CMWC '08 - It happened here.

Somebody had a friend at FedEx. Carrying these things were good fun (Hayward, that's for you.)
The floating checkpoint had victims.
Hayward (no-helmet man) gives main race instructions - "Don't be an asshole, don't ride like an asshole; assholes will get red cards and be kicked out. And don't be assholic to the dispatchers or you'll be made to re-do the whole race."
Martin de la Rue delivered special 19th c. telegrams (I got one!), and raced in a wool jacket.

It has been a veritable inferno of cycle sport action around here in the last weeks, and being in the maelstrom of that inferno can keep a man away from his tiny little piece of the world wide web for longer than he should do. So much, so fast.

Where to begin? The Cycle Messenger World Championships 2008 came and went amidst thunderstorms of controversy and rain - but in the end it was all a success and people went away bruised, hungover, and jazzed for more. The '08 Worlds were my first-ever, and I did get excited, did race the main race qualifier, did have a lot of fun doing it, and didn't do the sprints, which I have regretted since watching them happen on 14 June in the afternoon Island sun. It was 333 metre match sprints and most interesting. I bet I could have won a heat on my bad-ass track bike (which received complements all weekend long, I'll have you know).

Trackstand and reverse circle competition, bike polo tourney, skids (and sprints at 3 a.m!) on Temperence Street for old time's sake (nice one Nappy), parties galore, at least one alley cat (2nd place/28 for me Sat. night), four-up goldsprints at Navid's parties - it all happened and best of all, hundreds of messengers showed up from the U.S., Europe, Scandanavia, Japan, and maybe even Australia. It was the real thing - kudos to Shino of Tokyo for taking 1st place in the main race final.

It was hugely impressive to see the Japanese show up - about ten of them in total if you count Izumi from New York and Okapi who lives here. They came, they raced, they won - at least Shino did. Somebody explained to me that Shino was the star of the Monster Track movie, where he is brought in to New York by Mike D (who I got to hang out with - one hilarious dude) and co. to race Monster Track in the middle of winter and gets second place. There was no stopping the man this time - apparently Shino finished an entire manifest ahead of everyone else in the main race final amidst the pouring rain on Sunday, or so I heard. And there he was back on the island on Monday to help with clean-up. Classy.

Sure the main race went off four hours late on Saturday, the bike polo tournament had to be rescued from oblivion at the last minute, and the I-beams on the floating dock checkpoint were removed after Hayward (of course) slipped on them. But it all happened, and when it happened it was a great thing - kudos to Hayward as race captain for pulling together the very complicated logistical nightmare that is the two day main race and doing it really well despite the delayed start. Chapeau. The whole organizing crew seemed to have an hour's sleep between them all weekend, and ten hours that week.

With his leftover black eye, sunken eyes, and overall sleep deprivation under massive pressure for weeks, by Saturday Hayward looked like a man who had just set a small town on fire and then shot his way out of it, leaving a trail of dead behind him. I just stayed at least an arm's-length of his way at all times. He told me on Monday that almost no one had complained to him about the race, and those few who did were quite mild about it. Imagine that.

There are a dozen other stories I could tell - Jumbo riding from Montreal to Toronto (575 km)down the 401 in 36 hours, Dangerous Dan Hatcher riding his track bike from Calgary to Thunder Bay, the fight I broke up between the winner of the alley cat and his friend at the finish, the kid who did the skid comp final on his face, Mike D fighting Manny at Sneaky D's over a bowl of taco chips, on and on but it has to stop somewhere, even if messengers never know when to stop.

Down to the County by Train I Went to a Wheelsucking Paradise.

Close examination of this photo will reveal a) a wrinkly finish line, b) the presence of deep section carbon rims and minimally spoked wheels ($2000/wheel?) being bested by aluminum box rims ($500/wheel), and c) my mysterious absence.

Among other world events this Sunday past was the Milford Cycling Weekend's Ontario Cup road races out in Prince Edward County. Le temps etait bon, le parcours etait glisse et écoulement, et les coureurs etait sans courages. The Senior 4/Master 3 race amounted to a paltry, measly 47 kms; no escape suceeded due to a total lack of initiative, and a wheelsuckers' paradise strolled along at 29 km/hr, or 31 km/hr, or lined out (lined out!) at 35 km/hr with me pulling at the front. What a bad joke.

In bike racing slower is not necessarily safer: everyone rides closer together to the point where one big guy to my immediate left was pedalling away while his quad smacked into my arm repeatedly. The yellow line rule was to blame - all of us confined to the right-hand side of the road, on the narrowest country roads there are in this province. The finish line was on a wider road but the rest of the 15 km rectangle was classic country road with each lane about 10 feet wide, which meant the only route to the front from the back of the pack was the dirt shoulder. Cheap.

By the final two kms I'd had it, and launched an attack in full view of the 30 km/hr main field. As I launched into the sprint with head down the chain came off immediately and I was reduced to pulling over and untangling it. Luckily, the pace was so slow I was able to catch back on, and finished tenth in a hot sprint across a bridge and up a slight hill won by the road hogs you see in the above photo. At least it was a good excuse to spend a weekend in the country.

Pappy's Big Adventure On and Off Screen

(The early St Lawrence Race.)

What a moment it was. It is mighty rare that you'll see me on the boards anymore, and I don't just mean the velodrome, I mean the theatrical boards, but last Thursday was one of those times.

Just to the left you can see me shoulder-checking a blocked Pee Wee Herman in the opening scene of the Big Adventure, where P. W. fantasizes about winning a stage of the Tour de France on his 50 lb red cruiser. To my right are Cris and John, displaying their cyclo-cross racing abilities to a packed house at the Bloor Cinema.

This Rocky Horror Picture Show-style screening raised well-nigh $14 000 for the new Toronto Cyclists Union and its new sister magazine, Dandy Horse. I guess my 'Espa~na' jersey was a bit wrong - nobody is wearing long sleeves in the movie, just Italia jersies. Nobody has a beard either...

Bike Month is in full swing here in Toronto, and things are busy.

Twenty-four hours after playing in Pee Wee at 7 and 9:30, I was down at the Toronto Criterium @ St Lawrence Market, freezing my tuchus off marshalling in Turn One with a whistle in my mouth and a flag in my hand. It made for a front row seat for a terrific barrier crash that brought down a good four racers, the first of which got squared by his bike. Five riders managed to crash in the neutral lap. What the hell was going on? Perhaps it was those Zipp wheels on offer for the winner of the open Masters race, they just brought these guys over the edge.

In one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a bike race - no wait, make that the most stupid - three crashees decided to run carrying their bikes from the bottom of Scott Street back towards the start/finish to get their free lap, taking the inside of Turn One to get there. Of course the lead idiot in this footrace to nowhere came within an ace of causing a truly disastrous crash of epic proportions. He got away with this exercise in selfish idiosy extraordinaire - I wanted the paid duty cops to arrest him on the spot but they weren't taking orders from me. In fact they weren't doing much of anything for the first thirty minutes as the crowds of angry commuters swelled, except pulling in $70/hour by standing around.

Luckily some sort of sanity prevailed and a) no racer got maimed for life and b) no mob surged the barriers in search of their commute homeward, and c) thousands of the curious turned out to watch the races. And it didn't even pour rain till well after the whole event was over.

Symmetrics dominated the main race as predicted getting four out of the top five places (1st = new Cervelo for Pinfold, plus Bell won the bunch sprint, Andrew Randell was right there as well...). It all made for super-exciting criterium racing. Friday night bike racing returns to Hogtown!