Iced Iced Baby

For the past few months, I have observed with awe and a tinge of fear as the frenzy of Bros Icing Bros catapulted to feature articles on CNN and in the New York Times. The novel concept behind Bros Icing Bros, the effeminizing of the masculine, the simplicity of the rules, has officially launched an epidemic that will likely result in the coming of the next Ice Age.

The game is summarized by two simple rules.

1. When presented with a Smirnoff Ice, the Bro must drink it while kneeling (Getting iced).

2. When getting iced, a Bro can present their own Smirnoff Ice to cause the initiator to be iced instead (ice block).

Since first being introduced to the game, I made two complementary lifestyle choices:

1. Never attempt to ice a bro, in a subtle attempt to forge an implicit strategic alliance with fellow bros so as to avoid all contact with ice.

2. Assist all bros in becoming self-sufficient. Example: Can you grab my hat while you’re over there? (Read: If you pick up my hat, you’ll be iced.) No.

Well, my chameleonic strategy of fading into the background has done nothing but backfire (or backice). In the span of one week, I have officially fallen victim to this bubbly cancer, not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times!

1. Reaching for a popsicle. Not content with the orange and grape flavors at the top, I scavenged for the green one all the way at the bottom. Digging my hand deep into the bag, Bam. Iced.

2. Yearning to fill the void in my stomach, I opened the microwave to heat some leftovers. Bam. Iced.

3. Opening what I believed to be a cooler full of sandwich essentials taken to the beach. Bam. Iced.

4. Grabbing a beer from the case in the refrigerator. Bam. Iced.

The troubling thing is that all four icings have resulted from need for nourishment. My analysis has concluded that only a strategy of starvation could have prevented these icings. I suppose the silver lining is that I’m playing in the minor leagues, with the standard 11 ounce Smirnoff Ice. The big deuce deuce would most certainly be my Waterloo.

Swindle Me This

The other evening, I was dining with an assembly of friends, enjoying my oven baked pizza, salami with fresh mozzarella and grana cheeses, and a sprinkling of grilled peppers, while making pleasant table conversation. Around the time the bill arrived, the conversation transitioned from politics jabber to credit card fraudulence.

Coincidentally, Molly, Kyle and I had all fallen victim to credit card fraud in the past few months. The fact that so many of us have become wounded soldiers in this hustle led me to believe that these thieves were becoming collectively more intelligent and furtive. But the deceitful charges led me to believe the contrary.

Exhibit A: Molly’s identity thief used her American Express card to make a $5 donation to the March of Dimes. While a thoughtful gesture, it is egregiously impractical; committing a felony without any personal payoff. Maybe this lack of practicality when it comes to personal finances is what landed you in need of this knavery in the first place. My personal belief is if you are desperate enough to need to surreptitiously borrow from someone else’s bank account, you’re not really in the position to be giving.

Exhibit B: When I called Wells Fargo to ask why all of my attempted charges were being denied, I was informed of the temporary hold they had placed on my card was a result of suspicious charges. Did you make an $8 charge for breast milk in Detroit, Michigan? This opened the floodgates for the litany of questions running through my head. Do you think I charged $8 for breast milk? You can actually buy breast milk? How much breast milk does $8 buy?

It appears that we’ve entered the age of the Skittish Swindler. What ever happened to the precept Go big or go home? I guess it’s been supplanted by Go big or March home and feed your baby.

Boinked

The point of competing isn’t to trounce the competition, but to elevate yourself. – Cherie Gruenfeld, Inside Triathlon Magazine

My friends Lee and Ryan (also former collegiate athletes who could single-handedly and single-leggedly out athleticize me), recently founded a sports event management group that specializes in producing and hosting triathlons. The name, Elevation Athletics, was partly inspired by the above quotation.

Not long after hearing about the organization’s first Triathlon, to be held in Waynesboro, Virginia, fish-bowl friends/foes Stuart, Rhino, and I fell victim to the Abilene paradox, deciding to participate in the sprint-triathlon, despite this decision being counter to each of our individual preferences of physical apathy.

Preparation: The sprint-triathlon was a combined 400 meter swim, 14.9 mile bike, and 5 kilometer run; the true antithesis of what I might deem sprintable. Against the imploring of Ryan to train for the tri, the three of us found ourselves 24 hours before the race, having collectively forgone all training. I later learned that boinking is the action verb commonly used to describe this extreme physical activity without physical preparation. Perhaps in an attempt to combat the inevitability of our impending death, the day before the race, Rhino stopped by the pool and swam a few laps, Stuart went for a three mile run (after which she admittedly nearly collapsed on her bedroom floor from exhaustion), and I went to my parent’s house to pick up my mountain bike, test riding it two houses down and back. My idea of a sprint-triathlon. We calculatedly decided that the three of us would take on the tri together and collectively cross the finish line as a team.

Start to Finish: Prior to racing, registrants were required to submit their personal 100 meter swim time, off of which the participant order would be determined. Seeing as I had never been timed in the 100 meter swim, I entered Slow as a snail, placing me right behind Stuart, whose 100 meter time was Very slow. Surprisingly, about 10 individuals were queued up behind us (likely due to day-of registration); God bless them. After completing the grueling swim (to which I was mentally hummed VV Brown’s lyric Baby there’s a shark in the water as a means of self motivation), we proceeded to the transition area to move to the bikes. Well, whomever was not ahead of us after the swim certainly surged past us in the bike.Not long into the biking, Rhino had a mountain bike malfunction, her gears getting stuck in a lamentably low gear, resulting in a comedic peddles-per-miles-travelled ratio. Proceeding into the final leg, we paced ourselves during the run (a 12:30 minute mile pace to be specific). We stopped at the final water station to rehydrate and stretch out, the embodiment of chatting around the water cooler, before the last push across the finish line. After all, we wanted to make sure we had enough energy to express our excitement when we crossed the finish line; we had quickly emerged as the fan favorites and did not want to disappoint!

Reflection: The term sprint-triathlon is very deceiving. I would have elected for something along the lines of Traithlong. But I am proud that we lived up the quotation…or at least the first part of it: The point of competing isn’t to trounce the competition, as we finished a respectable 2nd…from last place.