schmalz Today we’re here with Jonathan Vaughters, el capitan of the Garmin Slipstream team, and Jonathan how do you explain the aggressive way you were growing your sideburns during the Tour?

JV (laughs) Yeah, the point was kind of getting a little bit stretched around almost in a mustache General Beuregard manner. I think a lot of it has to do with the hotel rooms I’m in sometimes don’t have mirrors, so I’m actually shaving the sideburns based on feel as opposed to sight. It’s hard… It’s hard to keep that up for three weeks.

schmalz Careful Vaughters’ facial hair watchers contend that once the burns meet that portends, along with pestilence, the end of the world – the coming of days. It’s bad news, so everyone was really concerned when they saw that.

JV Yeah, they were getting close, that’s for sure. I’ve actually pulled them back a little bit, in anticipation of my re-patriation into the United States.

schmalz Well, it will make your time through customs a lot easier – you’re going to avoid a cavity search that way. If you can take the burns down a notch and look less like a French carnie, you’re going to be able to get into the country a lot easier.

JV Right, right, well, some of us look forward to cavity searches – it’s the best part of international travel.

schmalz Oh, you haven’t been searched until you’ve been searched in Greece!

JV (laughs) Exactly.

schmalz Your team had a good Tour, a surprising Tour, were you surprised by what Bradley Wiggins pulled off or did you know what was going to happen?

JV It’s a little bit like Christian last year in that I am surprised that Bradley finished almost on the podium. I am not surprised – I was thinking that he would be on the outskirts of the top ten. Before the Tour he was doing a couple of power tests just like Christian was the year before – uphill and in a 10 mile time trial that he did up in England, and I knew that the power to weight ratio was right at world class. He was doing 480 watts at 72 kilos for a 20-25 minute time, so I knew that Brad would be one of the most powerful riders in the Tour; but the question was whether he could sustain it for three weeks. My prediction beforehand, and I said this to Doug Ellis, I said, "I think Brad will have the yellow jersey at Andora after the Pyrenees." I wasn’t sure whether he was going to make it through the Alps or Ventoux. If you look at it from a standpoint of "How do you not make the split one day with Lance in front and the Columbia guys?", had a couple of little things had gone slightly different, he would’ve been in yellow after Andora. So the prediction wasn’t that far off, the question mark that I wasn’t sure of was how his durability would be all the way to Paris, and he proved his durability was just fine. So, there you go.

schmalz Yeah, and it looks like the forced starvation program you have him on is paying big dividends…

JV It’s funny, I had dinner with Brad last night; and we had this Spanish eight course tasting meal at a Michelin Star restaurant. And I’ve never seen someone actually eat $19, tiny plate food so quickly, it was pretty amazing.  He was basically sucking down the scallops and caviar like they were sliders from White Castle.

schmalz That’s funny, because he looks scary skinny, it looks like he only smells food right now.

JV He’s already put on two kilos from the end of the Tour. He really had himself down to a bare, bare minimum for the Tour. It’s pretty impressive – the discipline it took for him to get that way.

schmalz It looked like his shorts were pleated – he was so skinny.

JV (laughs) Well, they actually are that’s a new fashion – along with argyle – we’re going with pleating next year.

schmalz That’s going to go over well. Does Alberto prefer to have his Garmin unit speak to him in Spanish or English? How does that work?

JV (laughs) Well, Alberto, uh, he doesn’t really speak that much English yet so, you  know… I’m hoping for the Ricardo Montalban version which can go back and forth between English and Spanish.

schmalz So are you making him mix tapes or anything – trying to get him to come over to Garmin, how’s that working?

JV Well, we have absolutely no control over whether Alberto comes to Garmin or any other team at this point in time. Even though Bruyneel and Lance are going off and making their team, Alberto still has a contract with the Khazaks for 2010, so as far as we are concerned… I don’t really know what he’s doing with that.

schmalz So you haven’t been sending flowers or just putting it out there?
 
JV Well, it’s one of those thing where, as much as we’d love Alberto, I really don’t know if we want to mess the Khazak Defense Minister on that front. It just seems that would be an unadvisable thing to do.

schmalz A bunch of guys in argyle taking on the Eastern Bloc, I don’t see how that could go wrong…

JV No, no, no, well… (laughs)

schmalz So what’s the vetting process? Because you’re probably in the season right now where you’re looking at signing guys for next year, what’s your vetting process like? How’s it different when you’re with Garmin with your team controls?

JV It’s different for us right off the bat, because we don’t quite have as big of a budget as a lot of the other big teams. So, well, we have to look at riders like Brad, for instance; last year where he’s not necessarily a proven entity and you just sort of take a gamble that he ends up being something special – and that gamble obviously paid off. Or the year before with Christian Vande Velde, where you’re taking a proven domestique and saying "OK, now you’re going to be a team leader." Our recruitment process is more diverse maybe than a lot of teams in that we’re always trying to look at things from a slightly different angle and seeing if we can find some hidden talent or unearth the new revelation of the year because that’s just the way we have to do it. Buying the blue chips for our team, with the budget we have, it’s not really an option. And then you have to throw into the equation that we are incredibly thorough with medical testing, and sometime those things don’t work in unison – they’re very contrarian. A lot of times the bargain basement riders, that you think "Oh, this guy would be great! He can kick ass!" or whatever. Those may be the guys that have had anti-doping infractions, or things in  their past that you don’t necessarily want to deal with, and that’s the reason they’re a bargain. So finding the rider that is a good value and can really grow the next year and doesn’t have any sort of issues in their history – it’s a difficult process.

schmalz Well, it’s a tough combination: talented, affordable and clean is not really a lot of riders out there, so you probably just have to go young.

JV Well, we’ve signed Jack Bowbridge, Peter Stentina, Travis Myers is coming on board – we’ve got a lot of young talent – Michele Krater, Raymond’s older brother, who’s probably the top U-23 in the world. All of these guys.. It’s funny because one thing that we did very successfully with Martin Maaskant and Dan Martin is we became, amongst the young riders in Europe and around the world, the team that has a reputation of "Wow! Here’s a team you can go to and they’re willing to let you have your own opportunities and go off and race for yourself the first year." Look at
Martin Maaskant, getting fourth place in Paris Roubaix as a neo pro, or look at all of the performances of Dan Martin. The thing we’ve got working for us now which we didn’t have two years ago is that all the young riders think of our team as sort of like the cool hip team to go to that you can really progress at. So that helps us out a lot in the young rider market for sure.

schmalz Yeah, you give them a lot of opportunity, and the argyle is so fetching that people can’t resist.

JV Well, in that young 20s crowd, all I know is – chicks dig it – and we all know how important chicks are to 21 year old guys.

schmalz Yes, right – so why do you hate George Hincapie? Can you tell me exactly why? What’s the reason? Is it because he’s beautiful? What is it, Jonathan?

JV (laughs) Well, it all goes back to when George beat me in the 1988 junior 15-16 championships in Reading, Pennsylvania.

schmalz Ha! That’s it!

JV Yeah that’s it. No, George has been a friend of mine my entire life. An American in the yellow jersey would have been great, and, I don’t know, it’s unfortunate it didn’t happen for him.

schmalz But you weren’t even in the car that day, were you? You didn’t make any call as far as chasing or anything…

JV No, I was actually, it’s a bit embarrassing in some ways, I was actually in Beaune that day which is the center of the Burgundy Region taking a couple of days away from the race before they headed into the Alps.

schmalz What would you be doing in Burgundy, Jonathan? What could you possibly find to do there?

JV Ah, well, you know I actually found a pair of Ferragamo loafers at the store that was right next to the hotel I was staying in, they were on sale. This time of year it’s sort of the big sales in Europe where they try to get everything out of the store before they all go on vacation. So I got some excellent Ferragamo loafers, and then, of course, there’d be the whole wine tasting thing, which, yes, I was going to a few places in Beaune

schmalz Ferragamo loafers and burgundy wine, anyone else, I’d think that might be a joke, Jon, but knowing it’s coming from you, that’s not a joke, is it?

JV On a more serious note, I’m an adequate, maybe even a pretty good directeur sportif. Not as good as Matt White, so Matt is our head directeur on the road. My strengths lie more in recruiting sponsorship, recruiting riders, finding new talent, doing reconnaissance of the time trial courses, and the management of the entire company from the financial side, the marketing side, from the sporting side, the overview of the entire thing. So I’m not on the race every single day. The last ten days have been busier for me than during the Tour de France. During the Tour, I come into the race for a few days, out of the race for a few days.

Johan Bruyneel, for instance, does that in a different way. He’s very hands on in the car, and sometimes I do that too. On stages I know I can be helpful, but Matt’s really good at his job, it’s more useful for me to be entertaining a group of sponsors, or potentially meeting with the organizers of the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and the UCI, my role as the head of the AIGCP, trying to strengthen the position of the teams.

So I come in and out of races, people are surprised when they hear that. A cycling team is a ten-fifteen million dollar operation, anywhere from 50-80 employees in total, it’s a large multi-national corporation. So you really have to work quite a bit, there’s a lot more than training and racing. Matt White is exemplary with the riders, so I try to stay out of his business.

schmalz Were you surprised at how big a deal having George in yellow for a day became?

JV He’s an American icon, and I think that he’s got a lot of fans, he’s a good guy, he’s a nice person, he’s a really genteel, honest good person, and I think people, his fans, pick up on that. People wanted to see him in yellow, so it doesn’t really surprise me that people were upset that he wasn’t in that by the end of the day.

schmalz Who do we lay the blame on? After the stage George said he was insulted by the way Astana rode, and I think somebody might’ve twitted something about you guys going to the front at 10k to go… Trying to control the end of bike races is like trying to stack squirrels into a pyramid. There’s so many things that happen, it’s that close and that little amount of time, it’s hard to control what’s going on. What’s your take on that?

JV Everyone was just out racing their bikes that day, and it’s just unfortunate George wasn’t in the jersey by the end of the day. But there’s no place to put blame on that.

schmalz I’m trying to think who I’m going to blame here. I’m really going to have to think hard about who to blame, then we’ll figure it out. Of course, we’re going to have to assign blame, and then somebody’s going to have to twitter about, and then we’ll see.

What’s the team going to look like for the Vuelta? Have you decided who’s going?

JV We haven’t decided the final Vuelta team, but we’re going to give some young guys who haven’t had the opportunity to do a three week tour a shot, like Dan Martin for instance. Svein Tuft, I’m hoping he makes the team, ’cause I think he’s worthy, Christian Meier, the Canadian brothers… We haven’t decided yet, we’re not going to decide until the Tour of Burgos is over. It’ll be a different mix of guys than the Tour and the Giro, it’ll be fun ’cause it’ll be a lot of guys who haven’t done a three week tour before, but a group of really talented guys. To me, Dan Martin could be the next revelation after the Brad Wiggins revelation after the Christian Vande Velde revelation. So maybe I should just read the Book of Revelations.

schmalz You’ll find out there’s a whole chapter on your sideburns, too.

JV Right.

schmalz So what wine does Alberto prefer with his dinner? Can you tell me that? After having taken him out in an attempt to sign him? Can you say?

JV Right. I don’t know what Alberto’s favorite wines are, have you been informed of my wine knighting?

schmalz Oh yeah, I thought that was some sort of tractor pulling society you’d been put into. I didn’t know it was a wine society.

JV Oh no, I was front page news in Châteauneuf-du-Pape I’ll have you know, which is a village of 18 people in the south of France.

schmalz What does this wine society entail? Is there a knighthood? Do you have to do certain feats of strength? What goes on?

JV Well, I’ll tell you about it, maybe I’ll even send you a photo. So Châteauneuf-du-Pape is one of the more famous southern Rhone wines denominations, it’s right near Mt. Ventoux. So the night before the Ventoux stage, Michel Blanc the vintner’s association of Châteauneuf-du-Pape invited me to be honored by the brotherhood of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the keyholders is the literal translation. So, the keyholders of Châteauneuf-du-Pape give you a key to enjoying good wine or something, they all dress up in purple robes, you have to do some chanting with them in French, which is really interesting after tasting a few bottles of wine before. But then at the end of the ceremony, whether you get your knighthood, or I should say your keyhood, or not, they put three glasses of wine in front of you. One is a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which is the correct answer, then there’s a cote du Ventoux, and a Cote du Rhone. You don’t know which one is which, and they’re all very similar wines in that they’re all Grenache varietals, they’re all grown right around the Mt. Ventoux. If you can correctly identify which is which, then you get your knighthood. If you don’t get it, then they boot you out back to being a peasant scooping up the poop of the horse.

I got the chanting mostly right, but luckily I got the blind taste test correct, so…

schmalz And after that, is that when they spanked you?

JV No, that’s later on, after you’ve actually drank a few bottles of the product, then that’s when the spanking begins.

schmalz That sounds like a great honor for you, might be completely lost on me, but sounds like you had a heck of a night there.

JV A heck of a ‘knight’.

schmalz So you took the wine Pepsi challenge and you’re in.

JV Exactly, you’re in.

schmalz What do you get now, do you get to just order people to smash grapes for you?

JV I haven’t quite figured that out. They definitely gave me a few bottles of free wine, but I think it was more of an honor, let’s say. I don’t know if there’s any actual free goods. I was hoping for land, I do consider myself landed gentry at heart, but sadly my parents who raised me in suburban Denver don’t agree with my assertations of having blue blood.

schmalz So you just really wanted a spanking and a fiefdom out of this?

JV Fiefdom, that sounds good. Not many people run their own fiefdom.

schmalz It’s a lost art these days. So Vinokourov’s back.

JV Oh goody.

schmalz Is he doing the Vuelta?

JV I. Don’t. Know. I have no idea.

schmalz I’m assuming he’s going to be with Astana? I’ve only seen him in this, there’s a picture of him in this psychotic jersey of him with a jersey that’s him with his face just below his real face. It’s like one of those endless Escher things going on.

JV Maybe that’s what I should do with wine. Maybe I should just demand that Châteauneuf-du-Pape be printed only with labels of sideburns on each side of the bottle.

schmalz Now you’re in my wheelhouse! Get that in a box and ship that over to me and we’re set. Do they make a wine cooler version of that? Anything with raspberries involved?

JV No, no. Rosés are excellent in that part of the world, but nothing with added sugar just yet.

schmalz Nothing from the Chateau is a cooler – that’s more of a "Shed behind the Chateau" thing?

JV It seen that they just haven’t caught up to the modern palate.

schmalz Mmm, that’s too bad – so how are you going to get Tyler around Cavendish?

JV Well that’s a…

schmalz He was second how many times? He was probably second to Cavendish 3 or 4 times at the Tour…

JV I think it was maybe more than that, I’m not really sure – if you count the Champs as an effective second as opposed to a third – but anyway… There’s a couple of thing that need to happen, one, we need to strengthen up our team that’s around him, and I think I have some good riders coming aboard that are going to do that. And two, I think that Tyler, well, they are essentially the same age, but Tyler – his first Grand Tour he ever finished – was the Tour de France this year; he’s not quite as experienced at those top level sprints as Cavendish is. And we as a team are not quite as experienced as Columbia is at setting them up. So to me it’s a matter of time and a little bit of luck, and if we can get those two things together, I think we’ll be in business.

schmalz Well, if Cavendish weren’t around, Tyler would be the best in the world right now.

JV Yeah, I know – it’s amazing, huh?

schmalz Not to discount Tyler’s talent, but Cavendish is just on such a roll right now.

JV Well, Cavendish is potentially the most talented sprinter of all time, so it is a tough position for Tyler, but, end of the day, I think every time Tyler wins, it makes it that much sweeter. That he pulled it off, that he wasn’t sprinting against a weak field or a generation that wasn’t that talented. In my opinion, he’s sprinting against the most talented sprinter of all time, so when you beat that, it says something.

schmalz Well, it’s one of those loathsome other sports analogies, he’s basically playing against Michael Jordan right now.l He got such a talent level and he’s able to dominate right now, and for the next couple of years it’s going to be very interesting to see who can get around him. So maybe he’ll get the runs one day or eat something bad at the buffet and end up having the trots out on the road, so we’ll see how that goes. I imagine you’re going to be sneezing on the buffet over at Columbia if you get the chance…

JV (laughs) I already do regularly.

schmalz Well, I know because you two teams don’t like each other, or are alleged to not like each other, so who can tell?

JV You know, I just got off the phone with Bob Stapleton just right before I called you actually. Bob and I get along really well. There was a lot more made out about Bob and I not liking one another by other people, I think if you call Bob, he’ll say, "I get along just fine with JV." And I certainly get along well with Bob. I mean, he’s got a goatee – I’ve got sideburns.

schmalz You’ve got your facial hair going on. Has Bob been inducted into any secret French spanking societies also?

JV No, no, Bob doesn’t share my love for alcohol.

schmalz What are his views on loafers?

JV Yeah, he doesn’t like loafers either. Bob is very much a Levi’s 501 and Reebok cross trainer kind of guy. That’s Bob.

schmalz What a Philistine! I can’t imagine. I’ll not stand it!

JV Linen pants and loafers just don’t go down with Bob so well.

schmalz Just for the people reading at home – which teams do you hate? Is it that Garmin hates Astana. or is it Columbia?

JV At the top level of sports any time the competition is really fierce everything gets put under the microscope and there’s going to be rivalries in the sport. Hate is a pretty strong word, at the end of the day, it’s racing bikes. Sometimes the competition is very intense – as it should be… If you look at it in another way, if you look at next year, and the three most powerful teams in cycling, OK, maybe not in the Classics, but in the Tour de France next year the three most powerful cycling teams in the world are going to be: Columbia, Radio Shack, and us. Which is kind of cool. Three American teams battling it out, that’s interesting.

schmalz What’s your feeling on the way the whole Armstrong/Contador thing went down? Did you ever see Alberto along the side of the road trying to hitch a ride to get to the time trial beforehand because they ran out of cars for him – did that ever happen? Did you ever find him out there without a place to sleep?

JV (laughs) Well, you’ve got two guys that are born winners, and I think it was very difficult to house them in the same place – do you ever watch those National Geographic Specials with the wolf packs and there’s the alpha wolf and there’s the young wolf that’s getting bigger and stronger every year?

schmalz Boy, do I! With the little whelps coming up and they get weaned from their mother’s milk. Yeah, I watch all that stuff…

JV That’s what I think of when I look at the Lance and Alberto thing; it goes to the National Geographic wolf pack program, and there can only be one alpha. I don’t know, it’s complicated with a lot of teeth and snarling and fur.

schmalz It seemed like they were going to let what happened out in the road decide things, and when Alberto had his attack that gained eight seconds on the last kilometer of the race; I think that’s where Alberto tried to jump in and say, "Hey, it’s my team." And I don’t know that everyone got on the same page with him after that.

JV Right, he is a massively talented bike rider, and if you look at him in the Tour, he’s never really put under that much pressure. So I think that those attacks in some ways, he may have underestimated his own strength in that he was attacking and thinking, "OK, I’ll attack and then someone else will counter and whatever else." But instead he’s just such a massively talented rider, he was just obliterating everyone every time he would attack. I just admire the guy’s talent and his class – it’s pretty incredible really.

schmalz His attacks were just uphill sprints, and he was able to gain so much distance so quickly that no one was able to counter what he was doing – he would just jump, get that distance and hold it. It was pretty incredible to watch. It was exciting in one way, but it did make the race uneventful because you could just see that he was going to go, he was going to get that gap, and he was going to hold it.

JV Yeah, the excitement of the Tour de France this year was the battle for the podium, it wasn’t the battle for first place. The battle for first place was over at Verbier, but the battle for second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth was, I don’t know, pretty interesting. Of course, we thought it was interesting, we were right in the middle of it.

schmalz I thought it was very interesting and I think that everyone should have a Twitter account now so they can get catty with one another and – it’s dynamite – I think it’s great. I would actually give everyone a Twitter account and maybe some red wine before they went on their Twitter account, and then that would be perfect.

JV You know, that it’s illegal in certain states I think, drinking while Twittering.

schmalz Twittering under the influence?

JV Yeah, Twittering under the influence because you can hurt people’s feelings doing that.

schmalz Did someone hurt your feeling Twittering, Jonathan? Is this what this is all coming back to?

JV I’ve got my feelings hurt many, many times Twittering or Tweeting… But I guess it’s just something I’m going to have to grow up and adjust to.

schmalz Yes, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention in this interview that Julian Dean actually got shot while he was racing the Tour de France.

JV You know he actually just had surgery last night to finally remove the thing, because at first they thought, "Ah, you know, it will work its way out. Don’t worry about it." And then, well, it got infected and it got a little worse, and then his finger was swollen to the size of an Illinois cucumber, so yesterday he had to have the pellet removed.

schmalz I didn’t know that the pellet was lodged in there, I heard that Oscar pulled one out of his leg during the stage, but I thought that Julian had just got scratched, I didn’t know that he had it lodged in his finger.

JV No, no, it was in his finger, So he raced the Tour with a little bit of extra weight. Greg  Lemond was actually there to advise him on how to deal with that, so…

schmalz Greg Lemond was helping him out, talking him through it, holding his hand – that’s nice of him.

JV Exactly.

schmalz Well, speaking of Greg Lemond, he did pop up during the Tour and had some comments about Alberto’s climbing prowess. So, how do you feel about that Jonathan?

JV Well, what he was basing it on was the VAM rate on Verbier, with VAM meaning your vertical ascension rate – how many meters up you’re going and how fast you’re going up. And the comparison he was making was to some riders in the 90s that had climbed at around the same rate, the flaw in the comparison that Greg was making was that Verbier was a 19 minute climb, and the climbs that he was comparing it to were 45 minute efforts, so you’re looking at essentially twice the length of effort. So I can see what Greg is after, and Greg is certainly a massive proponent of clean cycling, and I really like that about the guy, and he’s really an intelligent person, I like Greg, I get along with him. But to me, the math on that – I just wouldn’t want to make that comparison, because it’s comparing a 20 minute climb to a 40 minute climb, and the VAM rate thereof. So I’m not sure those are as comparable as – it’s not apples to apples…

schmalz The thing is that it ended up being the fastest climb in Tour history, and the trouble that pops up is that second place is Bjarne Riis in 1996, That’s the year he admitted to having a red sludge flowing through his veins, so that’s the big problem.

JV Right, and again I think that was on Sestriere or Hautacam?

schmalz I think it was Hautacam…

JV Yeah, again, it’s a much, much longer climb than Verbier.

schmalz It’s almost like he’s comparing a shorter interval effort, you know what I mean? Because the distances of the climbs are so different.

JV Yeah, exactly, I mean, at the end of the day, I don’t know specifically how Alberto won the Tour or didn’t win the Tour or whatever else, but to me, the math comparison there – I would like to look at it a little bit more objectively before condemning anyone.

schmalz And the Tour did come out as a clean one, except for Astarloza, who was caught in June, but he’s protesting his innocence right now so we’ll see how that turns out. But the Tour these days doesn’t really end until September or whenever they finish all the drug tests, so maybe the GC will change between now and then, there’s rumblings that there’s a new test out there so we’ll see what happens.

JV Yeah, WADA shot an email at me, the AFLD, UCI, all of those acronyms, they’re doing a very good job of keeping up – not only keeping up – but continually pushing the limits of testing and keeping the samples correctly stored so they can re-test them years later. I that’s all great, and I think that’s all very very good news for athletes and cycling in general, and all of us really, because it sets the bars where the bar is and I think in general cyclist are much more comfortable knowing that they can go in and win races clean, so I think that’s a fun thing to see. And if you look at the big controversies in the Tour this year had nothing to do with doping, and to me, that is the most positive that happened in this year’s Tour de France is that, sure there were controversies and they had nothing to do with cheating, doping, et cetera…

schmalz Yeah, I mean it was great that the only controversy was that you chased George HIncapie with 10k to go. Am I whipping a dead horse there? I don’t know maybe I am…

JV (laughs)

schmalz Yeah, but it was all "on the road" stuff this year – on the road and on the internet on Twitter, apparently. I guess that’s the way it should be?

JV "Twitter-versies".

schmalz Yeah, Twitter-versies, it should all be when you’re either pedaling or typing, that’s when we want to see the big things happen.

JV Exactly.

schmalz Well, Johnathan, thank you for your time. As always, it’s been very entertaining. Good luck with the rest of the year, hopefully you’ll get all the equipment at Garmin working; you’ll get the bus back up to speed and get the air conditioning working – was it the air conditioning that was the problem?

JV (laughs) Our bus continuously has problems. We have the oldest and cheapest bus in the peloton, but now that we have a new Briggs and Stratton five horsepower engine in the bak of that thing, I think that we’re set.

schmalz Sweet, you know what? The bus is good as long as the bathroom works. That’s the main thing you have to watch out for.

JV The problem is that Zabriskie is always flushing down his sani-wipes and occasionally clogs up the shitter. So Zabriskie making a very sanitary environment for himself creates an very unsanitary environment for a larger group of people.

schmalz Is it a germ thing with the sani-wipes or is it a cleanliness thing?

JV Oh, Dave doesn’t like germs.

schmalz Ah, is Dave going to be walking around with the tissue boxes on his feet soon? Is he going to go the Howard Hughes route?

JV That might be a good nickname for Zabriskie, I never thought of that, Howard Hughes…

schmalz If he starts growing his fingernails uncontrollably, then you’ll know something’s up. Or if he becomes a test pilot.