By day's end, the sports bar at the Howard Johnson's fills with hardy men in hunting clothes.
The alligator industry makes for an odd mix of hardy men on the bayou who smoke Camels and drive crumbling pickup trucks, and Paris and New York fashion setters who consider it reasonable to spend $12,000 on an alligator-strap watch.
In the 1930s, while determined and hardy men attempted to tunnel railways through solid pumice, a marginally less rugged Robert Byron busied himself describing Isfahan as a "common refreshment of humanity" in his classic travelogue The Road to Oxiana.
This is also the story of the hardy men who made this industry possible where they came from, what their homes and company towns were like, how they lived, and how they left their mark on American history.
Waking before dawn, these hardy men once needed hearty sustenance and the traditional breakfast was a porridge of thick, deliciously sour trahana, enriched with feta or their own sheep's milk yogurt.
Eventually, half-delirious with exhaustion, they staggered tearfully over the finishing line, the first and only victors in a race that had seen a couple of dozen of the world's hardiest men give up in despair.
Since his retirement, General Price, who lives in Washington and is a tall, hardy man with a deep, robust speaking voice, has been his sister's personal manager.
On the eve of the Balinese New Year, hundreds of villagers arrived at the beach here, the hardiest men carrying litters bearing effigies of Hindu deities.
From left: Pierre Hardy men's high-top sneakers, $520 at Pierre Hardy, 30 Jane Street; (646) 449-0070.
A few hardy Afar men mine its shores and transport the salt to Ethiopia.
For most, it's one to eight hours, but a hardy 11percentt of men (men are far more meeting-prone than women) somehow survive 13 or more hours of meetings a week.
