the floor.  A young man in a clean shop apron, who was working on a beautiful pro racing bike, said nothing and left the room.  A moment later, an older man walked into the shop, shaking his head, clapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Dana … I’m lettin’ ya go.”

The crystal ball winked out.  Wanda was staring at me, her hand out.  I gave her my checkbook and pressed Fast Forward again.

A man was lying slumped in a dumpster, clutching an almost empty bottle of Yukon Jack.  His hair was past his shoulders.  There was no way to know what color his ragged overcoat had originally been.  His shoes didn’t match.  A bag of garbage flew into the dumpster and landed near his head.  His face was haggard, filthy, and—mine.  “NOOOOOOOOOO!”  I yelled.  I seized the crystal ball and threw it at Wanda.  It missed, and shattered on the dirt floor of the tent.  Wanda flew into a rage.  “You little bastard!” she shrieked, and came at me across the table, her arms outstretched, her long fingernails bared.  The table collapsed, and we grappled atop the wreckage. 

Wanda had her hands around my neck.  She was immensely, supernaturally strong.  I couldn’t get any air.  She herself began to wheeze.  Her hands were getting sweaty.  A tiny ridge of my skin found its way between her thumbnails, and then something amazing happened:  a perfectly ripe whitehead burst, discharging its seed-like head on her nail.  She instinctively recoiled and frantically wiped her hands on her filthy gown.  I took this opportunity to make a break for it, charging the light leaking through the flap of her tent.  I ran and ran and never looked back. 

Was the crystal ball’s forecast binding?  Or was there still time to turn my life around?  The next day was Saturday and I spent eight hours in the library, studying with a fervor I’d never before had.  Then, exhausted, I snatched up a copy of the school newspaper, seeking a poorly-written story as diversion.  The front page headline read, “VAGRANT DIES OF VELVEETA POISONING.”  I wiped sweat off of my forehead and went back to hitting the books.

Later—how much later, half an hour? an hour?—I found myself waking up, slumped in the study carrel with a stiff neck, a puddle of drool forming on my French textbook.  I checked my watch: 7:28 P.M.  I looked around for the newspaper article on the gypsy.  Had it really said Velveeta poisoning?  But that headline was nowhere to be seen.  The lead story was “UCSB TO OFFER ‘COED STUDIES’ MAJOR IN ‘89.”  The gypsy, the tent, the crystal ball, the visions of hopeless decline … they had all just been a dream! 

And my poor score on the French midterm … could that have been a dream, too?  I flipped open my binder.  The exam peered out at me, with “84%” written at the top in red ink.  Damn!  Still … things could always be worse.

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Fiction - Rejection Affects Health

NOTE: This post, though referencing an actual psychology study, is a work of fiction. I use the actual study as a jumping-off point for something entirely fanciful.

Preamble

“Rejection triggers responses in the body that can increase a person’s risk for maladies such as asthma, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and depression, a new study says. Scientists at UCLA recruited 124 healthy young adults to participate in a lab-based test aimed at determining whether social stress such as rejection causes inflammation, which can have detrimental effects on mental and physical health. Participants were put through stressful tests that were designed to make them feel rejected. Measurements of inflammatory markers were performed on samples of oral fluids taken before and after the tests…. Not surprisingly, the inflammatory biological markers in oral fluids increased dramatically after the stressful tests.”

—“Rejection Affects Health,” WebMD Health Newsletter, 10 Aug 2010

Introduction

Our recent study was a big success. One of the conclusions we arrived at is that further study is warranted, with a widened scope. In our initial study we had recruited healthy young adults; what more light could be shed, we wondered, if we studied all ages?

Our first follow-up study was with seniors. The results are not documented because the sessions did not go smoothly. Several of the participants could not hear—and others could not understand—most of what our test administrators were saying. Moreover, several of the male participants had poorly shaved chins, with little white hairs like Shredded Wheat stuck to their skin, and other subjects drooled, which distracted the administrators.

Much better success was found with other age categories, and those results are documented here.

Test #1 — Six-year-old test subject

Several six-year-old study administrators were recruited and trained in how to make the study subject feel rejected. These administrators very quickly caught on to the study methodology and did an excellent job carrying out the test.

On a school playground, a test subject was selected: an especially cute six-year-old girl who we felt would be unaccustomed to rejection. She was not made aware that she was participating in a test. The administrators, who were also her classmates, set about teasing her mercilessly. The first said, “I’m not friends with you anymore!” The second joined in, “Yeah, you’re like a baby, always carrying your ‘Roo Bear’ around!” The third administrator yelled, “We hate Roo Bear—he smells like dog farts!” Then they all laughed.

The impact on the subject was immediate. Subject bawled loudly for some time. We had trouble getting a good oral fluid sample with our swab, as subject thrashed around and her saliva was diluted by nasal mucous, which was flowing freely from both nostrils, and by tears streaming down into her mouth. Subject would not stop yelling. It took us a long time to figure out what she was trying to say: “It’s not ‘Roo Bear,’ it’s ‘Woo Bear,’ and she’s a girl bear!”

Not surprisingly, and despite the trouble with the oral fluid sample, this social trauma resulted in significant increases in markers of inflammatory activity, with abnormally high levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). We recommend further testing with this age group, though it has become obvious that it would be wise, going forward, to notify the subject’s parents in advance.

Test #2 — Fifteen-year-old test subject

Subject was a fifteen-year-old bike racer. Administrator was a fellow racer, who was given specific instructions in carrying out the test. Following a difficult hill climb bike race, a group of racers was comparing results and talking about the race. Subject, who did not finish in the top twenty, looked ideally awkward from the outset. Administrator said to the group at large, “Hey, I don’t need this energy bar … does anybody want it?” Others had been instructed to say nothing, and eventually subject replied, “Yeaahh!” Administrator stared at him in disgust and did not hand him the energy bar, behaving as though subject were uniquely exempt from the energy bar offer due to some obvious defect.

While this test initially looked promising, the professor made us feel like idiots by refusing to analyze the oral fluid sample. Apparently the test setup was rendered invalid by the elevated inflammation markers that would inevitably accompany athletic challenges like bike races, and we should have known this. We have thought about trying again with this age group but are feeling a bit demoralized.

Test #3 — Twenty-year-old test subject

A pretty brunette college student was recruited as administrator and instructed to be conspicuously friendly toward a prospective subject in her foreign language class. After some delay, subject eventually asked her out on a date. From the outset of the date (a casual lunch at a café), per our instructions, administrator was oddly cold, refusing to smile or engage subject in conversation. Eventually subject asked her to explain herself, to which she responded, “I talked to my old high-school boyfriend for a long time on the phone last night—he’s at BYU—and we’ve decided to get back together.”

To our great surprise, the oral fluid sample showed no significant increase in either sTNFαRII or IL-6. We interviewed the subject later; here is the most salient excerpt from his statement:

“She was straight-up fly, so I made sure not to get my hopes up. Sure, I was disappointed, but mostly I was trying not to laugh. I was tempted to say, ‘BYU? In Utah? The epicenter of American polygamy?’ or, ‘Seriously, your high school beau? There’s food in your dorm fridge that’ll last longer than your “relationship”! With four years of young women being dangled in front of him, you really think he’s going to wait for you? ’ But I didn’t say anything.

“Anyhow, it’s no biggie. My roommate and I like to compare notes about girls rejecting us. It’s like a running joke. We even have an expression for it—‘me dio calabazas’, which means ‘she gave me pumpkins.’ We love recalling these rejections … it’s almost like keeping a scrapbook.”

Test #4 — Forty-something test subject

It occurred to us that our study should include subjects having the classic risk factors of mid-life crisis. Those in their forties, burdened with mortgages and living in fear of losing their corporate jobs, were deemed ideal. We selected our subject on the basis of his age (forty-one), life commitments (family, Bay Area mortgage), and the fact of his maintaining a non-commercial blog (apparently as a hobby). We recruited a woman of the same age to serve as the administrator, accosting subject at a barbecue. Administrator’s friend began the dialog by asking subject’s wife if she blogged; she took the bait, replying, “No, but my husband does.” Administrator promptly asked subject, acidly, with evident bewilderment and even revulsion, “Why do you blog?”

Subject was speechless for at least ten seconds, before stammering, “It’s because I’m stupid and I don’t have any friends, why do you think?” We immediately swabbed him and found unprecedented high levels of both sTNFαRII and IL-6. A quick scan of our records showed this was in fact the strongest data set of rejection-inflicted inflammation on record. Subject agreed to a brief discussion about his experience. Why, we asked him, was his reaction so strong?

“Well, first of all,” he replied, “she asked the question with such disgust, as if she were asking, ‘Why would you sniff a cat’s butt?’ I mean, ‘Why blog?’ Why do anything? Why do a crossword puzzle? Why knit? It’s like she couldn’t imagine that a person would write just to express himself, maybe improve his writing, and post his stuff to a blog in case somebody might want to read it. Her question seemed like either a rejection of the idea that I could ever offer anything of value to the literary world, or a rejection of the very existence of literary world, like the world has forgotten that there are modes of written expression that go deeper than Twitter or Facebook.”

We asked if that was all. (Subject became even more agitated and we even considered re-swabbing him.) “Isn’t that enough?” he said. Finally, after some reflection, he said, “I guess I’ll admit that, since nobody questioned the idea of my wife blogging, this woman’s incredulity was like a rejection of my masculinity. Like, why would a guy blog, you know?”

Further study is clearly warranted.

Test #5 — Forty-something test subject #2

Based on the success of the last administrator/subject pairing, we again selected a forty-something woman as the administrator and a forty-something white collar husband/father amateur blogger as the subject. This time, the venue was a high school reunion, which we felt would be a perfect setting. (We deny the assertion that this test was an attempt at getting the “high score on inflammatory activity markers”; we are simply trying to isolate acute cases for further study.) Administrator was a friend of the subject’s wife. Subject, again, was unaware that a test was being performed on him.

Administrator, behaving in a friendly manner, casually asked subject if he was on Facebook. He said he was not. She asked if he Tweeted. Again, he replied no. She asked if he did anything social online at all, and he said he had a blog. “A blog?” she said, with unmasked repugnance. “Why do you blog?”

Subject, to our surprise, was placid, even sanguine. “You mean you really don’t know why bloggers blog?” he replied. “I thought everybody knew that. It’s so that they can make fun of people to a wide audience. For example, by tomorrow everybody on the Internet will know that you went around this reunion with your bleach-blonde hair and boob job thinking you were all hot, when really you looked ridiculous because your teeth were stained purple by red wine.”

Thinking quickly, we swabbed the administrator and found sTNFαRII and IL-6 levels that were completely off the charts. Clearly, further study is warranted.

dana albert blog