the m00se

Moo.

• Name: Dustin
• Nicknames: m00se, DT, Curio, Dee, Night moves (don’t ask)
• Birthday: Friday the 13th
• Zodiac: Scorpio Sun, Gemini Moon – also a Rooster
• Height: Between Vertically Gifted and Holy Crap!
• Eyes: Blue
• Hair: Brown (Might go Platinum for the IM.)
• Pets: Argos (Dog)
• Hobbies: Writing, 3D Modeling, Film making, coffee connoisseur-ing, Daydreaming,

Favorites

• Colors: Orange, Yellow, Blue
• Food: Sushi
• Candy: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (King size, baby – yeah!)
• Beverage: Coffee, coffee, coffee.
• Alcoholic Beverage: Bud Lite, Pear Cider, Snake Bites, or Pear Vodka 7Up. (I don’t actually drink very often.)
• Music Genre: Depends on the mood; Country, Rock, Alternative, Metal
• Band: Tool
• Song: The Parabol / Parabola pairing by Tool
• Actors: Kevin Spacey, John Malcovitch, Christian Bale, Meryl Streep
• Movies: The Man Who Wasn’t There, Fargo, American Beauty
• TV Shows: Dexter, Family Guy, American Dad, MythBusters, Whale Wars
• Sport: Swimming!!
• Pig-out food: Punkin’ Pie
• Quote: “Chance makes a plaything of man’s life.” Seneca
• Favorite Shoes: My cowboy boots

Triathlon-Related:

• Favorite carbo-loaded meal: Anything with Pesto!!!
• Pre-race psych-up song: That’s a hard one. Lateralus by Tool
• Post-race song: Evenflow or Alive, by Pearl Jam
• Three things that scare you:
  • Doom squirrels and miscellaneous wildlife
  • Inept Drivers
  • Bonking
• Three goals you have:
  • Finishing an IronMan
  • Finishing an IronMan in a foreign country OR Hawaii.
  • Swimming the English Channel.

The m00se likes his brew.

Here, the m00se can be seen drinking from his favorite local stream. Usually, he rises to the occasion once he’s had just the right amount of mud, and he takes his mud with 2 sugars, and cream. The m00se is a strange creature, indeed!

Hi there. I guess an introduction might not go amiss. Most people call me Dustin, and sometimes people call me Dee. Most of my life has been fairly uneventful, from the outside looking in. I’ll try not to give you my whole life story.

I’m a fairly lanky twenty-something living in the burbs of beautiful Colorado — one of the only places that I’ve ever felt at home. My height has garnered me a good many questions about basketball, for some odd reason. Here it is: Six-foot-nine, no I didn’t play basketball, and no, just because I jump into one side of the pool doesn’t mean that I could reach the side before everyone else. (Lots of complex body dynamics and hydrodynamic principle going on there.)

Heh. Sorry to piss in your Cherios.

With anything in life, there are advantages and disadvantages to being this tall, especially in the athletic arena. Water-wise, I have more mass to pull through the water than most, but on the other side of the proverbial quarter, my wingspan allows me a lower stroke count and a longer stride while swimming. Should that come together with technique and speed, I could be tearing up the lanes. Most of the times, when I’m racing, technique seems to butterfly out the window.

This body wasn’t really meant for running, either. Much as I try, I still don’t like running, and it takes me a lot to roll out of bed in the morning to actually take a jog around the park. Tall people have bad joints, and I’m lucky that mine have held up as well as they have.

I do love biking. It’s my second love to water, but again, the height factor here is a disadvantage. Sure, most cyclists are small or average sized. You don’t see too many 60cm road bike frames out there, much less 63 or 64cm frames. That, and they just don’t make production-run triathlon frames my size, especially in carbon. (This is why I’m riding a TitanFlex. It’s plenty big for me, and easily adjustable.) Weight’s a factor, too. I once taco’ed my front tire coming around a corner because it wasn’t built to handle my weight. And this was a crunchy taco, too! Damn, that hurts thinking about it.

My first real foray into athletics was when I was about ten. A few of the kids I went to school with liked to push my buttons, and liked to watch me freak out. Mom thought it’d be good for me to get involved with some sort of team sport, so she signed me up with swimming. While a great sport, she didn’t realize then that she was shaping this amphibious video editor for better things.

While the kids didn’t get much better, by the beginning of seventh grade I started seeing a kinesiologist who my family still lovingly refers to as Dr. Dan. Always being the tallest in my class, I had a few joint and back issues. Not only did Dr. Dan help bypass those in a motion smoother than margarin on hot concrete, he also helped me balance my body chemistry — a field of work that interests me to this very day.

I swam through high school, skipped my Junior Year in favor of a trip to Greece, and really came to life my Senior Year, when my family packed up and moved to Wyoming. I might not have been the fastest in the pool, by any means, but as much as I tried, I gave it my all.

That is, until my adrenals shut down.

Being far away from Dr. Dan wreaked havoc on my endocrine system, and a few people in my family have had issues with their thyroid-thingee-mabobs. I started taking supplements for my thyroid, to help regulate my adrenal glands, and moved on. Still to this day, I occasionally have issues with my thyroid and adrenals.

I set up this website as a journal for my adventures into the world of multi-sport. It’s a little for my friends, a little for my family, and out there for anyone who might get a kick out of it. I’m not much more than a little m00se, trying to find his way.

Frank: “Has goldfinger ever had a flock of mooses advancing on him? It’s a terrifying sight.”
Mikey: “That’s not the plural of moose, it’s moosi.”
Gerard: “F**k off, it’s meese.”
— My Chemical Romance