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.

Once we were brothers (and a few sisters)

Maybe it's just me, but what is up with the tribe these days?

A little rivalry is always fun, and I've witnessed various factions:
mountain vs. roadie
biker vs. blader
messenger vs. roadie
messenger vs. wannabe

...and then, within these groups (mostly messengers), you had some playful debates:
lifer vs. summerboy
single speeder vs. geared
fixed vs. free
straight bars vs. bullhorns
one brake vs. two
clips vs. cages

...but the fact is, most messengers I've known liked to swap out bars, go back and forth between fixed, free, no dérailleurs, rear dérailleur only, commuter tires, crit tires, one or two brakes, what have you. Eventually you found your groove, the rig that worked for you. Over the last few years, I've finally reached a point where I have that mythical "pile of parts" in the basement, and I can swap as needed, not based on what I can afford, or what I have to borrow from a friend's junkpile until payday. My last conversion was from a single speed 'cross bike to a below-the-radar messenger ride, and the best part? I didn't even have to go to the bike shop for a single thing! I had it all laying around. Ahhh...it only took me 17 years of modding to get there.

While I love the simplicity of a FG with straight bar and one brake, but I keep coming back to homemade bullhorns. Fact is, I even feel a little bourgeoisie on my CF rig these days, like I've finally become that old dude with money to blow on gratuitous bike parts. Maybe I have. Maybe that's why I've been spending all my time on my 72-spoke, ancient phil wood hubbed, platform/clip pedaled, 12 year old saddle with a 15 year old flipped and chopped handlebar, stickerless, freewheeled SS. It's very strong, very dependable, a little heavy, totally filthy, and I think the tubes have at least ten patches in each of them. The best part is, I leave it locked up outside in downtown Chicago every day for about 9 hours, and I don't really worry about having it stripped or nicked, unlike the Velocity rim crowd.

Ah, the Velocity rim crew. Now heavily documented in the NY Times (subscription required to read it now), as well as the Wall Street Journal, SFist (cool photo but it spawned a bit of a flame war), as well as the Independant Florida Alligator, LA City Beat (profiling the Wolfpack, who sound like a bunch of clowns), the Guardian (FG bike polo), the Maryland Gazette (old dude commutes on a FG), and the Philadelphia Enquirer.

This last one is particularly entertaining to me, because it's accompanied by a picture of a grinning "messenger" with a six inch handlebar. I'm down with the "less is more" thing, especially when you're splitting lanes and you have side view mirrors to contend with, but I (and probably a number of other messengers) have cut down a straight bar just a little too much, and discovered the complete lack of control it leads to. Nevermind the fact that you still have to squeeze your ass through those side mirror gaps, you give up little things like stability, power, and control, in favor of....style.

Which really cuts to the heart of it. It's all about style now. Every city has roving packs of skinny boys with retro cycling/army caps, italiano steel, neon Velocity rims, and skin-tight jeans (don't forget to fold the cuffs up to just below the knees, boys!). A friend of mine was riding on a junkpile bike through his neighborhood, which is part barrio, part Ratbike haven, and part fixie-boy crew. He encountered a pack of about a half dozen of these guys, and one of them made some comment about his bike. He's always quick with a witty reply, and he didn't disappoint: "Do you guys all shop at the same store? Do you swap girlfriends too?" Point is, the biker tribe has gone from "freaks of a feather" to being co-opted and marketed into little clones.

I was riding the other day, and a fixie rider said, with a bit of attitude, "nice bike, but why don't you go fixed?" I responded "because freewheel's faster." What I meant to say was "more aggressive" but whatever. Anyway, that's all it took. The light changed, and he charged, and though he was fast, he couldn't drop me, and I eventually got the best of him, though I pulled a tow off a passing car to really put the nail in the coffin. (Oddly, I saw him two days later on a road bike :) but neither of us raced hard that time.)

There has always been a messenger style, and a crowd that borrowed heavily from it. It just seems to have reached a tipping point.

For the record, I'm not down on fixed gears. I love them, and I have ridden one off and on for years. However, if you're riding one in the city and you don't have a front brake on it, you are a either a poser or an idiot. Not because of your look per se, but you're a poser if you are probably GOING SO GODDAMNED SLOW that pregnant women overtake you. You're an idiot if you're flying along, apparently not concerned about the fact that it will take you twice as much time and distance to stop. If a car were flying at you, and the driver had only installed half as much stopping power on it because "it was cool" I think you might have a problem with that.

Granted, back when I was a messenger, it was difficult and expensive to put together these rides (mostly through mail order parts), but the few guys that had them rode them only occasionally, mostly to do tricks like backwards figure-8s or riding while sitting on the bars. They didn't really work on pure fixed gears, any more than the guy who was a trials star worked on his super-granny gear bike. Because EVERYONE ELSE WAS MUCH FASTER ON BRAKED BIKES.

I have passed about a thousand fixies this season, and only one guy truly dropped me (though it was on the lakefront path, where he didn't have to worry about intersections). For the record, I had already swum 1000 meters and run 4 miles that day, but I'm not making excuses, I was properly dropped. I guess I've just never noticed so much attitude from any block of riders before, save the roadie packs on $5k rigs, but let me tell you, if you go on a group ride with those guys, and you can hang with the top fifth, even they'll lighten up.

I'm not saying I'm a star, far from it. I'm a 36-year-old dad who sits in a cubicle all day. The point is this: ride your own ride, but ride it with at least ONE freaking brake. To brake it down one last time (sic :)...using a front brake, you can go from (any speed) to zero in about HALF the time and distance than a rear-wheel skid. The math is explained in excruciating detail in Bicycling Science, and I'd dare to say that those numbers can be drastically improved upon with true mastery of a nose wheelie stop.

Ergo....you can come into an intersection/split lane/sketchy line twice as fast, and still be able to stop in time. If you don't have to stop after all, you have more momentum conserved (vs. the fixie rider who started backpedaling half a block earlier). More aggressive riding = faster riding. For those of you messengering: faster riding = more money (unless runs pay based on "oneness with your bike" these days?). For the rest: stopping faster = less likely to get creamed. As a bonus, you won't look like such a FG poser creeping down the block at 3 miles an hour.

I don't mean to be so caustic, but my passion has been co-opted into an aisle at urban outfitters, so maybe I am just a little bitter. Just ride a little smarter people, and don't be afraid to step out of uniform, and stop ranting to the papers about how you're "one with your bike." You can still be one with it with a brake, and you get to be one with your brain too.

Velocity Tour rundown and killer alt bike shots

Three North American velodromes. A bunch of messengers. No brakes. The top 3 male and female finishers won tickets to Sydney CMWC. A gazillion different heats...4 man chariot, match sprint, snowball, flying 200m...The heavily sponsored Puma crew was out in full force, but there was plenty of local talent.

Results here or do yourself a favor and see more of Amy Bolger's pics (LA, Chicago 1 or 2, NYC).

Amy Bolger's site is stellar. She is the Graham Watson of the alt.bike scene. World Championships, alley cats, what have you. Clear out your schedule, cuz there's plenty to look at.

North America Cycle Courier Championships

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story on last weekend's North American Cycle Courier Championship. They seemed genuinely shocked that the winner (Austin Horse) had a 20 speed road bike, no tattoos, and he wore spandex. Stop the presses: Courier breaks the mold.

Here's an article (10 pics) of the 2005 World's in NYC (ok, Jersey), and the 2006 Worlds are in Sydney in October. Crikey.

Once upon a time I raced in the first CMWC in Berlin, 1993, and won a prize for my ah, minimalist attire. One of these days I'll write it up and post some photos.

so you wanna be a messenger? part I

Quite accidentally, I recently found myself in the role of "geezer" - giving advice on the subject of messengering and/or single speed bike setup. It takes little more than espresso and a curious post on Craigslist to get me started on some subjects, so I decided to codify them. (You know, these adsense links are really starting to pay, I'm up to eighty-five cents a month.) We'll start with the job itself and next time get into some bike specifics.

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So you've seen some twenty-something kid whiz by, carving through a red light smoother than canned peaches. Maybe they were bunny-hopping two sets of railroad tracks at speed, or decelerating from 25 mph in a heart-stopping nose wheelie. Maybe you're a student, or a barista, or waiting tables, and you think "that looks fun." It is. It's nice to have single-digit body fat and be a "professional" athlete. Some girls dig it while others find you stinky and dirty. Adrenaline and endorphins are quite addicting, and you may find yourself pulled into it, again and again.

Get a few things straight. Unless you're elite or you go independent, the pay sucks. Even when it's good, it still sucks if you plan on having things like a house or a vacation in your lifetime. If you're lucky, you'll buy the best gear, only to systematically destroy it. You'll get hit repeatedly, and bystanders, drivers, cops, judges...none of them really give a crap. If you work hard winters, you could spend a month's pay on clothes, and you'll still get wet and cold.

Still interested? You'll start off clueless, but if you last a couple months, you'll probably become a poser. You will ride like you own the city, and do stupid things like fly blind around corners, use the sidewalks as your own velobahn, thread every gap at top speed, and scrap with any driver that dares not premunize your line. The sooner you get over this, the better. The forementioned citizens of your city think that all messengers ride like this and would just as soon see you bleeding in the gutter; impressionable children will mimic you and get creamed. And you'll look like a tool. Advance yourself a little further down the evolutionary line and control your anger, among other things. Your skin will last longer, and so will your gear. The cooler, experienced guys ride the same bikes for a year and barely get a flat. The guys who ride like this get creamed, destroy their gear, or get locked up. Coming from one who's been both.

With that said, here are ten things I wish I knew back then:

1. Wear a helmet. It may not look cool, but you *will* get in lots of little accidents. You will feel really stupid when you finally hit your head, especially if you can't walk or talk. I've heard every line about it restricting your vision, being too heavy, making you sweat, disrupting your flow, but it's all BS. You wouldn't catch a motorcycle racer or an F1 driver not wearing one, so just deal with it.

2. Get health insurance. Make sure you either have worker's compensation through your employer (if you're an employee, you'll have it - if you're an independent contractor you will not) or get some basic health insurance. If you're in your 20s (and don't tell them you're a messenger, or that you smoke) it could be as little as $45/month. Actually, this should be #1 on the list. I had to pay $13,000 in old medical bills before I could buy a house, and I knew a guy who got hit and put off going to the doctor for so long that his hand had permanently curled up like a chicken foot. Seriously. You won't be able to get basic cable in ten years if you rack up hospital debt.

3. Assume all drivers are blind, angry, drunk, incompetent, or stupid. Control your anger, or you will be a raging asshole by 10:30 am. Let it all slide off you. If someone dicks you over in traffic, make sure they're not psycho before you go off on them. You'd be surprised what people will do when you disrespect them. I've had people drive up on the sidewalk after me, drive the wrong way on a one way, stop the car in traffic and chase me on foot with a stick, etc.

4. Don't ride like a pro wrestler on crack. You really don't look that cool. If you need to go fast, flow, don't force your line. Nobody, not dispatch, your client, _nobody_ really gives a shit if you're a minute quicker. These rules can be suspended if you have to get to the bank by 2 or court by 5. Those are the only exceptions. I'm not saying you have to go slowly, you just need to learn how to go fast without annoying the shit out of everyone.

I once had a truck driver pull up to me and say "Don't be an asshole" and it got me thinking...he was exactly right. Of all the things that have been yelled at me (get on the sidewalk, I'm gonna fucking run you over, it's against the law to do xyz, put some pants on faggot) he was exactly right, I was just being an asshole, grabbing my line and expecting people to give me the respect of not running me over. Later in my career I adopted a policy of not dicking over the same car (or clump of cars) twice. It paid off dividends; people would see me drafting in traffic, cutting lights, catching a tow off cars, and actually pull up and give me tows, slow down to let me draft them, or wave me through ahead of them. As long as I didn't hold up the same 2-3 cars for blocks on end, they'd give me more respect. When people told me to "Fuck off" I replied with "Thanks, Havagoodone!"

5. Start from the ground up. Do the long cheap runs, the dead-ends way out of town, etc. If you do this for a few months and there's someone newer than you, THEN you can start bitching to dispatch. This is a big duh, but it ought to be said.

6. This one deserves to stand alone: Dispatch will move you up the food chain much quicker if you get your ass downtown and call in before everyone else EVERY day. If you work with a lazy or hung over crew, and you call in at 7:30 (not still in bed, but juiced up and downtown) you can make $40 before 9, and dispatch will reward you for making their lives easier. Half of all messengers call in at 8:55, sitting in bed, loading the bong, telling dispatch they are "downtown and ready to roll." This one should be up at the top of the list with "get medical insurance."

7. You may do all these things and dispatch will feed your ego, telling you that you da man. Then they will give you a $2 run far out to nowhere and give a coworker 4 of them in the same block. Deal with it, but not forever. Almost every courier starts out a shitty company, making shitty runs for shitty money. Then you look around and get in with a better one. Working is the only way to find out where to go, and a decent company won't want to train your ass until you know what floor to go to to file something in state superior court vs. federal. Don't bother trying at an elite company with 3 guys that have been there for 10 years, but somewhere with some turnover. The better one have a guaranteed minimum or base pay - usually 2-300 a week just for showing up, then around 50% commission on your runs.

8. Kiss the asses of security guards. Call them sir and maam. If they work at court, bring 'em a soda or something. I have bypassed a line of 15 pissy lawyers waited to get patted down to enter the building, and impossibly gotten a case filed after 5 pm. Yes, they are probably felons and they get pushed around and will take it out on you, but you will not win this one. You can get banned from the building, and it can be damn near impossible to get back in. Try landing a spot at an elite company and telling them you can't get into the Federal courthouse. You may as well move to a new city.

9. I've heard that one of the sweetest messenger jobs are delivering sandwiches or the like. Fewer security hassles, lots of tips, taxes paid, health insurance, free food. Even though it's not the 'standard' messenger gig, look around for something like this.

10. While you're doing something, think about what's next. This may seem obvious, but it was a big epiphany at one time. I remember sitting outside the First Boston building with about a year's experience. I was pretty fast, and I had my routine: rack and lock the bike (and my helmet, since I hated wearing it inside), stuff the headphone in my bag, walk 50 yards to the building, check out some eye candy on my way in, dig out the package, look up where it went, what floor, find the right elevator bank, etc. I came out and was killing time, and saw a "lifer" - one of the guys who looked ice cold and didn't bother to even glance at you until you'd been out there for a year. He bypassed all the "good" places to lock up, right up the door, freelocked his bike, made a beeline for the right elevator bank, and was back out in a minute or so. I realized that riding fast was only part of it, and there was this completely clean routine that I was overlooking. Of course you think about where to go next and what streets to take, but it made me do that on a microscopic level. Keep my lock opened and keyed. Know my next stop, right down to what door and what elevator, leave my helmet and headphone on. Ask security for the right floor as you walk by, instead of looking it up on the board. Hit the "down" button on the elevator as soon as you get off. Keep a detailed map taped to the back of your manifest board, and save floor numbers for your most frequent drops. Think about where you can use a free phone (yep, not many radios back then). It seems obvious in retrospect, but I noticed that instead of delivering a package every ten minutes, I cut it down to 7, then 5. After that I noticed how other riders would burn up time doing nothing, then complain about getting half as many jobs at the end of the day.

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I did it for 8 year in 2 cities, plus some "freelance" runs in Europe. I started at about $200/week and by the end I was working for 2 companies simultaneously, plus a few personal clients on the side, and I was clearing $700-1,100 a week. I came away with a couple $1000 bikes, $200 in the bank, $30,000 in back taxes and medical bills, a criminal record, a lawyer, and a probation officer. But if I won the lottery, I would do it damn near forever.

Next time: bike tips.