Our beautiful sport can occasionally give rise to ugly sores, festering boils, and assorted creepy-crawlies. Here’s how to avoid the horror show.

Click here to read the full article online (repackaged as the slideshow “Treat Cycling’s Grossest Medical Mishaps”)

It’s 10:35 p.m. on a Saturday night at Breckenridge Brewpub and the randy tourist crowd is looking sluggish, worn down by a solvent of mountain air and ethanol. I’m sitting alone at a booth seat near the bar, looking like a buffoon with my sampler platter of every beer on tap. Folks walk by me, cocking their heads as I hold a tiny glass of beer up to the light, give it a sniff, take a sip, swish it around, then scribble something on my notepad.

Once the tourists clear out I find a stool at the bar, surrounded by Breck’s finest: the service-industry locals who make this town hum. Between impromptu sing-a-longs to ‘90s gangster rap and shots of Jägermeister, the locals chat me up… Click here to read the entire article online

(Cover Feature from Breckenridge Magazine, Summer 2011, page 40)

I’ll admit it: Every time summer, I spend an inappropriate amount of time checking out men’s legs. Why, you (and my wife) ask? I’m looking for greatness. It’s not just the tell-tale shaving nicks around the knees or Lycra-induced tan lines. Those are common signs of a professional mountain biker, but not all greatness is sanctioned and sponsored. No, I’m looking for the cut of the riders’ calves, those mosaics of triangular muscles, chiseled by the boulder-field climbs and hip drops. In Breckenridge, I see those legs everywhere—on man, woman, and child.

If, like me, you spend the summer months looking for mountain bike greatness, you’ve come to the right place… Click here to continue reading online

(Cover feature from Westword, June 9, 2011)

Eva Håkansson and Bill Dubé fell in love with green technology, going fast, and each other. Now they’re on a mission to make you believe that electric is sexy.

One of their homemade motorcycles, the KillaCycle, goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than one second. And that’s without an engine. Engines use fuel and fire. This bike has no exhaust pipe, no radiator, no spark plugs, no transmission and no clutch. The electric drag motorcycle runs on two series-wound DC motors — the kind Germany used in its U1 submarines during World War I — and cordless tool batteries, the same kind used in DeWalt power tools. Dubé calls the KillaCycle a cordless drill on wheels.

The world’s quickest, sexiest cordless drill.

******

It’s a Wednesday morning in late May. The KillaCycle’s only real competition today is the weather: Dark, low-slung clouds squat above Morrison’s Bandimere Speedway, pregnant with rain and hail, ready to break water at any minute.

A television crew from the German science program Galileo has rented the entire racetrack for roughly $300 per hour, hoping to get footage of the KillaCycle in action. Up in the pits, the KillaCycle rests on patches of outdoor carpet next to its trailer, looking like some sleek black-and-orange waterbug with handlebars. Far below, large rolling machines lumber along the drag strip, scrubbing and conditioning the concrete, drying off the previous night’s downpour and applying a new layer of skin-thin rubber.

Tracy Helmhold steps out of the KillaCycle trailer wearing his red-and-white Alpinestars racing leathers. A veteran motorcycle driver from Morrison, he’s one of two pros who’ve set records atop the electric beast. Helmhold walks around the pit with a bowlegged gait and does an occasional squat to stretch against the aramid fibers in his suit. He looks like he’s been riding a horse all morning; now he’s preparing to ride several hundred at once.

“If I’m going to wreck, it’ll happen between the trailer and the starting line,” Helmhold says. “The bike isn’t built for steering, and the tires aren’t made for bumps or impressions in the pavement. The whole thing just wants to go fast. And because it’s electric, there’s no sound or warning; accelerating is like flipping a light switch. One flick of the throttle and it goes ballistic.”

The film crew is eager to get to work and anxious about the rain. The fashionably disheveled cameraman hoists his camera on and off of his shoulder, sets it on the ground next to the KillaCycle and fiddles with his yellow foam earplugs. Dubé takes a few steps over, puts his hand on the cameraman’s upper arm and gives a compassionate squeeze. He points at the earplugs and gently says, “You know you’re not going to need those, right?”

Bill Dubé grew up in Cranston, Rhode Island. A member of the ecology club in high school, he graduated in 1971, fourteenth in his class — from the bottom. A glut of draft-dodging college applicants and his less-than-stellar academic record left him few viable options, so he enlisted in the military. After a couple of years tooling on small engines and catching jet planes for the Air Force, he returned home to Rhode Island and began work as a foreign-car mechanic and an apprentice electrician.

“The blizzard of ’78 drove me out of Rhode Island,” he remembers. “A buddy of mine gave me a deal on this old beater car, so I loaded it up and drove to Colorado.” He started attending adult education classes in Aurora, where his introductory algebra teacher laughed at his aspirations of becoming an engineer. Soon enough, however, Dubé enrolled at the University of Colorado Denver — paying his own way on part-time jobs and a small check from the GI Bill — and earned a degree in mechanical engineering.

With his environmental orientation and electrical engineering education, it was no surprise when Dubé discovered electrathons in the 1980s. The events, which still take place all over the country, challenge participants to build battery-powered vehicles that can outlast the competition using only a limited amount of energy. At their core, they more closely resemble a dance marathon than an actual race; endurance is the main objective, and speed is irrelevant. “It was a bunch of tree-huggers and nerds building science projects,” says Dubé.

He quickly recognized that electric vehicles should be both efficient and powerful and that mainstream motorists would never voluntarily buy EVs, as they’re known, until both characteristics were available in one package. He also believed — in part because of timid, genteel events like the electrathon — that electric vehicles had a serious publicity problem.

To beef up their wimpy image, Dubé and a group of other enthusiasts decided to introduce EVs to drag racing. “Racing is less sophisticated, but it’s a lot more exciting,” Dubé points out. In 1996, he helped found the National Electric Drag Racing Association, becoming its first tech director and drafting the organization’s safety rules. Dubé and NEDRA’s inaugural president, Roderick “Wildman” Wilde, successfully lobbied the National Hot Rod Association, the primary governing body for American drag racing, to change a 56-year-old rule that required drag vehicles to have an internal combustion engine, opening the door for EVs to compete in official NHRA-sanctioned events.

Dubé’s first homemade drag EV was a cherry-red 1985 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible named the Ewetwik Wabbit. In 1998, the Wabbit vomited its transmission onto the starting line of a drag strip in Portland, Oregon. Dejected during the long drive back to Denver, Dubé daydreamed about his next project. “Conversions always have issues,” he says. “Cars are heavy and expensive, so I decided on that road trip that I wanted to build a motorcycle.”

He spent six months creating the KillaCycle in the basement of his Park Hill bungalow. He dismantled the finished bike to get it up the stairs, then reassembled it and took it straight to the racetrack.

Click here to read the rest of the article at Westword.com

(Feature in Draft Magazine, January/February 2011, pgs. 68-71)

A 1937 Ford Slantback Sedan sits under a thin layer of sawdust inside an otherwise immaculate two-car garage in Loveland, Colo. Dustin Nere stands at a workbench, his back turned to the car, stroking an electric sander back and forth over a long, narrow strip of aircraft aluminum.  More than twenty pairs of skis hang on the wall opposite the classic auto. Lined up by age and design, the skis grow shorter, wider, their curvatures changing over time—like a giant evolutionary chart.

At the most evolved end, half a dozen different pairs bear the same name: Hangfire Handcrafted Skis. Just beyond, in the future, wide core blanks of maple and poplar wood rest in a corner, awaiting their maker.

Nere couldn’t wait for natural selection to bring him what he wanted—so he decided to build his own skis instead.

“There was this old issue of Ski magazine that said on the cover, ‘Build your own skis in a weekend,’” Nere says. “I thought, there’s no way you can make a good ski in two days. The idea, though, it got stuck in my head. But I didn’t want to make skis to save money or make money—I just wanted to make something better than I could buy.”

Just like the beer industry, the ski industry has experienced a major transformation in the last twenty years.  The largest manufacturers have gobbled up competitors, merged or assimilated brands, and moved their manufacturing facilities outside of the United States, mostly to Europe and China. Meanwhile, like microbreweries, smaller craft ski builders have emerged in North America to fill the void and sate the diverse tastes of snow sport enthusiasts.

These companies—Donek, Icelantic, Moment, Never Summer, ScottyBob, Venture, and Wagner Custom, just to name a few—manufacture their boards in small batches and sell at moderately higher prices. Some companies, like Icelantic Skis and Never Summer Boards, reduce their costs by sharing manufacturing facilities. To get our attention, most of these companies use unique marketing campaigns, experimental materials, and innovative aesthetic and functional designs.

OK, I know what you’re thinking: Innovation in business is nothing new. Talented individuals work for a company, develop their craft, and then strike out on their own. Idea-filled entrepreneurs design and patent their products, licensing their designs to larger manufacturers. The tastiest little fish are eaten by the bigger fish, which then spawn more little fish. Big deal.

What’s so different about today, you ask? The cycle of innovation no longer feeds upon itself—now anyone, anywhere, can invent the next big thing. Big companies have lost some of their ability to steer the market; the little fish are now driving innovation for the entire industry.

In 2011, if you have creative spirit, basic workshop skills, and an Internet connection, you can learn how to make your own skis or snowboard. Websites like SkiBuilders.com and GrafSnowboards.com serve as online centers for instruction, collaboration, and idea exchange. Ski building materials and tools, once only available to well-vested manufacturers, are now available to anyone via online retailers. SnowboardMaterials.com sells items at every price point: from a single metal ski edge for $4.25 to an entire turn-key ski or snowboard factory kit for $18,500. Videos on YouTube demonstrate the variety of individuals building snow gear, from shaggy teenagers screwing high-top shoes into snowboards of plywood and hot-glued Formica, to experts waxing poetic about die cut presses.

According to SnowSports Industries America, the top five ski manufacturers—Atomic, K2, Rossignol, Salomon, and Volkl—still control 71 percent of the total ski industry market share. But combine the new, fast and affordable prototype-to-production process, a barrier-free digital marketplace, and a young consumer market rabid for that which is different and new, and you have the perfect conditions for small craft and homebrewed ski and snowboard companies to succeed.

In his basement, Nere’s homemade ski press looks like the love child of a medieval torture device and a panini grill made for a party sub.  Bizarre items lie around—a short section of fire hose, a squat air compressor in the closet. Nere explains what is called the layup process to me.

First, he sets out the base layer, metal edges already attached, and adds a coat of waterproof epoxy. He repeats the layer-and-epoxy step eight more times—adding pre-cured fiberglass with Kevlar stringers, Kevlar cloth, the wooden core and sidewalls, more Kevlar, a strip of aircraft aluminum to dampen chatter, more Kevlar, carbon fiber, and yes, more Kevlar. He tops it all with a thin sheet of polycarbonate. When Nere says his skis are “bulletproof,” I know he means it literally.

The firehose and 150-pound press are set on top of the skis. The air compressor fills the firehose to 40 p.s.i., squooshing everything together until the epoxy hardens. Nere removes the skis, trims excess from the edges with a bandsaw, seals and finishes the sidewall, then tunes the ski.

A nearby retailer in Denver, Confluence Kayak and Telemark, now sells Hangfire skis to the general public. “It’s an awkward feeling. This is the first time a total stranger has owned a pair of my skis,” Nere says. To handle this new demand, Nere’s getting rid of the antique car in the garage. “I sold it to a guy in Denmark,” says Nere. “I need to get the ski presses out of the basement. This car was my obsession for nine years, but restoring cars turned into my work. But I’m still having a hoot [making skis]. I don’t want that to change.”

Listening to Nere speak about his hobby, however, it’s hard to imagine his company staying small. His Wisconsin drawl and heavy-lidded eyes make him seem a little sleepy, and he’s prone to saying “I’m not sure how other folks do this,” but he flies through technical talk about torsional flex and wood core profiling faster than I can take it in.

His day job as a period-correct hot rod restoration expert requires extraordinary attention to detail; meticulousness is evident in his craftsmanship. His ski templates are created with CAD software and every measurement accounted for down to the millimeter. In just a few seasons of diligent practice, Nere has developed a ski as good as any large factory in the world can make.

He’s not alone. ExoticSkis.com, an unofficial directory of manufacturers, currently lists 267 independent ski and snowboard builders around the world. The actual number of folks building their own at home is likely many times more.

The late Shane McConkey, extreme skiing and base-jumping legend, is credited with inventing rockered skis—the latest craze in the snow sports world. “Rockered” is a shape in which the tips angle significantly upward like the rails of a rocking chair. As the myth goes, McConkey carried a sketch on a napkin for years, rejected by manufacturers until Volant created a ski model called the Spatula based on his concept in 2001. It was an odd-looking character for its time. Two years later, Atomic Skis acquired Volant and discontinued the line. McConkey took his design to K2 Sports, who in turn created the Pontoon in 2003.

Major manufacturers have been slow to react to the rockered ski trend, including K2, in spite of the Pontoon’s success. Craft ski builders quickly embraced the concept, however, launching it into popularity and gaining new customers along the way. Without them, this new design may have faded into history. Instead, the biggest companies now all offer rockered skis.

For the future, Nere and a handful of others are experimenting with hybrid designs that blend variations of sidecut, rocker and camber, seeking the holy grail—one ski or snowboard for all conditions. Will they find the perfect design? Not likely. But for the 2010-2011 season, K2 introduced their own hybrid-shaped models, showing that they’re on the hunt for the grail, too.

If and when they find it, we all win. And if they don’t? I guess we’ll have to build it ourselves.

“Soak It In” (Click here to download a PDF of the original article)

“25 Breckenridge Faves,” co-written with Irene Thomas (Click here to download a PDF of the original article)

“Babes in the Backcountry” (Click here to download a PDF of the original article)

Soak It In

(appeared on pages 6-7)

In the simmering sanctuary of a mountain hot tub, we confront the elements—and ourselves.

I swear I heard a squeak—like wet balloons rubbing against one another—when the taut-and-toned skin of the two twentysomethings first collided. I was schlepping grocery bags back to my family’s hotel room when I noticed the couple, pressing hard and careless against one another in a hot tub.

The sun was on its final tilt, stretching light long and orange, but dark was still an hour away. Three manorexic college boys nursing cans of cheap beer sat in another tub, also staring, their mouths agape. A circle of prune-skinned seniors softly chuckled and cooed, lightly encouraging the passionate display. The two lovers knit their mouths together, completely unaware of their audience.

There are lots of iconic symbols of life in the mountains: The glow of aspens in the fall. Glittery fresh powder. Pristine mountain streams. Sunshine on your shoulders. Whatever. You want a symbol? I say it’s the hot tub.

Think about it for a moment: Like life in a mountain town, a hot tub is totally decadent with just a hint of dirty. Space and sometimes privacy are limited; germs and gossip spread quickly. It’s okay for children in small doses, but it’s primarily a place made for athletes, adventurous single folks, and successful retirees. It can be difficult to maintain, in both terms of cost and convenience. And even a three-degree temperature change, in either direction, can make the difference between a good day and a bad one.

But we’re not talking Jacuzzis here, the foo-foo indoor cousins of the hot tub. I’m talking the real deal—outdoors, in the ground or on a wooden deck, in the snow. Thick brown foam-and-vinyl insulating covers that burp steam like a new piece of Tupperware. Deep, 1970s cask-barrel-style soakers with benches made of redwood, and those shiny new one-piece, vacuum-formed acrylic models with bucket seats and jets so strong they could knock you over if you weren’t already sitting down.

That’s mountain life’s true baptismal fountain, where we all strip to our skivvies (or less) to confront the elements, one another, and ourselves. It’s the altar at which so many of mountain life’s rites of passage are performed. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but stare at the lovers. Seeing them, young and unfettered, filled me with nostalgia for the time in my life when the mountains were my everything—when my beard was big, my winter skin was thick, and I was never treated like a tourist above 9000 feet. Seeing them made me remember the beginning of my love affair with mountain living.

I was a freshman in college; it was my first invitation to stay in a mountain condo. The dozen teenagers that packed into the place on Buffalo Mountain each had their own firsts—some drinking for the first time, some making first-time romantic plans. For me, it was my first trip to Summit County.

The native Colorado kids changed into trunks and bikinis, wrapped themselves in towels, and ambled out to the hot tub across the snow-packed parking lot in bare feet. I wanted to join but I was terrified. In the mind of this New Mexican desert boy, the snow could have been glowing charcoals. But I knew that the hot tub snow walk was an initiation—so I bared my soles to the snow and became someone new. It sealed my sense of belonging, it made me an equal.

Indeed, the circular hot tub is a great equalizer, no one position holding more power than another, making it the perfect place for post-pow-pow powwows. Hot tub poachers climb fences for a free soak while hot tub owners grow bored of their own and hike off in search of backcountry hot springs. Access keys and codes to the best condo hot tubs are coveted, traded and shared in secret like powder stashes. Ever wonder why mountain locals are so friendly to tourists? They want an invitation to one of those big hotel whirlpools downtown.

Ultimately, hot tubs are an apt metaphor for mountain living because they are like us. Let’s face it: Hot tubs and humans are essentially oversized bags of hot water. We aren’t made for below freezing temperatures at 9000 feet. It’s easy to start wondering, especially when you’re sitting outside in a hot tub during a snowstorm, if perhaps maybe we don’t belong here.

But the hot tub, like a mountain town, is supportive. It wraps you in a warm bubble, a lover’s embrace, enabling your survival in the colossal cold. Maybe we don’t make sense here. But as you lean back and look up at the sky, enamored with the peaks around you, watching the snowflakes and steam collide, polar opposites dancing and swirling, accepting one another, it becomes possible to imagine that maybe the mountains love us back. ❄

Babes in the Backcountry

(appeared on pages 38-39, mentioned on cover)

Breckenridge-based outfitter offers outdoor adventure education with a twist.

It’s Saturday night at Francie’s Cabin, a Summit Huts Association cabin five miles south of Breckenridge. The wind outside quietly sculpts wavelike cornices on the rooftop. Inside the cabin a group of women seem to be relaxing, sipping wine, loosely chatting about everything from politics to parenting. In reality, they are learning how to survive in a backcountry emergency.

Leslie Ross, 41, has discovered something profoundly counterintuitive about avalanche and backcountry travel education: Women learn about the topic differently, and safety is as much about trust and comfort as it is technical knowledge. Ross is the founder of Babes in the Backcountry (BIB), a pioneer organization in the women-specific adventure sports industry. Focusing primarily on backcountry travel, telemarking and safety education, BIB offered its first avalanche course twelve years ago. BIB pushed for a shift in avalanche safety education, which Ross says used to exclusively target scientists and snow professionals. To do so, they designed an avy course that’s intuitive, easy to digest, but still meets American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) and American Avalanche Association (AAA) standards.

“We need women to be part of the decision-making process in the backcountry,” says Ross, “for everyone’s sake.” Research would agree, because involving women in backcountry decisions may not only be positive for women—it could save men’s lives. A 2005 study of mountaineers shows men are less able to perceive risk in the mountains when compared to their women counterparts.

BIB’s success parallels a nationwide trend, says Susan Hays, editor at the Boulder-based Women’s Adventure magazine: “Women are showing their purchasing power, and companies are responding to women making their own buying decisions.” Companies realize they can no longer take a product for men and merely shrink it and pink it for female consumers—they now design products that meet the specific needs of women.

BIB winter courses come with perks—they include meals, wine tastings, access to backcountry gear (“Women should have a chance to try things before they buy,” says Ross), even dressing with a little flair on the first night of a multi-day clinic. BIB also incorporates yoga into every course, even avalanche safety, because Ross believes smart choices in the backcountry come from learning how to tune into one’s body, environment, and the traveling group.

Many new courses are open to men, too, and some are specially created for couples. This winter in Colorado, BIB will offer telemark clinics at Arapahoe Basin and Loveland, an introduction to the backcountry course in Breckenridge, and a three-day “Sisters in the Steep” clinic in Silverton. Several other courses will be offered at Lake Tahoe resorts and Sugarbowl in California.

But BIB aspires to do more than simply offer a unique educational product—it brings adventurous women together. “I had no female mentors, only brothers and guy friends. There were few women in the huts. I was asking myself, ‘Where are the women at?’ That’s why we take groups of women to huts, give them an opportunity to get into the backcountry with knowledgeable female guides,” says Ross.

While the occasional birthday, bachelorette party or reunion may fill up a workshop, most women arrive alone or in pairs, which Ross encourages. “A hut trip is a real bonding experience,” says Ross, “and that’s what we’re here for, to provide a place where women can meet other other gals to go out with in the future, women that they are comfortable with and know they can trust.” ❅

For additional information, call 970-453-4060 or visit www.babesinthebackcountry.com.

Click here for a PDF of the original article.

(from Backpacker Magazine, June 2010, page 52)

Beat Pack Strain

Hauling a heavy load can do a number on the neck, back, and hips. Stay pain-free with these tips.

By Ron S. Doyle

PROBLEM Neck pain Leaning forward against a pack‘s shoulder straps pulls your head into an abnormal forward posture (aka turtle necking), which can cause neck strain, headaches, and impaired balance.

>> Solution Keep your head back and lead with your chest to take pressure off the neck. Also, adjust the pack’s load-lifter straps to 45 degrees. “At lower angles, the top of the pack pulls backward,” says Jason Klimpke, a pack-fitting expert at REI’s Denver, Colorado store.

PROBLEM Tingling fingers A 2007 University of California, San Diego study found that packs weighing as little as 26 pounds can significantly reduce blood flow to your arms, which can be painful, impair fine motor skills, and increase fatigue, and chill hands in the winter.

>> Solution Adjust the pack’s fit to place more weight on your hips. Also, raise your sternum strap just above armpit height, and tighten it to pull the shoulder straps inward, relieving pressure on the shoulder’s axillary vein, says Klimpke. As you hike, pull the straps away from your shoulders with your thumbs for as long as necessary.

PROBLEM Lower back and hip pain Loads weighing just 10 percent of your body weight can compress your lumbar spinal discs, according to a 2008 study in which MRI scans were taken of people wearing a pack.  That two-week hike you’ve planned may only cause some muscle soreness and nerve irritation, but decades of toting an ill-fitting pack can lead to disc compression, degenerative disease, and chronic pain.

>> Solution Make sure your hipbelt sits right on your iliac crest (the top of your hip bones). The pack’s stays (the vertical bars of the internal frame) should curve with your spine without pressing into your sacrum, and the lumbar pad should rest gently against your lower back. A professional stay-bending, which many stores will do for free, can adjust for this. Pre- and posthike stretching also helps: Stand with your feet hip-width apart and fold forward, keeping your torso straight. Rest your palms on the ground beside your feet. Bend your knees if you feel any discomfort of hamstring pain.

Click here for a PDF of the original article, which ran as a supplement to my feature story, “What is he thinking?!”

Getting Intimate with Sex and the City 2’s Max Ryan

English-born Max Ryan plays Rikard, a hunky European architect who crosses paths with Samantha Jones in the upcoming Sex & The City 2, in theaters this May. The role is a major departure from Ryan’s previous roles in action films such as Kiss of the Dragon, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Death Race. We caught up with Ryan (who you can learn more about at www.maxryan.eu or follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MrMaxRyan) for his thoughts on family, career, and relationships.

On his first crush. “Her name was Lisa and I was probably about eight years old. She had long brown hair. We kind of became boyfriend and girlfriend, but at that age, what is it? It was my first love and it was fantastic, you know, cute and innocent and we never really knew what was going on between the pair of us.”

On being cast in Sex and the City 2. I wanted to do something different, like a romantic comedy, instead of being killed or playing these really heavy, nasty characters. That’s not really me—I’m really an uplifting, smiley person. So when my manager came to me with Sex and the City 2, I just said, ‘Okay!’ The rest is history.”

On his family’s reaction to the news. “My mother was absolutely freaking out, loving it. When we were shooting the movie, I brought my parents over to visit. When the customs officer asked “Why are you here in the United States?” my mother said proudly, “Well, our son is in Sex and the City,” and the customs officer started telling everyone. Soon the entire American customs area was cheering for them—it was just incredible.”

On working with the SATC2 cast and creating his character, Rikard. “The ladies have been doing this for years, they have their characters down, and there’s a lot of force there to be reckoned with, so it was a challenge. It certainly wasn’t easy. But when I read the lines written by Mr. King (director Michael Patrick King), my personality really came through. I think it all came together to create something unique.”

On Sex and the City’s portrayal of relationships between men and women. “Since I’ve been watching Sex and the City, it’s actually made me more intuitive about the opposite sex. It’s helped me personally in my own life and if you want to get deep about it, I think it‘s saved a lot of relationships. I believe all men should watch and learn how a woman ticks. It’s really true to life.”

How he describes his Complete Woman. “Best friend, great lover, great mother, loves animals, and a lot of patience. A lot of patience. [laughs] I’m like any man, I adore women. I think behind every good man there’s a very, very strong woman. A man needs a woman to help him keep on track, help him through the good, bad and the ugly. I think I’ve had that and I blew it. You know, I’m 43 and I’ve missed a few opportunities. If I’d watched Sex and the City sooner I think I’d be married by now.”

How women he’s dated would describe him. “It depends on what era of my life. [laughs] I would say motivated, focused, but I may have some kind of attention disorder when focusing my energies on a relationship. I think most of the women I’ve dated left me because I’ve been careless to some degree. When you’re an actor, and building your career, there are a lot of sacrifices you have to make. But I think it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens next in my personal life.”

Click here for a PDF of the original article, including an interview with Sex & The City 2′s Max Ryan.

What is he (really) thinking?!

Women have long gotten a bad rap as being difficult to decipher, but, if you ask us, men can be just as baffling! Luckily for you, we present a view from a true-blue guy into the male mind at 10 crucial relationship stages.

By Ron S. Doyle

By all indications of what I saw in the shower this morning, I am definitely a man. I should know how men think. Apparently, however, I’m a different sort of man, because I’ve recently been called a traitor for revealing male secrets to women (thanks for publishing that past article, Complete Woman). And because, to tell the truth, I just learned I don’t have a clue what other men were thinking.

Here’s what I assumed: there are two major types of men, those who think too much and those who think too little. The thinkers consist of those paralyzed by anxiety and those who always have a plan; in other words, they are the control freaks who run our world. The non-thinkers, in contrast, jump into life headfirst and depend on a testosterone-infused cocktail of courage and charisma to get through it; they are my buddies from college on a bender.

After spending several weeks interviewing men, however, I discovered it’s far more complicated when relationships enter the equation. You wind up with this freaky form of Cognitive Calculus where anything can happen—the non-thinkers start overanalyzing before doing something impulsive and the thinkers leaving rambling voicemails at 3 a.m.

The point? Men think more than I thought—and I was therefore totally stumped.

I was ready to throw in the towel when my friend Frank, a graphic illustrator, shared his own theory on the matter. Frank claims what men think about relationships (or don’t) depends entirely on what they want from the women involved. Frank even defined three categories of women for me: “Permanent Pursuits,” “Friends with Benefits,” and “Hot and Wild,” which sounded more to me like a barbecue sauce than a female archetype.

Believe it or not, Frank is onto something. Tufts University psychologist R.J. Sternberg says all love relationships are built from three basic components that line up perfectly with Frank‘s categories: commitment, intimacy, and passion. Different combinations of these three components create different kinds of relationships—and for men, each relationship results in a different way of thinking.

So, without further ado, here’s a look into the minds of men at ten different relationship stages. See if you can figure out which men are seeking commitment and which only want passion! Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, embarrassed, and deserving of pity.

1. He reaches out for the first time. Here’s the first time when men really start thinking about those three categories—commitment, intimacy, passion—and how you might fit into them. A few men claimed to have no expectations; their first contact was purely platonic. But Lorne, 45, says men think about two things, sometimes both simultaneously, when they first reach out to a woman: “the prospects of a mutually supportive, interesting, exciting, supportive relationship” and, alternately, “getting laid.”
2. You kiss for the first time. Maybe reruns of Sleeping Beauty on The Disney Channel are having an effect on men; many hold surprisingly romantic notions about the first kiss. And some men consider the first kiss as a final grade on the evening, while still others treat it like a final exam. In other words, there’s a lot of pressure to make the first kiss a good one. The Experience Project, an online community where folks share their life experiences anonymously, is filled with stories of men regretting the outcome of their first kisses. With so much pressure placed on such a small moment, it’s no surprise so many men said they think a little liquid courage (read: a margarita or three) helps them stop constantly wondering and worrying if they have spinach in their teeth.
3. You have sex for the first time. Perhaps all those jokes about “diverted blood flow” are more accurate than we realize, since not one man could not give me a straight answer on what they’re thinking when they first hop in the sack. As best as I could gather, it’s a scrambled hodgepodge of excitement and terror, a desire to have orgasms and successfully give them, and the whole mess is smothered with their own personal kinks. Complicating matters more, some men intentionally try to think about anything but sex (work, cars, golf, you name it), using mental distraction as way to improve sexual stamina. The end result? A man’s inner monologue during your first sexual encounter with them might sound like someone with Tourette Syndrome winning the lottery—or a golf announcer being tickled by strippers.
4. You cry in front of him. Female tears put male senses on red alert—their brains start screaming, “She’s sprung a leak, Captain! Quickly, do something before we all drown!” Sometimes, however, men think your tears are fake, and those warning signals become about you, not what made you cry. Gary, a 24 year old from Luton, England, says “Even if her tears are not genuine, comforting her is the right thing to do, because she may be trying to see how much I actually care.” Karl, a 27-year-old stock broker from New York had a less compassionate outlook: “I view this as major weakness and an attempt to manipulate me. I hate it and if it’s really early [in the relationship] I lose all true interest and will not take her seriously.”
5. He doesn’t call. Lorne confessed that when a man says “I was too busy to call,” it’s probably code for “I’m not that interested.” Other men gave me so many excuses (some legitimate, some questionable) that I felt like a school teacher asking for last night’s homework. I was holding my breath, waiting to hear someone say “It’s not my fault! My dog ate her phone number!” A surprising number of men, however, revealed that they’re not calling on purpose, as a test. Karl says “I will not call to observe a girl’s behavior. Will she call me? Will she go nuts and call 50 times? I give it a few days or so before I respond. It shows me if she’s needy and unstable.”
6. He meets your parents and friends. Often men are thrown off-guard from being paraded around, thinking they must defend themselves from judgment (“I am not a creature in a zoo!” says Gary). But more often they’re asking themselves questions like, “Could I be friends with these people?“ and sometimes, according to a few brutally honest men, “Could I sleep with any of her friends?”  Most often of all? They’re judging too, sizing up your father in the event of a nasty breakup, and then checking out your mother, wondering if you (and your waistline) will someday look just like her.
7. You discuss the future. While there was certainly a group of boys who didn’t seem prepared to talk engagement, marriage and children with a woman, most men I interviewed seemed comfortable with thinking about the future. “If we’re talking about the future, I’m in it with you,” said Lorne. Almost every man who wanted to talk about the future, however, naively pictured marriage and family as enhancements to their current life, instead of a replacement for it. As a married man with two daughters, I kept my mouth shut about the truth; you can thank me later.
8. You have your first fight. When that first major disagreement arises, my friend Frank says a committed man’s mind takes a short journey, starting out at “What is wrong with her?” making a quick pit stop at “I have to fix this,“ and finally arriving at “I’ll just say I was wrong.” Derrick, 39, from Columbus, Georgia, says of his first fight, “She had her first fight. I just listened and kept the conversation moving.”  And Lorne wondered, “How soon until we have make-up sex?”
9. 9. He cheats on you. When men talk about their past affairs, there’s a tendency to deny any thought involved (“I wasn’t thinking”) or to diminish its importance (“It was just sex”). But remember what I said about men’s thoughts when they have sex for the first time? The cheating mind is no different. Their thought processes are on overdrive, first reveling in their naughty behavior, then planning alibis, and for many, finally psychologically flogging themselves with guilt. Frank says, “Regardless of how it happens, eventually you come to one big, understated word resonating through your head—Oops.”

10.  You move in together. Brad Berkowitz, author of The 21^st Century Guide to Bachelorhood (iUniverse, $12.95), offered me a comprehensive list of all the negative thoughts filling the minds of many men: “Moving in together will be a big adjustment. I will have less personal space. I will have less closet space. I will see my friends less often. I will have less free time. She will talk too much. She will continuously ask me questions when I want to watch football. She will take 80% of the bathroom space. She will not understand the ways guys think.”

In the end, despite all their fears, occasionally misguided ideas, and sex-scrambled attitudes, and despite the overwhelming evidence that men think differently that women, men remained optimistic, and the overwhelming majority reported that they truly wanted the same things as women—a secure relationship, an intimate connection, and long-lasting passion. Which makes me wonder—if we all want the same thing, does it really matter if we understand what the opposite sex thinks about it along the way? Probably not. But it’s still nice to try.

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