UPDATED: Messenger Worlds #1 - Berlin 1993

The Worlds are coming up "just down the road" in Toronto. I considered going, but I figure they'll have enough retirees without me posing. It got me digging around in the basement though:

"The U.S. would have been shut out of medals if not for Avi Neurohr of Boston. Neurohr won the 'Most Outrageous Uniform' competition by bunny-hopping onto the course wearing only a sock."
-Bicycling Magazine, October 1993

It had to show up here eventually.

*Update: Just to clear up some confusion, it was a single speed, but back in the stone age, track frames were hard to come by and pretty expensive. To tune your chain slack, you either had to replace your chain as it got stretched out, file out the drops a little deeper, and maybe cobble together a homemade chain slack contraption. It wasn't bulletproof, and I didn't want to drop my chain in the race, so I ran a derailleur without gears or cables.

Ghetto, yes, but I still finished around 40th, despite the fact that I watched at least 25 people skip the last checkpoint (changing a flat) and finish ahead of me. I was also placed in the 16th (and last) row at the start, instead of the 8th, where I was supposed to be. I was supposedly 2nd North American, but everybody knew the results were a total joke. 6 German newspapers reported 6 different winners (from their own city, of course), and nobody reported the fact that a Women's team beat all the Men's teams (Go Running Gags! Thanks for the place to crash, Katherina!)

I was on the news, but the interview was so painfully bad that I resorted to hitting on the reporter. My prize was a Cannondale MTB frame tagged by the messengers who hosted the race. It's still in my basement, unbuilt.

What else? The beer was good and plentiful. The Euros had road bikes, but most everyone else had MTBs with slicks. Boston and SF were the only crews I remember rolling deep on road single speeds. I don't remember meeting anyone from Chicago. NY thought they invented the sport, and the SF guys were pretty high on themselves, too, except for Marcus. He was the last person I saw in Berlin, yelling "BOS-TON!" across the train station as I headed to Amsterdam. I was bummed out to hear that he ODed before the '96 Worlds in SF.

I only noticed a couple riders on "pure" fixed gears (Boston and SF - though see the comments below, there were a few more, no doubt). Two NY guys thought we should skip the formalities and hand the prize to them. They rolled in on tricked out race bikes, and it was obvious they weren't riding their "work bikes" as the rules specified, but nobody really gave a shit about things like that. They ripped on my fellow Bostonians for staying out 'til 6 am in East Berlin the night before the race. (Uh, it's a MESSENGER race, in BERLIN! What, are you gonna come home telling everyone you were tucked in bed the night before?) I remember being very happy to beat both of them.

The Scandinavian teams were cool and wicked fast, and the Danish women were 6 feet tall and smokin' hot. The Germans were uptight roadies and they were about the only ones who took it seriously. Way too seriously.

The Americans were most likely to be tattooed and pierced. One guy worked as a messenger in Afghanistan, and he about cried when he took the stage to a standing ovation. I don't remember much about the intros, but racers generally took to the stage with a healthy amount of braggadocio: "Yeeeaahhh boyeeee! We're gonna kick some mufuckin' ASS tomorrow!" (NY) or elation: "this fucking rocks!" (everyone else). Of the three of us from Boston, nobody felt much like chest thumping or saying anything, so we just walked on stage in our underwear and mess' bags.

It was strangely legitimate. They shut down huge chunks of the city for us, and I don't mean a couple blocks across the tracks. On day 1, we ran through a ped underpass to deliver a package at the "Victory Column"(you might recognize it from Wings of Desire or a U2 video). On day 2, we raced right through Brandenburg Gate. Four years before, it was a checkpoint for East Berliners trying to drive $50 cars into a different world, and we were ripping laps through it. In the finals, we raced ten plus miles through the city, at one point, shunted right into traffic, in a plaza not unlike Times Square. I remember skitching a bus and looking over and seeing a family looking quizzically at my bare ass.

The only real complaint I had about the race was the "hassle" checkpoint. You got there, and you had to get a signature from one of the tables, where they would essentially refuse to take your package or say you were at the wrong table. You had to "convince" them in some way. They were trying to simulate the BS a messenger would have to do, so I don't think it was a terrible idea, but the execution killed the race for everyone but the first few racers to get in. Everyone else got stuck in line, waiting to get to an open table. The entire race was pretty much decided by a sprint from the start to that checkpoint. I had picked up 100 spots pretty easily in the bunch start, but that checkpoint allowed the 5 leaders to be off racing for the win while everyone else stood in line. To be honest, I was surprised the event was as organized as it was - seriously, a bunch of messengers staging a race? In Boston, we would've all ended up in jail.

There was definitely a thread of Euro racers that fancied themselves head and shoulders above everyone else. Another Bostonian and I came back from riding in the city, and there was a gaggle of Euro racer dudes sitting at a picnic table. Pat was kinda punk rock looking, pierced face and all, and he rolled up on his Pinarello (single speed, with a straight bar), right up next to their table. He did a nose wheelie in slow motion, gently placed his back wheel on the bench, then powered up into a wheelie with the front wheel crossed up. For one instant, he froze and looked like was going to do a trials move up onto the table, but he just set it down nice and gentle. The roadies didn't say a word, but all the messengers standing around went completely apeshit.

It wasn't a scene, it wasn't a posefest, it was a bunch of freaks throwin' down and gettin' stupid together. Maybe I will go to Toronto after all.