Here he is folks: 66 kilos of unabashed ignorance and arrogance. According to this guy, if you eat meat you'll end up an obese, caffeine-addicted, walking tumour. Don't dare question him, because he knows everything. Says who? He does.
Neville writes:
This psycho vegan reckons he belts you up the Corkscrew, whatever that is.
You've most likely heard of him; he calls himself Durian and Harley, and has that 30 Bananas a Day vegan site:
"You know what is HILARIOUS about this post brah? Anthony Colpo is a local rider to me and NOW eats high carb, low fat. (He still doesnt want to hit the local bergs with me cos he knows I will kick his a'ss and make a blog post about it lol!) Come on AC, step up brah! Corkscrew is only 2.56km! "
http://forum.cyclingnews.com/
Neville.
Anthony replies:
Hi Neville,
“Corkscrew” is Corkscrew Road, a short but steep (average gradient 9.4%) section of road that runs from Gorge Road through to Montacute Road in the Adelaide Hills. It ain't the Mortirolo, but hey, this is relatively mountainless Australia. Despite having logged a lot of miles in the Adelaide Hills, I rode Corkscrew Road for the first time only six weeks ago. I’ve long avoided Gorge Road due to the kind of lunatic car drivers and motorcyclists the road is well known to attract (the section near the reservoir is a well-known accident hot spot).
As for “Durianrider”, I first heard of him earlier this year, after Castle Grok sent me a link to a blog post by Mr Rider regarding the pathetic physical condition of popular Paleo/low-carb commentators. I totally agree with Rider on this point, and never cease to be amazed at how people will take advice from so-called ‘experts’ who can’t even begin to get their own butts in shape.
That’s where the similarities between Rider and I end. Rider is a vegan; I’m an omnivore who thinks veganism is a load of unscientific bollocks. I’ve presented an extensive amount of published scientific evidence to support my case; from a cursory glance around Rider’s site, all he is able to present in support of veganism is his bike riding mileage, recommendations to read popular format garbage like The China Study and The Skinny Bitch Diet, and a generous serving of caustic ridicule of anyone who dares (correctly) point out that vegan diets have a number of nutritional shortcomings.
As for Rider’s claims that I refuse to “hit the local bergs” with him, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about when I first read the passage you’ve quoted. No-one by the name of Durianrider had ever made any attempt to contact me, let alone challenge me to some kind of contest in the Adelaide Hills.
But the name “Harley” in your email rang a bell, so I ran a search for the word “Harley” in my email inbox, and retrieved the following conversation from almost 6 months ago:
[No further reply from Yours Truly due to distinct lack of interest in "Harley's" dialogue]
So some guy writes and asks me if I’ve ever ridden up Corkscrew, I reply in the negative, and in his mind that constitutes a challenge that I allegedly cowered away from?
It’s times like this I really, really miss Melbourne…
Adelaide: The “City of Churches”, serial killings, bikie shootings, and annoying vegan loudmouths who will do anything to attract attention.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you carefully scrutinize the above exchange between myself and Mr Rider, it should be readily apparent that my interest in establishing some kind of rapport with him was (and is) somewhere between zero and none. Hence my short, nebulous replies. Maybe Mr Rider is upset that his overtures to start a friendship with me went unrequited. Sorry Rider, but when I got an anonymous email from someone with poor spelling, a need to ramble on, and calling himself “Harley” with an email address starting with "Veganbobster"...hmmm, let’s see…Harley…Bobster…Vegan… I immediately assumed the sender was a Harley-riding vegan. Given that Harley Davidsons are a clichéd but evidently essential accessory for every try-hard that wants to come off like a bad ass, and that veganism is an unscientific wank, “Harley” never stood a chance of winning my acquaintance from the outset.
Furthermore, given my penchant for attracting disgruntled nutters, I can’t help being suspicious of anonymous emailers who write asking where I ride and what sort of a bike I ride…
I see that “Harley” included a signature that reads:
“i eat up to 70 bananas a day..check our site at
www.30bananasaday.com”
Forgive me for not dropping everything and clicking the link to his site, but when someone’s biggest claim to fame is eating 70 bananas a day…
Rider had little chance of winning me over with his first attempts at contact, and after reading his latest load of bollocks, he has even less chance. If Mr Rider wants me to even begin to take him seriously, he needs to do 2 things:
--Stop acting like he is the super-coolest, all-knowing, almighty, supreme being just because he is able to log thousands of miles on a bike without keeling over while following a vegan diet. My response to Rider’s endurance feats, if they are truthfully reported is: well done! My response to his claim that he performs these feats while eating a vegan diet: Big deal!
Given that vegan diets are nutritionally inferior to omnivorous diets, who’s to say he wouldn’t do even better on a mixed diet? But noooo, in Rider’s world, a mixed diet automatically equates to a pathetically inadequate low-carb Paleo diet. Like all incurable dogmatists, Rider loves a good false dichotomy.
We've all read the stories about centenarians who smoked and drank whiskey every day. Using Rider’s logic, if you want to live to 100 this means you should start smoking and putting away a couple of glasses of Scotland’s finest every day! Hey everyone, ciggies and booze are good for you!
I’m sorry, but I really do think that people who issue totally unprovoked challenges to others are really, really sad creatures, who clearly suffer some inadequacy for which they seek to compensate for by big-noting themselves. The thread you link to was started by Rider himself and is titled:
“Look at me, I am a Vegan! Can I persuade you to become one too?”
Yeah, look at me, please, I need the attention! I need the external validation, pleeeaase!!
How sad.
Trash talk is just that: Trash. And trash is something that Mr Rider evidently does well.
Just what is it about vegans that makes them such a pack of militant, obnoxious, holier-than-thou, eternally angry fanatics? Lacto-ovo vegetarians don't generally act like this - in fact, most of the vegetarians I've known over the years have been truly nice folks. I'm guessing the more extreme nature of veganism attracts more extreme types of individuals (by the way Rider, are you the sadly misguided sod that has sprayed vegan graffiti along the bike path that leads to the old freeway??). I'm also guessing that, as with ketogenic low-carb diets and the screwball behaviour of so many of their adherents, the angry fanaticism that seems to be part and parcel of veganism has a biochemical basis. Studies repeatedly show that vegans suffer greater deficiencies of B12 - a vitamin critical for healthy brain and nervous system function - than their vegetarian counterparts.
Personally, I think the best course of action would be to ignore Rider’s attention-seeking antics, but I’m happy to accept Rider’s challenge … with one small proviso.
I currently weigh 81 kilograms at a height of 5’10”, which means my build is about as suited to hill climbing as Rider’s is for strongman contests. Because, unlike Mr Rider, I like to look like I can bench press something heavier than a Coke can, while having an above average level of fitness, I’m kind of caught in a no-man’s land. I’ll never be as big as some of my weight lifting acquaintances, and I’ll never be the best cyclist I could be. But that’s OK – given that I make my living out of neither, and that I generally couldn’t give a rat’s ass what other people think, at the end of the day it’s my own hybridized standards that I need live up to. I'll keep enjoying the benefits that my mixed training routine offers, thank you very much.
Rider’s challenge – which he never bothered to issue me directly – is rather unfair, given the distinctly different nature of our training regimens. So to even up the stakes a little I’m happy to accept his challenge-that-never-was - his mythical time trial contest up Corkscrew - providing he increases his body weight to match mine. I currently weigh 81 kilograms but am in the process of gaining more muscle, so if Rider is hellbent on seeing this challenge he better bulk up pronto. If I increase my weight in the near future to, say, 85 kilograms, then that will be the bodyweight Rider needs to match also.
(It’s about at this point that critics like Rider start accusing the targets of their hostility of “abusing” GH and anabolic steroids. I’m happy to submit to drug testing prior to and at the time of the event, but Rider has to pay for it, and he has to undergo the same testing himself. Of course, because vegan diets are the greatest nutritional regimens in the history of the universe and Rider is the smartest all-knowing dude in the history of everything, he won’t need anabolic enhancement to put on 15+ kilos of solid muscle…).
By the way Rider, if I happen to conclude in the near future that Adelaide is a bogan shitpit beyond salvation and move back to Melbourne, and it is not until after this occurs that your soy and banana overfeeding regimen finally sees you tipping the scales at 81+ kilos, then you'll need to pack the incense sticks, chakra crystals and your favourite Janis Joplin 8-track tapes, fire up the Kombi van, and get on over to Melbourne. Upon arriving, your goofball challenge will have to take place on Belgrave-Ferny Creek Road in Melbourne's Dandenongs, a rather memorable section of road with some of its gradients exceeding 20 degrees.
--The second thing Rider needs to do is stop lying about me. He claims I follow a high-carb, low-fat diet. I guess one out of two isn’t bad. It’s pathetic. My diet is currently around 15% protein, 30% fat, and 55% carbohydrate. Depending on who you listen to, 30% fat is low (the AHA) or high (critics of the Zone diet). I have little regard for the popular need to place labels on everything to help people’s feeble minds make sense of the world around them; let me just say that with a caloric intake that hovers between 3500 to 5500 daily, I probably eat more fat in a day than Rider eats in a week.
Regardless of how His Holiness Harley or Durian or whatever the hell his real name is chooses to proceed with his idiotic challenge, here’s my special New Year’s message to him, and the rest of my critics:
Grow up and get a life, for chrissakes.
For crying out loud, we're not even 48 hours into the New Year and I'm already attracting the whackos [Note to self: Make New Year's resolution to remove "Lunatics Welcome Here!" tattoo from forehead].
POSTSCRIPT: I've just been informed that in 2007, Channel 9's What's Good for You performed blood tests on a number of omnivores, a vegetarian, and a vegan. Guess who the vegan was? Yep, our unhinged buddy, Durianrider! His real name is Harley Johnstone, and according to dietician Susie Burrelloversaw, Johnstone's vitamin B12 level was "one of the lowest clinical levels we have ever seen!" At only 29 years of age and after only six years of meat-free eating, Johnstone's B12 was just 78. "That's drastically lower than the normal intake range from 145 to 637 and means our vegan could be susceptible to anaemia, blurry vision and loss of feeling in the hands and feet in the long term." Suddenly, Durianrider's irrational behaviour makes a lot more sense. Imagine what a mess this guy's head will be by the time he hits middle-age...
"...it's probably worth him discussing it with his GP or medical specialist," says Susie. Fat chance of that, because Harley Johnstone is of course the supreme omnipotent all-knowing, all-powerful Durianrider, who lives in a demented fantasy world where scientific reality means nothing.
The What's Good for You article can be read here.
PSS. It appears Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone has garnered himself quite the reputation as a forum super-troll. Just like the megaphone-wielding religious nutters that pollute Adelaide's dying Rundle Mall, Johnstone just can't leave well enough alone and has to militantly impose his views on others, whether they're interested or not. Starting arguments on Paleo forums is evidently one of Mr Johnstone's all-time favourite pastimes, and he's not above posing as a female poster to covertly sneak onto forums (hi "Leanne"!) This kind of transgender cyber-wierdness is reminiscent of low-carb super-troll Razzi/Razwell, who in his more estrogenic moments has posed under such monikers as "Dr Susan Harmony". I guess a troll's a troll, whether they're a constipated low-carber or an angry B12-deficient vegan suffering from chronic fructose-induced flatulence.
Ciao,
Anthony.
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I eat up to 6 bananas a day! Plus berries too! Am I the shit, or what!! Check out my website at:
AnthonyColpo.com
SEE ALSO: The Ugly Truth About Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone
Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist, and author of the groundbreaking books The Fat Loss Bible
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Consumer Alert: The Latest Rip-Off from Harley Johnstone a.k.a. Durianrider
Anthony Colpo vs The Evil Duo (Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone & South Australia Police): Part 1
Anthony Colpo vs The Evil Duo (Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone & South Australia Police): Part 2
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Six Reasons Why Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone is an Evil, Worthless Troll
The Ugly Truth About Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone
A brief response to accusations of fraud, steroid use and welfare receipt at Durianrider’s website
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