There are races to race.

Oftentimes life is made dull by the web-log. As I creep back into the whole business I wonder just how to keep it compelling.

Choices and decisions have oft made me nervous in this life, much to my regret. This weekend has loomed with several choices hanging upon me:

1. Go to the farm w M & her band.

2. Go past the farm to Ottawa and race the Ontario Crit Champs + OBC Road Race.

3. Race Global Gutz messenger race Friday the 13th to win a free plane ticket to Ireland for the Worlds in August.

4. Forget it all and go birdwatching.

I've decided to go with Global Gutz. A worldwide simultaneous courier race with similar courses and a local prize. It should be high excitement to say the least. Just writing about it sends a shiver of energy through my gurgling veins, seeing as I was the winner of the last courier race in this town. Just because I'm an ex-courier doesn't mean I can't still race the race,

I'll have you know. It occurred to me in passing, more than a month (nearly two) after retiring from that line of work that I might very well have been one of the five fastest couriers in town, out of maybe 200 or so; or maybe 100. No one really seems to know how many there are any more, though once upon a time there were 500 or so (when I started last century). Those were the days, days when I didn't race at all, being too green and with too crappy a bike. I've gotten older and much more daring.

My courier racing career is pretty short: The first one was called Blood Bath a few years back, and my goals were to finish and not be last. Accomplished both. Then this past spring I did the Friday the 13th treasure hunt, 'Lucky 13'. 3rd place. Then a hastily organized post-polo Saturday night 'cat where I prevailed against a field of seven. Forty bucks and a baseball practice jersey were mine.

A pretty decent record so far.

On the legitimate racing side, I've done alright this year. Fifth in a short points race at the club (which I now dispise), and seventh overall and fifth in my category (Senior 4) at the CHIN International Races, in a field of over 70. That was really my best going.

So I'm primed for a top finish this Friday the 13th at Global Gutz. Did I just massively jinx myself? Yes, yes I did. Who cares really, courier races are a big adventure where we transform the whole city into our adventure playground, which is the size of playground you want to have when you're my age. Its a wholely different deal than 'proper' racing, and vastly more entertaining, involving on-the-fly orienteering skills, historical plaque facts, waypoint approaches like subway escalators and turnstiles, and finishes that sometimes involve postsprint multi-story stairclimbs with the bike in one hand. And of course open traffic all night along. A mad, bad business only for the maddest and baddest.

Like me.