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It is called the CMWC. It is a race.  It is a party.  It’s a tongue-twisting acronym.  Every summer since 1993 in Berlin, this courier inspired bicycle bacchanalia has traveled the world, each time reinventing itself in the indigenous flavor of the host city.  Cities such as SF, Barcelona and Toronto have all previously fed the global hunger known as the CMWC, and this year the world’s most hedonistic bicycle messengers converged to have a taste of Zurich.  Let me tell you, that like a bar of Swiss chocolate, CMWC Zurich was mmm, mmm, delicious!

There are some things about the Cycle Messengers World Championships that will always be the same, while others will always be different.  You are going to miss a lot of sleep.  You are going to drink & smoke more than is really necessary (even if you don’t drink or smoke).  A European, most likely from Copenhagen will win every event except the track bike races, and without fail, some wise guy (or girl) is going to race naked. “Oh my God, was that John Kenda!?”  There will always be new bars to find your way home from, new languages to bend your ears around, and new customs to learn.  Chiefly: don’t bother tipping the bartenders in Europe, they’ll think you’re crazy.

Other helpful hints for competing successfully at a CMWC include: Making sure you have a firm understanding of the local exchange rate before you go out on the town.  During instances of gratuitous partying, a strange phenomenon occurs whereby the more you drink, the cheaper the beers seem to become.  If you yell “On your right!” to a European, they will move into the right lane, not from it.  And perhaps most importantly, don’t challenge anyone you don’t know to a drinking contest.  Remember you’re drinking with the world’s best, and they have uses for cooking oil that you’ve never even imagined.

For many, the big race is merely a side event for the social gathering that always revolves around a CMWC.  Most like-minded folks spent much of their free time chilling at the Lucky 7 bar.  While the Lucky 7 was just a small, makeshift bar, in a seedy neighborhood, down a dark alley, it happened to be located immediately next to a large beer brewery.  Despite this overwhelming advantage, by the end of the week the couriers had managed to drink all of the bottled beer, and they had to import kegs from elsewhere to keep us from rioting.  On the other side of the Lucky 7 was a restaurant where you could score some good eats and check out the “Urban Cowboys” photo exhibit arranged by the CMWC crew (I love it when people call me an urban cowboy).  I had a couple of shots up there, and I quickly noticed that I had gotten censored!  They put up the photo of Little John naked, but not the one of him and Nadir flipping me off in Barcelona!  A curious decision I thought, but then shortly concluded that the Swiss are simply more open to nudity than obscenity.  With that I went down to Lake Zurich, took my pants off, cracked open a beer, fired up a spliff and watched the topless girls wondering around...

So any ways, there was some racing I probably ought to mention too.  My favorite new event had to be the no-holds-barred paddle boat races held down on Lake Zurich.  Picture the WWF meets Heineken meets aqua cycling.  There was pushing, pulling, splashing, cursing, beer...  It was great.  I don’t remember who actually won, but everyone who saw the Norwegian women’s bikini can all be considered winners.  Zurich also introduced another fun event; a sprint race that had as much to do with drinking beer as it did with riding a bike.  They set up two identical bikes in the middle of the dance floor at this cavernous night club, attached them firmly to two identical sets of rollers, connected some funky contraption to the rollers which in turn moved these large hands on this big dial that everyone could see.  The races were 500 meters long, and everybody got 3 chances to record a qualifying time. It was quickly obvious that the red bike was faster than the blue bike, (theories ranging from chain tension, frame geometry, to tire pressure swirled around all evening) which made it a bit unfair for the head-to-head elimination style finals they had planned.  To balance this advantage, they chose a two-race format where each guy rode both bikes, and then the time difference decided the winner.  A fair enough way to do it, I thought.  In the end it all boiled down to Copenhagen’s Rasmus “Friday” Diege, and the Great American Hope, Filipe from NY.  Homeboy made a valiant effort but came up just shy of the flying Dane, who a few days later would claim the CMWC title as well.  Then, of course, there were also the more traditional events such as the sprints, the ever-popular bunny hop competition that pushed the bar up to an impressive 95cm.  There was a brutal cargo race with shit like picnic tables, wooden kegs and car tires to deliver.  DC’s Steve Mack, defending cargo champ, got edged out by a guy riding what pretty much amounted to a flatbed truck on 26-inch wheels.  These two outscored all other pathetic, Bob Trailer using fools who thought they could hang by hundreds of points, and while Steve traveled twice as fast and twice as far, he simply couldn’t compete with Dude’s massive cargo capacity.  There was a windy-ass uphill time trial, won by the tallest man in the field and defending CMWC champ, Shorty, and a trials competition with only 4 competitors.   Hawke from Germany livened things up by smashing out all the windows and mirrors he could find, unwittingly triggering a near riot.  By the time Buffalo Bill showed up, the mob had one car upside-down and was spinning it in circles, while some idiot stood on top of it trying to set in on fire.  Something tells me that that would have not been good, and that we all owe Bill a debt of gratitude for putting an end to that party.  The main event saw 25 guys from all over Europe duking it out in the finals.  There was one English speaker among them, and he was from Glasgow.

What can I say?  Next year, baby.  Next year.  Oh yeah, and then there were the track bike competitions!  We sure spanked those Uber-Hammers there!  Rebecca from NY swept top women’s honors, winning the skid, track stand, and the title of Fixie Queen.  Spencer from DC won the men’s skid by a mile, err, I mean kilometer, and Brad from Minneapolis won the track stand.  USA! USA! USA!  Lance won the Tour!  In your face!  Oh, excuse me.  Johnny from London somehow clinched the men’s overall fixie title, and if he didn’t have dreadlocks past his ass, I would’ve omitted him from my story entirely.  He’s not American, but at least I can understand what he is saying.

Other personal highlights included a trip to the hospital after some bozo came out of a checkpoint the wrong way, and I slammed into him at top speed.  Of course he was fine and rode off fast enough to avoid disqualification, while I was left there looking at my bent bike and bloody finger.  Nice!  My finger wasn’t broken and my bike was repairable.  All’s well that ends well, but still, I was pissed.  Aside from that, I thought the race was extremely well thought out and very well organized.  In fact mine was the only mishap I heard about really that had anything to do with the checkpoint marshals.  The truth was, you were much more likely to be taken out by the complexity of the racecourse itself, rather than by some dumb race official.  The course had everything you could want from a CMWC; from gravel and train tracks, to stairs and dirt paths, to explosive landmines and guys in green Tuborg jerseys, all foaming at the mouth, this race had it all.  It consisted of 15 different checkpoints, many approachable from only specific directions, and most with freaky, long German names (how the hell am I supposed to find a checkpoint I can’t even pronounce?).  On that tip, I have to give kudos to the Tokyo posse, who has to deal with severe language barriers every year, regardless of where the race is held.  Domi Orogato, Mister Roboto.  In any case, you didn’t have to speak Swiss-German to appreciate the timing chip each rider was given to race with.  These puppies attached easily to your skewers, and accurately recorded everyone’s race times, streamlining the whole race and eliminating a lot of human error.  Man, what a great idea!  Why didn’t we think of that?

As for my living conditions, I have to really hand it to Luke, the housing coordinator from heaven as well as Zurich’s “most likely to be mistaken for Marlon Brando” bike messenger.  I ended up staying with Speedy and Use (pronounced sort of like Uzi with an eh on the end) directly above Flash Delivery Service, in the heart of the city, so that was cool.  I’d come home every night from the Lucky 7 around 4am, sleep until 12pm or so, wake up, smoke a giant doobie (Cubello, you’re the man!), stumble down to Flash, get a tasty Italian sandwich from around the corner, and watch the Tour.  It was awesome.  You could be watching the race, go off for a swim and a beer or something, come back and they’d still be at it, elbow to elbow, the whole thing covered live.  These Europeans just don’t know how good they have it!

In retrospect, Zurich was really great.  I mean, I’ve never been to a Championship yet and felt like, “Man that sucked, I didn’t have a good time or nothing”, and this year was no exception.  The one thing that I felt the ‘99 Champs might’ve lacked was a bit of the chaos and excitement that past CMWC’s have had, and I think it had to do with the lack of North Americans.  Some people might remember the impromptu awards ceremony in Toronto that got held in a nearby alley after the organizers got kicked out of the stadium they had rented.  The sort of excitement and positive energy that was generated in that alley, is what turns every delivery I make, for weeks after a Championship, into a super-rush, and renews my commitment and enthusiasm for my job.  Lord knows, in DC we had WAY more than our fair share of chaos and exuberance, during the races and afterwards, but I suppose that that is part of what makes each CMWC new and different.  Who am I kidding?  This was a Swiss CMWC and it went off with the precision of a multi colored Swatch.  The joke before the event was not to miss your start time this year or you’d really be screwed, but luckily for all racers concerned, and for my own sense of not being out-done entirely, even in Zurich the races were all at least an hour or so behind schedule.  Don’t get me wrong though, I truly believe that in many ways, the bar has been raised once again.  Especially as far as the way the race was run and organized, and I sincerely hope Kenda took a few mental notes to pass along to the Boston crew for next year.

I would personally like to thank all of the dedicated individuals who worked so hard to make the race the huge success that it was.  Shout outs go to Markus, Victor, Roman, Luke, Frank, Alloy, Speedy, Mara (it is art I tell you), all the cats at Veloblitz and Flash, the folks working the Lucky 7, the many competent course marshals (but not the dorks at the Keystone checkpoint – you suck), and all the nice people preparing the food at the racer tent next to the course.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Next year, the Cycle Messenger World Championships will be held in Boston and I’ll be there with all three of my bikes ready for every event they can think of.  Luckily for me, this time the CMWC is only a bus ride away, I speak the native language and the money is all the same.  I know for a fact that these guys can really throw down; they are freaking crazy, and for anyone who might’ve felt that the partying in Zurich was a bit tame, come to Boston and get punished!

One thing I still can’t help pondering however, is the irony that the International Federation of Bicycle Messengers had just recently declared Boston to be the world’s most un-friendly city for bicyclists, and now we’re all going there for the Cycle Messenger World Championships.  Maybe the politicians over there are anxious to counter balance some of that bad press they got when that jay-walking school board guy was put into a coma and they tried to blame it all on that kamikaze courier.  Or maybe the Boston Blackouts are just playing a small practical joke on the city (what jokers they are).  Either way, we’ll all find out for soon enough when CMWC version 8.0 hits Boston, Labor Day 2K.

Oh yeah, and while I still have your attention: all you wanna-be couriers and self proclaimed bad-asses, I would like to publicly challenge anybody out there to a drinking contest with Matt Nipple. Boston, ahoy!