adventure stories; head first

hiatus - & a musical interlude

2010-01-04T20:50:00.002+01:00

2009 was a giant jump-off into compulsive travel, art worship and project treasure hunting. There's a lot to write about and I think there's also an important balance between just living and having some digestion time to avoid my inner teenage girl commentator, "and then, we totally had a great time, which I'll go into enormous detail about! Though it's only interesting to me!" Perhaps it will be anyway, but I'd like to think that having time between the thing itself and the report will at least improve the general grammar.

A note: for consistency's sake I'm retro-actively dating posts to correspond approximately at the time they happened, so Croatia = June/July 2009, etc.

Now that it's the deep cold of January in New York, with all bank accounts depleted and only the memories to keep warm, I've got the time to put some words and pictures together for last year. And while that happens, I'll be listening to a LOT of Rufus Wainwright.

This one is always my favorite.

Winter in Reykjavik

2009-03-18T13:26:00.002+01:00

I arrived in Iceland and promptly messed everything up. I knew there was a bus (flybus) that went into Reykjavik from the airport in Keflavik and also that there was no "blue lagoon layover" possible having arrived at an ungodly early hour. I immediately headed to the duty free shop to load up on cheap booze and smokes. You can never know when those will come in handy due either to extreme partying or cultural desirability. I mean if coffee and tobacco are the only real currency in jails worldwide, it goes to say that there is a strong possibility that cigs might be the difference between making friends and choking to death on expired nicorette after a night of heavy drinking.

Disappointing after the impressive display of local and exotic booze varieties, there's a 1 liter limit per person. I mean WTF? I went with the standbys: the local Black Death and whiskey. I found some limited edition camel cigs that might make good souvenirs for my committed smoker friends in NYC.

Before the coffee had kicked in I realized I was the only non-employee in the airport. I asked at the counter when the next bus would be. I had missed the one perfectly timed for the more 'with it' members of my own flight. Luckily, there was 1 other guy who had somehow convinced the bus to make a trip and I could piggy back on this tremendous good fortune as the difference between the deluxe Mercedes bus and a waiting taxi is about $100 usd.

Even after reading extensively, the landscape was still shocking; barren, volcanic, windswept and black. I expected more snow, or more land. Somehow the horizon and a great sky had become 60% of the visible dimension. I was stupid enough to travel without a power converter and had only one charge on my fancy camera battery. Instead I took it all in, a living IMAX nature show. The sheer Nordic-ness of everything was deeply impressive, even as it became clear that Reykjavik is a very little city. I tried to imagine living there, in tastefully painted metal sheet buildings with heavy wooden windows all reminiscent of a fishing village from another century.

The apartment-hotel that I had booked for a few days in the city was not to be ready until 2pm and I had 6 hours of trying not to fall asleep carting around too much baggage and looking for the address of the place. Somehow I found a gated black house, something that looked more like the inspiration for a painting than a functioning building, and rand until I was buzzed in. No one appeared to be home except a gentle old black dog. The doors on all the first floor were locked. The entry inside with stairs leading up seemed a bit rude, but after 5 minutes and no answer I climbed up to find a very young, very blonde boy looking at me with bright blue eyes. My first instinct was to wonder what language I could speak, since I hadn't even bothered to try to learn any Icelandic. English then.

"Hello. Is your Mommy home?" He turned to run, like a boy messenger warning of an approaching army. His mom, the proprietress, was busy on the phone. He returned to his room, a beautiful pastiche of blue walls, dark hued books and a rainbow of wooden toys. In the stairwell a sculpture of books, glued together in a spiral, had English titles and upon closer inspection some were stamped with, "San Francisco Public Library." The main room, a dining room, leading to the open kitchen was a perfect blend of art and design from Latin and Nordic cultures. I stood stunned taking in the visual ghosts of the late 1990's San Francisco Art Institute. The paintings on the walls were exactly like those my friends had been making then. An attractive middle aged woman in black appeared and began to apologize. She looked Icelandic, her clothes definitely were. Even her English had a cute Icelandic accent.

She explained she was alone in managing their growing stable of apartments and rooms. She could do nothing until 2, but I was welcome to leave my things and she would direct me to anything I might need or want, which considering the city was inevitably within a 5 minute walk. I asked about the art. She had been there just before I had, knew the same painting professor -the legendary one- and had married an Icelander. I asked if she'd known a woman named Madia who I had known from that time. Madia had moved back to Reykjavik around 2000. Since then I’d only heard from her once, a phone call in which she described hooking up with a rock star that she couldn't name but was a household name internationally. It was all very exciting for her and sort of depressing to watch. We gossiped about the epic motorcycle accident in Italy of a mutual acquaintance and lost touch. It was a small city, even with a confusing lack of surnames there couldn't be more than 20 Madia's in the phonebook and why not try them all?

Instead I found an adorable tearoom, experienced my first sudden Icelandic hailstorm, the delicate protocols of the Reykjavik hot pots and waited to 2pm. My fellow alumni surprised me with a car ride the several blocks to the apartment, which was a considerable upgrade from what I'd actually paid for. It was the brand new apartment designed to house five significantly more affluent individuals than myself. First there was a vintage armchair placed artfully under a skylight with custom upholstery that had a repeat motif of either a clown or Barack Obama, the detail of the weave made it impossible to distinguish which. On either side a massive coat closet (no hangers) and a beautifully tiled bathroom with a huge oval shaped bathtub sculpted to look like a vase. Wandering through the great expanse, heated to a perfect level of comfort, I began to feel a kind of elation that my efforts had lead me here. Two bedrooms, both luxury foam mattresses, one with a patio overlooking the harbor and classic Icelandic architecture. The massive front room was a modern studio with white leather sofa, fake velvet deer heads arranged in a row, awesome new kitchen appliances far more space age than anything I'd seen in real life. I slowly sat in each room, looking over each piece of wall or tile and considered that everything had to have been imported by boat from the harbor, driven over here and installed with precision by the same generation of Polish immigrants who artlessly slapped together countless condos in NYC. What a difference a culture makes.

My second day the time difference and massive clock failure between various laptops, clocks, cell phones and other devices left me late and pissed about having missed the city tour I'd arranged in advance. Having already mastered the DIY stumbling around, I figured it couldn't hurt to do the tour with the idea of saving time and increasing the likelihood that I'd learn more than the aesthetic composition of buildings in general. Alas. The second half of the day I managed to be picked up in time for the "Golden Circle Tour." And if ever there was a non-stop whirlwind of must see sights made way awesome for the gentle voice over by sing-sing Icelandic English, this is it. Everything was amazing, but more so because of the variability and violence of the nature that is more than a backdrop, but a participant in the history and experience of Iceland. It started snowing and I was amazed to see the buss plowing through the massive snow like a modern Valkyrie, which has been almost uncomfortably captured by the Iceland Expeditions flash ad.

Sanity Check

2009-02-24T19:52:00.005+01:00

Since December, I'd been working in the gray open maze of the 7th floor of the midtown Manhattan version of Art Deco; which is to say endless slick black surfaces, chrome trim and rounded edges. It was a first in terms of hard core mega-corporate employment and initially my feelings were an incredulous mixture of confusion, joy and mind-numbing disappointment. It's not that my work was horrible, just overly simple (in task and concept) and overly complex (down the corporate rabbit hole/directory in execution). Definitely less colorful than South India, but I had a committee of managers (supervisor/boss') that respected me as a human being and professional, plus the HR department never failed to mail a paycheck. I got to wear cute business clothes when I felt like it, and dressy jeans when I didn't.

I worked the holiday season in complete solitude; and endless gray cubicals. Not the operatic hardship and disaster of the last Hungarian Christmas seasons. Apartment searching was a lesson in the futility of trying to live in NYC with a less than 90K income. Thankfully one of my best friends works in the exciting world of wine reviews and that managed to keep my experience yellow hued and blurry at the edges. Things weren't great, weren't terrible.

January I moved into a gorgeous Harlem Brownstone and assumed that my new life in corporate technology marketing to the publishing industry would be the foundation for a new settled life. Until the quarterly budgets came in. In review it was apparent that I had been lucky to be hired after layoffs, spared an additional round, but that the end was clearly visible; even if I hadn't actually accomplished anything yet. I hoped to prolong the inevitable as long as possible after I got a VPN key and a blackberry that let me keep up with the office chatter without having to be sitting in my chair pretending to smile. I started to appreciate the people I liked and forget the incidental office gremlins I didn't.

Still the stress of trying to keep everything together was getting to me. I didn't really like anything about my life, it was just an experiment in finally doing the thing that I was supposed to in the first place. I missed trying to survive in foreign countries. I hated having to do the same things everyday with no variation.

Initially the idea was to travel with Niki, a fixed gear head I'd done the R1 with in 2005. He's now a lead developer at a video game company in NYC and, as it happened, also needed a vacation. Our birthdays are both in March and we agreed it was time to escape the GRAY city, GRAY offices and go somewhere shockingly different.

Since my wine expert friend is always waxing poetic on the wonders of Spain, I thought I might drop in on the Madrid boys from the last adventure. Niki was up for it and we planned a Madrid-Barcelona tour until the weather reports issued a depressing GRAY forecast. At about that time, the Icelandic economy and political structure became a dissolving meteor before the world stage. My various pals in fashion photography and other hipsters couldn't shut up about how great it is. I obsessively checked internet sites before proposing a change in venue. Niki was down.

Unfortunately so was his new girlfriend.
We tried to meet up as a three legged albatross with the idea of a 'group trip,' but in their new love they were impossibly smitten teenagers and my bitter old lady persona couldn't stomach it. Whatever it was, it wasn't working and suddenly the great idea of an expensive vacation split with a charming travel companion was bust.

I printed up a map of the country and affixed it above my office phone, made the tiled background of my corporate laptop a misty picture of the blue lagoon and started collecting maps, books, PDF's and other research materials that I promptly left in a mad rush to make it to the airport after work on a Friday. My manager had already left and benevolently let me leave early as well.

I was off to the land of Bjork, elves and glaciers! HOORAY!

The Finale

2008-10-13T05:00:00.001+01:00

Day 14: August 14, 2008

Alibagh to Mumbai

The last day and the shortest distance was complicated by the three separate flag down and flag off points designed to keep the teams tightly together so that we could all chat with the press, enjoy a snack on the beach and then arrive to the luxurious JW Marriott in a grand procession –all without disturbing the legendary Mumbai traffic ordinances. Thankfully with all of our newly acquired practice navigating, getting lost, staying together and wandering off; all of these things happened, perfectly of course.

Entering Mumbai was quite the experience, teams had to avoid the appearance of staying too close together, and the urban roads and distractions, including a major accident were difficult to navigate. But not impossible; impossible wound up being trying to order a coffee and a sandwich to be delivered within 30 minutes at the Park Hotel. Alas, better things were waiting for us in Juhu.

The Norwegians got the charming experience of witnessing an accident with a man's brain spilled all over the place. One of them might have gotten sick, apparently brains don't get smashed & exposed a lot in Norway, the way they do through television in America or through violence & civil mayhem in Central & Eastern Europe. How will Norway survive the coming apocalypse? At least the Lost Vikings have some practice now.

The Park was nostalgic for me, the Chennai Park hotel had been a great experience... the Mumbai Park? Not so much. Still anything super modern is a nice change of pace, even if highly out of place in general.

The next stop was a “flyover” or highway overpass, overlooking the Arabian Sea and the vast expanse of Mumbai.

Home to over 20 million people, it’s a lot to take in after roaming around the rural wilds for two weeks. Suddenly the sun came out, a few journalists appeared and participants started sharing snacks and jokes, flaunting their outrageous costumes and doubtlessly breaking the rule of not distracting passing traffic. Once almost all of the teams arrived, we were off again to our final regrouping point a large dirt parking lot in Juhu, with massive Bollywood billboards contesting our own fantastical costumes but by the attention of the locals and press, it was clear who would be the winner that day. Waiting for the last of the group, we made it to a beachfront hotel/restaurant to sneak in a quick drink before the final procession began.

The beach stop was my favorite part of the day. I got a snack and watched as one of the girls cried over the impending loss of her holiday romance, while Steve & Oscar chatted about trips to Spain and what was waiting back in their respective versions of reality. I'd been invited to switch rickshaws back with the lovely team 18, but those Madrid 2016 boys were getting more insane as we entered the metropolis and Oscar took the wheel. Some story about having been a taxi driver before a lawyer. Whatever it was I was almost sure he'd spin us into an accident and I wanted to be in it.... I don't know. But it was great fun.

Participants were warned - it was also India's Independence day celebration and to avoid any potential conflict during a highly nationalistic time we might, as highly visible foreigners, feel behooved to display the Indian flag. Great. More shake downs.

And what a procession it was. Glorious, all the teams in full regalia entered the ultra-luxe Mediterranean style rotunda of the JWMarriott, flanked by waiting press and the screams of excited locals from other cars, the street and buildings. With a final group photo, teams checked into the hotel.

I was rushed to my room, so I could figure out the winners for various papers. And it was hard. And mostly arbitrary. There were technicalities. And politics.

I had been waiting to debu my gold accented black silk Saree for the occasion, but being an incompetent American, i needed a helper to drape the thing. As some kind of classist revenge the woman was totally late and then did it wrong. I had no alternative, so I ran out in my heels to catch a cab. The hotel's were a pain. Something about time or money, it always is no matter where you are, so I ran out into the street to get a black taxi. Argued the location and fare, almost identical to the same experience in Manhattan. Classic. But less comfortable. Yet more glamorous...

That night we also had our beer session, where participants volunteered to take care of managing the Adopt-A-Village charity and funds to be properly used in the schools visited. A large buffet with cocktails managed to put everyone in a great mood until the grand prize winners, participant stories and CEAT Mumbai Xpress 2008 Finisher’s Certificates were distributed.

And Now: the Grand Prize Champions of the CEAT Mumbai Xpress 2008: Team #3 Two Tukkers in Tukxedos; Alex Jones and Stephen Milford from the UK. Congratulations gentlemen, you’re officially number one!

Dangerous Waters, Anorexic Ponies and the Team Point Totals

2008-10-09T04:57:00.000+01:00

Day 13: August 13, 2008

Mahad to Alibagh

Though it took most teams several days to get into the mindset of traveling and living in India as long haul autorickshaw drivers, by day 13 everyone had grown nostalgic and a little disappointed that it would all end so soon and regular life would take its’ place. Luckily there was also a fantastic extra excursion to Kulaba (Island) Fort in Alibagh Beach after the flag down.
Day 13 was like the last week of school before summer vacation: no one who isn't valedictorian gives a shit about anything except partying and trying to get with that one girl. I'm not naming names, but apparently the holiday hook ups had already turned into something of a soap/pop drama. Funny. I was busy figuring out international calling on the 40INR crap cell phone I'd been saddled with. The hotel was a disappointment in terms of food and the bar was like a foot locker filled with dirty old men, a place even foreign white women were not welcome. I decided to extract my revenge on Aravind by ordering the most expensive food and drinking as much booze as possible. Pretty much everyone knew things were a bit... unhinged.
The funniest part came when I opened the door to the room I had to share with the little brown butter ball. It was the honeymoon suite, complete with a heart shaped bed and hand embroidered coverlet. Where I there with a lover, I would have been delighted. Given the circumstances, I had us moved immediately and asked for the beds to be moved to opposite ends of the room. Then I had to figure out some scores, all of which were mostly ridiculous.
Some people cared too much, most not at all. The sheets had been lost for the first teams back in Hassan, which had the effect of kicking the strongest teams down to a big pack of whatever. But it was almost over. People wanted a winner, they wanted the idea that if they just do something fantastic tomorrow, they might walk back into their offices with a ridiculous trophy and some artificial pride at having conquered the subcontinent, again. The wanted a rocky. Unfortunately as things looked according to good behavior and luck, it was down to the british tuxedo kids and the creepy kiwi couple, who having shunned everyone the entire trip began being painfully friendly -at the last possible moment when it was announced that you get points for being liked. Hm.

The day itself was peaceful, the roads became less densely covered by jungle and more agriculture, towns and open spaces filled the view. Still overcast in the wake of the passing monsoon, the island was still not reachable by 4pm, the time when the tide should have gone out. The two usual options for making it out to Kulaba Island are simply waiting for low tide and walking, or taking one of the horse carts. With storm clouds threatening, it became obvious that only the poor swimming horses would be able to make it, even at the lowest tide.
Good God, I've lived in rural Romania and my former shock at the poverty of those animals is entirely eclipsed by the poor beasts that pulled these ghastly little wood carts through freezing monsoon tidewaters. The tide still deep, yet people paid to have them make the attempt and the poor little bastards had to swim before mostly giving up -only at the urging of the tourists who couldn't watch it anymore. I was disappointed, but the horror of it and the cold wind made me happy to just go back to the hotel and try to catch some of the olympics that might be on the big screen in the dining hall. We gave the Spaniards a ride back & Abdul got lost. It was funny & I was determined to ride with them on the trip into Mumbai. Those guys are nuts!

This is one of those moments, when you realize how delicate nature is and even when something is repeated, like the CEAT Mumbai Xpress, nature often makes each experience totally unique. Last year there were hardly any monsoons, as the CEAT Mumbai Xpress 2007 chased the lingering monsoons. This year we were right in the middle of their fury. A wild and intense experience, but unfortunately not so good for the view this time around.

Luckily the Hotel RaviKiran had a flat screen television in the restaurant and teams got to soak in the Olympic fever with beers and local cuisine before resting up for their final day on the road to Mumbai. Before leaving the next morning the scores were posted. In the competition category, team 15 Wheelie Wheelie Mad from New Zealand was clearly in the lead, but with competition only counting for 55% of the total scores, who would be the winner? The question lingered on everyone’s minds.
The other thing about that night, besides getting a surprise international call and staying up all night doing the accounting for the scores that would wind up being largely arbitrary anyway, was how happy I was with the hot water. No, really. I had a great time in the shower with the bright blue tiles and the candy colored plastic bucket. Not the nicest shower at all. But I guess by day 12, hot water alone is enough to make you sing in the shower.

The Mists of Imagination; the Amputees of Raigarh Fort

2008-10-07T04:54:00.000+01:00

Day 12: August 12, 2008

Ratnagiri to Mahad

The morning flag off started with a group photo, The Engine team 13’s Steven and David in Sari’s borrowed from Team Compact Pussycats.

Their lovely imitation of a traditional dance in the girl's fake neon Saree's left everyone coughing with laughter and hoping that the locals would be flabbergasted enough not to do anything. India, for all the male hugging & affection, is enormously homophobic. Would they not understand? Would they give the paying white tourists a pass? I briefly looked around in case. Thankfully, the only thing that happened was their repertoire of dance moves to imitate came to an end and with that everyone shoved off. Somewhere it's on video.

Without any late sleeping officials to flag us off we enjoyed careening out of the hotel flagged off by the mechanics. Everyone, but the Spanish Team #16’s the Thirsty Riders, took off with a roar. With the bad mechanical luck and good humor that had brought them along this far, they were just about to experience their best mechanical accident

yet: a flipped rickshaw landing both of them into a very muddy ditch.

When the mechanical team arrived, they appeared to be covered head to toe in mud yelling at each other like creatures from the black lagoon. Eventually, even they found it quite funny.

The biggest adventure each day, from the pace car, is where to eat lunch. Though there are not many variables in outcome. Still somethings like the euphemistically named Swiss Restaurant are a good time while today's was a red earth, brutal chicken hut with omshanti played on repeat, until nauseous, on the inside of a dirty porch eating the usual spiced dishes and trying not to worry about Hannes, murder Aravind with a blunt object or start crying over one of the impossibly poor and skinny children working like a pack horse. The intensity of everything required long stretches of silence, but Aravind kept yaking away about his incredible knowledge of everything. Checking the blog comments. Abdul, the ever silent driver was my solace. At least he knew how to appreciate the scenery and shut the fuck up.

Despite the rains, teams had a fairly easy day and everyone arrived to the flag down in time to visit the incredible Raigarh Fort at Mahad. Lost in a deep mist with scattered rains, a vast rock face covered in lemongrass, moss and gently swaying greenery that appeared almost electric in color, the fort is at the very top.

The tram seems impossible, it sways and I was almost certain that if the other tram didn't go spiraling to the riders demise, then it would be mine. When we arrived at the parking lot, there had been a fee. At the tram we had to pay a fee. Then at the top, there was a wet stone hut with no electricity where an amputee demanded another fee for the fort. Everyone began arguing.

Typical india. Everyone there is desperately poor. I felt bad for everyone. All they can do is try to extort money, their neighbors are less ripe as targets than we are, but westerners are sensitive about being hustled when there isn't a tag attached. I was frustrated and figured them men would either come to a solution or fisticuffs and in either case I had a fort to explore. The steps were very steep, cut into the rock and enormously fun to climb up with my goofy plastic shoes. One of the pussycats followed me as I climbed past the social scene and up into the trail.

Only in medieval movies about princesses have I ever seen a sight quite as fairy tale as riding up the tramway into the mists of the mountain to see the crumbling turrets and stonework, a human sized maze of stone overwhelmed by moss and water. The fog was the thickest that I have ever experienced and had a density, like walking into cotton. Aravind even seemed to be purposefully nice and trying to give me space. Stepping into the dreamworld alone I felt very happy. A brief return to the secret garden of my girlhood, filled with impossible places & stories. No one followed me, but I could hear their voices. Wandering around until I found the throne, or a reproduction of it. I stood in the center and played emperor of a few minutes and hopped down when I heard the others approaching.

On the way down, it was the first time that I felt sad I was seeing this alone. What better way to explain the delicacies of my heart than to show someone this? Funny that such an open valentine is here, not in one of the neighborhoods of my childhood, but in the closest physical manifestation of that imagination.

Teams climbed into precarious little boxes on the rope way that leads up in groups of 8 or 9. Despite the hilarity of arranging transportation in regular jeeps that broke down anyway (thanks team 6!) and the mysterious Indian fees for things you never imagined for things from parking to gate fees, taxes, entry, etc. It was incredible, the stuff of fantastical medieval movies and dreams. Waterfalls gushed out of the green mountains everywhere with delicate little flowers struggling against the elements on impossible slopes.

The fort itself was huge, covered in moss and filled with rainwater. The throne and various look outs called for more exploration, though the fog was so thick you could only hear the voices and steps of friends nearby but anything more than 10 or 15 meters disappeared.

The nice people at the Hotel Kuber Palace assured us that there would be a pool next year, though we aren’t so sure that’s the improvement we’d most like to see. Still the people were very nice, the service was unusually good and the restaurant was really what you’d want to tell people about when describing the more exotic experiences along the way.

I liked that the hotel had an extensive walkway of shades that kept most of the monsoon rains out. That was nice. The bedbugs? Not so much. The restaurant staff was the fastest, most accurate & helpful of any so far.

The Kilometers and Monsoon are Merciful - Mostly.

2008-10-05T04:51:00.000+01:00

Day 11: August 11, 2008

Tarkali to Ratnigiri

After the extreme monsoon, driving, accidents and late night the teams started off humbled and determined to get to the evening’s hotel with as few breakdowns and

problems as possible.

I had become, not unsurprisingly, sick. Possibly it was the damn Indian moonshine whiskey, but later in the day it was confirmed to have been simply being stressed out in the middle of a monsoon, freezing and later being locked outside while my fat little Indian boss refused to get off the crapper to let me into the beach front hut room. I remember wonder

ing if, after the day I had, I was more or less able to physically beat him to death. No, better to wait for a hotel with nice ammenities.

Thankfully the weather and the roads seemed to hold out. Waterfalls made regular appearances and so did troops of monkeys.

Sitting in the pace car, happy to not be in an autorickshaw, happy to not be in the monsoon, I was happy I'd gone shopping in Goa. The resistance to all things India was broken. I began wearing the traditional clothes, starting with the blue and gold salwar suit. Kausar became more friendly and the pretty sash was a nice distraction to meditate on.

I sat in the passenger seat and concentrated on the absorbing everything that could be seen. The road and water. The million shades of green and the strange new variations that each village had. Goa had looked like the army base it had been, covered in black and green fungus. The jungle villages began in much the same way that other south Indian villages did, but there were always small variations. We stopped at a clinic for more medicines. The building felt like a dark doll house, an old woman quietly sitting in the front room looking out. How often is there something to see?

Close to the final destination the route took us past some of the largest mango plantations on the planet, but in the heavy greenery of the season, it was hard to make out what could have been a mango tree and what was part of the kaleidoscope of green that covered the earth. To consider that only in a few months time the whole scene should change to fire tones of yellows, oranges and reds seem almost incomprehensible. Though there may not be active nightlife in the villages, it’s easy to see that the seasonal cycles provide enough distraction to remain fascinating.

It's true. The landscape changed in that day, from being under the canopy of jungles to being in the rolling hills, which though lush and green bore the faintest look of what the hot dry season might bring. Changing of the season, watching the earth go through the season remains one of life's greatest pleasures, a rare phenomenon after years in New York City. Though I'm grateful to be passing through, I want to return to this spot to see these trees become pregnant with fruit, see the harvest and understand what survival feels like here. Presumably at some point it even stops raining.

In happy contrast to the day before, everyone made it to the Flag down on time. Several participants rushed out to the pool with a huge twisted red slide and a hot tub that overlooked epic cliffs and the beach view from the Hotel Kohinoor Samudhra. The storm clouds gathered again and most made it back to the nice hotel rooms or dining hall while a few stayed back to experience sitting in a hot tub on a cliff in monsoon rains, which is different than sitting in an autorickshaw.

Each night, when we reach the lobby, I have to haul out my briefcases with my laptop, files and not so secret bottle of vodka that the lovely Hungarians had bribed me with. That night as I'm shuffling to the front desk to find out where the hell I relax for a moment, Aravind happily accepts a bouquet of flowers from the front desk clerk. He opens the note and almost throws them disgusted to the floor. Instead, he hands them to me. Nice.

In it, a lovely note, thanking me for the day before. Anonymous, though I have my suspicions. It's not a particularly thoughtful or a resourceful group and the list of suspects is exactly 1. I'm thrilled. The key is mine and I haul off with Abdul carting the printer behind me. I get into the room, sweep away the curtains and find that the bathroom has Bollywood tunes piped in. Fantastico! I'm entranced with the bathroom and spend as much time as possible freshening up before deciding to jump into the hot tub perched on the cliff overlooking the ocean. If we can drink cocktails in there, even better. It turns out to not work out so much, but that's India.

Later at dinner, the waiter ignores me, then loses my order and I wind up chasing the guy into the depths of the kitchen and screaming at the cooks. Steve, the almost silent tech contractor from Colorado, working in Iraq, seems greatly humored by the whole thing and I momentarily wonder if I've gone insane or if it's really just India. In either case I get my food.

The Thin Line Between Adventure and Disaster

2008-10-03T04:48:00.000+01:00

Day 10: August 10, 2008

Panjim, Goa to Tarkali, Maharashtra

I've written the official daily blog entry for each day of the Mumbai Xpress 2008. Day 10 was the day in which the "official" version was a triumph of PR professionalism over reality. I was not sure if I should publish the 'real/personal account' quickly after so as to create a potential controversy or wait. As much as I hope CEMS & owner die a long slow traditional death, it's less drama for me to quietly publish an obscure correction, such as this.

If there is one day that everyone present for the CEAT Mumbai Xpress 2008 will remember most, it is very likely to be Day 10. After almost all 18 teams got their chance fighting with the hotel over ruined or stolen laundry, or change not received, burglarized autorickshaws and the late flag off due to late sleeping officials, it was a frustrating way to begin a long day that promised more brutal monsoon rains. With all the good humor and determination of elite troops, teams set out knowing that there would be a beautiful and incredible road ahead.

Ha, ha, Ha. Oh, I'm funny. The truth is that the morning was a painful monsoon disaster. Everyone was hungover and it hadn't stopped raining for more than 5 minutes since around 2pm the last day. The grey stormy morning destroyed many of the rickshaws and most of the mechanics had to be practically beaten to death to hammer shit back into place. But it didn't help much, since the breakdowns became more aggravated with the impending monsoon & less than ideal circumstances.

About at the boarder between Goa and Maharashtra teams began being turned away due to a washed out bridge. At the bottom of the hill a road was barricaded and a large lot with shops was filled with villagers curious to see floods reported to be the worst seen in 20 years. Of course when 18 rainbow colored autorickshaws driven by internationals showed up, it became a wild and potentially dangerous gathering. Children and drunks began trying to enter rickshaws and provoke participants. Vehicles were lined up and the crowd kept at bay before a restaurant was identified as a safe stop point where everyone could wait before hearing what the alternate route, or embarrassed trek back to Goa, would be. In a tight convoy the autos left the village and waited at the stop point before being re-routed.

Check, please. Actually, the bridge was a low lying flat patch of road that was enormously washed out. The level of the water wasn't rising like a tide gently rolling up to the shore, but like an opaque gas that instantly filled everything at a certain ground level and without any indication of speed or origin simply became higher. The road was elevated as we drove down to the washed out road and small village.

I was in a rickshaw with 2 unusually adventurous types who had a lot of experience in 'out of the way' places, who happened to work for a security firm, also providing myself a mysterious kind of security. We are in the first 5 vehicles to get to the wash out, to see villagers streaming out of flooded huts onto the road and into a large parking lot type enclosure, slightly out of the flood plane where a few food huts are doing the best business they can remember in recent memory. I jump out and talk to the guard about the road & the possibility to pass or how long we might need to wait. As far as I have heard from the morning's briefings with local authorities there is only 1 road and this is it. The option is returning to GOA, where everyone from participants to organizer's have told the Hotel Fidalgo staff to go fuck themselves -in no uncertain terms. Some people even briefly thought back to their jobs in far off countries and the loved ones they might miss if they became stranded & the whole thing went to shit.

One of the policemen is patiently turning everyone off of the road, driving away any curious persons with the bored acknowledgement that to wade in these muddy flood waters is not good because the blue crabs are "very poisonous." Rick, though over six feet tall and looking quite battle ready, still manages to jump a little and speed up. India, particularly outside a metropolis, is not a good place to have medical problems. We look up at the closed road and see more rickshaws arriving, more villagers surrounding them & the party like sounds of kids in one language and the British party brothers blasting music and trying to figure out what's happening in another.

Quickly it occurs to myself and my unusually savvy companions that the locals are young, drinking and entirely too intermixed with the rickshaws. It's prime riot-vandal conditions and the whole thing looks rather stupid on the white tourists' part. The lead organizer is no where to be seen.

I moved the rickshaws into a semi circle on the outside of the parking lot. A modern day circling of the wagons, trying to remember any general Custer or wild west stories that might also have some survival anecdote. Nothing comes to mind. One of the teams is eating gummi candies and I notice that if the kids see it, they will swarm & attack them. The plan is to hide anything but if it gets out of hand, toss & drive away. In a rickshaw, that's kind of like throwing a fish head at a Grizzly bear & crawling away with the rest of the fish in a wheelchair. More hopeful than practical. There's some full sized school buses on the opposite side of the parking lot and some of the participants climb up it to take aerial photos and video of everything. Notably Stephen and Oscar, the two most fearless members of the challenge.

About 30 minutes later the CEMS owner calls to say that another route may have been found but to pull everyone back to a rest-stop/restaurant 3 kilometers back. We all go together in a tight formation as the monsoon begins to kick up again. Everyone loads into the well covered food shack, hitting up the remaining beer stocks, when the call comes that a new route has been found & to pull everyone 5 kilometers back to where the first overpass had been. Considering the rain & the newly opened beers, no one wants to move. But it's a long day & we're behind. I have the mixed sensation of wanting to let everyone stay where they are. Stay here for days, ruining holiday plans, getting everyone fired and starting a new Jones Town cult of alcoholics who left society in favor of avoiding driving through the rain. Instead, I do my best General Patton.

The new route looked to be a million times more glorious than the intended one; curved hilly jungle roads with ever more beautiful scenery. Even the monsoon seemed to begin cooperating a bit. The first accident hit Team 13, The Engine, resulting in the loss of their front windshield, a particularly uncomfortable problem during a monsoon with 100 kilometers left to go. Mechanics drove the autorickshaw into Tarkali through everything.

At the gas stop where several teams fueled up and the windshield disaster forced the team to hand over the driving duties, Rick & I decided to find a toilet. In rural India, finding a toilet is always an adventure, but this one was the best that either of us have yet to come across. First we had to step in between the alley separating the petrol station to an outdoor market, covered by tin sheeting. The rain was relentless and the market labyrinth daunting. Before the toilet building could be found we agreed that nothing in life had more closely resembled a scene from Indiana Jones as this. The toilets looked like a long neglected railway waiting room, smelled like death and cost 5 rupees. Bargain. On the way back I couldn't be sure if the snakes were toys or real, and felt the incredible anxiety of wanting to draw the experience out while also wanting to make it out alive.

What the official version neglects to mention about the busted front windshield is that the nice British boys didn't have to suffer driving it through what would become horrific conditions. The emaciated Indian mechanic did. Alone. Eventually after 12 hours of fighting it out through the passages that follow, he shows up at Tarkali, shaking cold wearing a t-shirt and starving. Eventually he gets some leftovers & to sleep on the floor with the other mechanics. CEMS is an Indian company and reflects the traditional hierarchy and concern for the employee.

Bah. But what I said about the beauty of it. It can't be overstated. Somehow as things became more dangerous, the roads we were on completely unknown and off the daily itinerary, everything became almost mystically beautiful. Never a straight road, the lines curved and twisted, rose and fell until the rhythm of moving and gaping at the idyllic jungle transitioned to the least possible expected landscape: Ireland.

Somehow we managed to leave the coastal jungle and wander smack into open fields, hemmed and boarded by dense black rock and country roads. Hills of intense green and piles of things that looked a bit like hay. Like everywhere else in India, no matter how remote, some amazingly skinny fellow was wandering around, as if looking for a shoe left somewhere along the road. The Monsoon became so heavy the sky and the fields were blanked out by a steel grey color, impossible to see through.

The road signs stopped bothering with English anymore. And no one had any idea where we were or how far off the original route we might be. The lead organizer was in a mini-van somewhere behind us, likely obsessing over his online profile and new treo.

The big disaster came about 30 minutes later in a curvy downhill section of the road where the jungle becomes field. Team 17, Luft der Freiheit, lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a ditch. For reasons unclear, the autorickshaw then burst into flames from the front. Hannes, the driver of the auto experienced several injuries, including trauma to his ear and hand that later required over 30 stitches. Despite this, he was able to pull his stunned partner, Niraj, out of the flaming auto before other teams could show up.

The vision of a flaming autorickshaw, bloodied and shocked friends is enough to unnerve anyone. The teams that were first on the scene, however kept calm and collected, despite also being out of cell reception and being in an unknown area where none of the signs had been in English for several kilometers. Team 18 Northland Control’s Grin N Bear IT, found an ambulance in the next town, team 6, Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies and 7, Compact Pussycats provided first aid, team 8, The Bald Spots, the GPS coordinates and team 5, The Jokes of Haphazzard, drove back and kept everyone moving. Organizer Nona Varnado was with Team 18, and took both injured participants to the nearest hospital, where lead mechanic supervisor and translator Kausar Baig was also on hand to provide assistance and transport to Mumbai if necessary.

What linguistic concision! What 'don't alienate the sponsor & any future paying customers' class! And to think I wasn't the Wall Street Journal Reporter paid to gloss over the situation. In direct contrast and perfectly embodying the complete loss of journalistic standards; either due to the reprint rights situation since the late 1990's preventing professionals from being able to get paid for a well-honed craft or the infamous LCD that is the inheritance of being recently acquired by Rupert Murdoch, aka 'News Corp'. Instead the WSJ reporter, a young man recently out of Stanford university, purposely played up the fireball and general extremeness of the event. Of course, that would happen after it was apparent that everyone would survive -parts mostly intact.

By the time the crash happened, it had already been a long & difficult day. But the beauty of it, the dozen or so trouble free kilometers had restored some energy. The year before a team of greatly hungover and possibly drunk girls had driven off a cliff, saved only by vegetation & luck. One of the girls almost lost a foot and required Kausar driving her directly up to Mumbai for surgery. Remembering the photos still grosses me out. Like Icelanders, you give people one day off to party and they have a rough time behaving themselves or performing early the next day. Plus comfort is disarming. The little golf carts on speed seem harmless by day 10. So it was not without some level of apprehension that we came over a perfectly green hill to see a teal blue rickshaw in flames in a ditch on the side of the road, flagged down by the British party twins.

Hannes was standing around with his hand on his head when I found him. I couldn't see the wound, just that he was bleeding, it was that deep red almost black that happens only when something is deep and he began to shake. Someone approached me to say that it looked extremely bad and there was the implication that it might be life threatening. We all knew we were in the middle of nowhere, in a monsoon. In a dead zone for cell reception. I had him lie down on his back, with the others wrapping him to keep warm and raincoats overhead to keep as much rain as possible off. His team mate appeared physically fine but was clearly in shock. You can't really blame him, but it didn't help matters any.

The situation was this: no cell phone reception, we had no idea where we were or even what road we were on exactly. From what I could see the main injury was that the ear was almost completely severed and required being held in place. I had no idea how far ahead the nearest village would be or where the nearest hospital would be. The remaining participant rickshaws would also make for a particularly horrible ambulance and might not be capable of making it to where ever we needed to go if time was critical. For a second nothingness stretched in every possible direction.

But the road only goes 2 ways.

So I had Team 18, my capable security professionals, continue down the road, while the twins & I would drive back until we could contact the pace car/mini-van or the back up SUV or Kausar and the mechanics. First, we found two participants clever enough to have their own GPS. I finally got the coordinates and a few meters later, cell reception. I called Aravind who seemed irritated. He didn't have GPS, that's a toy for white people apparently. He had no idea where we were either. I tried to explain the exact route that all the front autos had taken & how to get to us. Then, another call. Team 18 has found a gigantic old land rover type ambulance in the next village that has no outward appearance of being an ambulance. Quickly, we get team 17 into the car. Luckily Raj also speaks Hindi, so we feel mostly prepared for whatever is going to happen next. In between moments of semi-calm the rain comes.

We're in a big hurry to get to the hospital that is apparently in the last village we past. The driver knows where he is going. But everyone who has stayed to see things through are all standing on the side of the road, dazed. It's getting late. They're still only 1/2 to Tarkali. I tell them to get back on the road, drive safely and finish the day. Go.

When Raj offers a cigarette, I suck it down, cracking the window open for the rain to pour in and the smoke to stay in the large back space of the old vehicle, wishing there were some shocks on the thing to prevent Hannes from being jostled anymore than he needs to be. One of the pussycats is coming with us, as she's been holding his hand and seems to be calming everyone down, even while wearing a neon pink faux Saree. We get to the clinic.

Up until that point I felt like I had things under control; that options like the road were still open. The clinic is typical of a jungle village and anyone who has traveled or lived in these places, knows what this looks like. A museum of dirt. A quietly dying elderly body tucked along a wall. Diminutive nurses handling trays of unsterilized medical stuff unfit for a basic emergency kit.

First the cleaning. One of the nurses collects some things from an open cabinet that looks like it belongs in an auto body shop. A few precious cotton gauze squares that fall to the dirt floor and placed back on the tray before being handed to the doctor who begins to use them after briskly grabbing the ear flesh, holding it back and rinsing it down with alcohol of some variety. His movements are coarse, he tells us that today is supposed to be his day off. That he shouldn't have to be working right now. Like the mysteries of empathy, self-absorbed assholes seem to be available universally. I panic, not sure if I should stop them, stop everyone from this filthy catastrophe and find a way to go somewhere else. But where?

Both Emily and myself take turns holding Hannes' large hand. He's lying down on his side as the other hand is cleaned & the gash on his palm is stitched. He's given painkillers by injection and for a second I wonder if I am also in shock. The needle and tube with the painkiller looks antique, or like something out of a Victorian horror film. Hannes is making pleasant conversation with the doctor and mentions that his father is a vascular surgeon. A small, giddy sensation happens when I assume that Aravind will be sued out of existence by the poor boy's family. They begin sewing the ear back on with what looks like shoe laces and crochet needles.

His team mate is quietly freaking out on the next chair and I mention that it's okay to squeeze my hand as the pain must be quite intense. It's Hannes that smiles at me and declines as he could easily hurt my smaller hand if he did so. My admiration for his character doubles. KK shows up and quietly talks to the hospital staff and relays the location to the other organizers before Kausar shows up drenched and looking like a prize fighter who has just entered the ring. He probably hadn't slept in 5 days or more and was expecting to perform a repeat of last years' Goa-Mumbai sprint to the hospital. It probably would have been the better idea. He's loud & I have to remind him not to freak out, but it's much better to have him around. The two team mates are talking themselves through the procedure, how things look and staying unrealistically optimistic. Raj uses his multiple smart phones to photograph the stitching. The doctor, after hearing his patients' father is a German surgeon had become far more interested in the task and ordered that they show his father his handiwork and have him send him an email. Yes, he wanted an email.

And payment. KK paid the fee, which included some pills for antibiotics, pain and something else -maybe clotting? It all looked like dirty street crack, but it also might have been a welcome placebo. We were happy, very, very happy to get into the heated, sealed SUV with KK to finish the trip. Kausar & the mechanics had to haul the wreck out of the ditch and attach it to the mechanics van, a miniature thing that can be found only in southeast asia and was also constantly breaking down, just to make things more challenging. By that time many of the teams were also breaking down and the mechanics were more than an hour before they could reach anyone. Even with the hand drawn map they had given us in the hospital-hut we had to have Raj ask for directions every 10 minutes.

How everyone else got there, I have no idea. As night fell, roads were washed out, bridges underwater and we ran into Batman & Robin camping out under a shrine, trying to keep dry and figure out how to get their rickshaw moving again. There wasn't enough support cars or mechanics to help everyone, they had to save themselves and make it to the resort. Under the circumstances it looked like the Lord of the Flies set. I decided to begin drinking.

Though Team 17 would be okay, other teams were still far from Tarkali with a major monsoon already flooding out the only roads available. Autorickshaws crossed roads just before, during and after rivers swelled into gushing floods. Only 4 teams made it to the hotel in time for the flag down, but all arrived safely before the next day’s flag off.

Brutality: punishing kilometers in monsoon rains

2008-10-01T04:44:00.001+01:00

Day 8: August 8, 2008

Bhaktal-Murudeshwar to Panjim, Goa

The most arduous day of the Mumbai Xpress 2008 began promptly with a flag off at 8:30am amid torrential monsoon rains that drenched everything, regardless of any rain gear or the rain flaps attached to the autorickshaws. So dense was the downpour that the limitless view of the ocean on one side and the tropical forests of palm trees and the Western Ghats behind them were completely hidden behind a wall of grey. To make it even more challenging it would also be the longest distance to the flag down, a daunting 208 kilometers.

Within 10 kilometers teams began having problems with rainwater seeping into the fuel tanks and breakdowns became less fun. As mechanics and support vehicles rushed to assist, other teams also stopped to provide assistance –despite the reasonable desire to plod ahead and finish in the much anticipated Goa. Teamwork, gorgeous beaches and tropical scenery provided a great motivating lift to all the teams who kept their spirits, wits and enthusiasm high.

In anything that qualifies as "Expedition" or "Endurance," such as real life (particularly jobs and relationships) the only possibly way to survive is to find nonsensical and harmless ways of amusing yourself. Traveling to India to participate or organize an autorickshaw race might be right up there with inane distractions, only to find yourself in a world so entirely different and mono-cultural, if not monotheistic, that you'll spend days laughing at the Indian-English road signs and the Swiss Restaurant that serves exactly the same food every other hotel/pit stop.

When teams made it to the boarder crossing between Karnataka and Goa, they were in for a surprise. Officials ushered team members into a small office structure and demanded 100 rupees ($2.50usd) to be allowed into the state. Without issuing receipts or notating the transaction, teams were waved in after handing over the money. At dinner that evening some teams were confused, was it a toll or a bribe? After a few laughs from the more experienced organizers and travelers, the bribery heavy culture had made a concrete introduction to all 18 teams.

Soon, the entry into Goa once again changed the landscape with the Portuguese and former military influences felt in the architecture, roads, people and animals lining the route. Every building seemed covered in various shades of green and black fungus that streamed down the windows, corners and cracks of walls and up from the floors, ledges and broken metal wires. It gave the effect of a living malignant predator and a decaying carcass; from which countless families live out their lives. Since the monsoon so totally transforms the world, it seemed plausible that the dry season might banish this invader but I quickly dismissed the thought remembering the relatively placid pacific northwest and looking closely at the permanent decrepitude and wetness the buildings and their cancerous mould. I'd see a lot more of these buildings in Mumbai - a far cry from the desert cities of Tamil Nadu.

Yet the relative whiteness of the Goan architecture style, the supreme gift of the Portuguese who seemed to have screwed the natives in every possible way (barring some delightful culinary tricks), is often sited as a highlight of the region. Having grown up around American military bases it's strangely familiar; as is the relative lack of buildings and population in that unique Indian style of "roadside development." This I find out is due to the fact that Goa, until relatively recently has essentially been a base for the Indian military. This also explains why one of the richest regions, thanks to tourism, has one of the worst most underfunded schools of all the areas we have visited.

Intermission: Dance Party

2008-09-20T04:25:00.001+01:00

And now for something completely different:

This is a pretty fun dance track, but it's also a hilarious video; particularly if you're familiar with Eastern European mom's and their tendency to baby their sons... and occasionally put the younger generation to shame.

Classic Budapest apartment. Fun as hell to dance to.

Ancient and New: Temples with air-conditioning, elephants and Disney like displays.

2008-09-12T04:37:00.001+01:00

Day 7: August 7, 2008

Mangalore to Bhaktal-Murudeshwar

Leaving the official flag down from the Hotel Taj Manjarun on a bright sunny morning, spirits at an all time high, the rickshshaws began their 150+ kilometer journey. Suckers.

The first stop and challenge location was the legendary Shri Krishna temple in Udupi .

A large winding structure situation in an old town complex, this was one of the most memorable temple visits, with diamond encrusted golden gods, air conditioning through certain hallways, loudspeakers broadcasting pious chanting and an unforgettable hall looking out over a vast square water complex where 23,000 people are fed on a daily basis.

For those lucky enough to wander the whole grounds, a temple elephant was taking 10 rupee coins in exchange for soft smacks on the head by the elephants truck, a blessing all will remember.

After the temple visit roads were a mixed tropical experience with dry patches alternating with washed out roads and mixed showers. Teams that broke down sporadically hid under palm trees; or took refuge in roadside hotels, deciding to try the menu as well. Lunch with locals is always an experiment with local dishes and moreover the distinct experience of trying to order from Indian waiters.

One of the greatest moments of the CEAT Mumbai Xpress 2008 will undoubtedly be the moment when Madrid 2016 stopped at the point where other teams, such as the British team The Engine spontaneously burst into shouts of joy: the appearance of the Arabian Sea. After stopping, the Spanish team noticed a local holding what looks like a small plastic tortilla holder. Inside –a King Cobra. Hypnotized by his handler, other teams began to stop to offer assistance, assuming that they had broken down. Upon seeing a real live snake charmer and the incredible spectacle of a King Cobra the magic of the experience left everyone speechless.

As is the nature of these events, not but 3 kilometers after this amazing experience we come across those old British assholes, broken down on the side of the road as the mechanics have the purple monstrosity on levers of some kind. Even more amazing they're doing a (poorly) choreographed rendition of Monty Python's, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (insert whistle.) With the well known chorus, "life's a piece of shit, when you look at it."

Imagine how warm the cold cockles of my heart momentarily turned! After all this was the exact same song, in printed lyric version no less, that I sent my brother when he was trapped miserable in basic training in the US ARMY. His story about the whole barracks whistling and singing (they're not allowed music) made me positively upbeat. With a Bhaktal Biryani to look forward to, things were looking up.

Finally turning into the road leading to the RNS Residency,Murudeshwar, the flag down location for the evening, teams got a glimpse of the incredible silver and golden statues and temples, dominated by an enormous seated Shiva atop a museum. Once an island accessible only during low tide; the island with its hotels, statues and shops is a little less than 10 years old, prompting varied responses from awe to comparisons to Disneyland.

Epic views from the hotel, with local fishing boats making their way out despite the storms took second seat when teams started getting hungry and agreed to roam through the strip of restaurants to find one serving meat and alcohol –a service difficult to find in the stigma of a vegetarian and abstinent Hindu village. Eventually, wading through the dark amid intermittent drenching rain, almost everyone reached a hidden restaurant that required nothing less than a dark alley and being turned away from three moral vegetarian restaurants.

Into the Jungle: the Monsoon Begins

2008-09-11T04:34:00.000+01:00

Day 6: August 6, 2008

Hassan to Mangalore

One of the most beautiful and varied roads on the route, teams flagged off from the tropical setting of the Hotel Ashhok and got their first taste of outrageous road conditions bounding up and across dusty dirt roads before hitting the lush tropical farm lands filled with coffee and pepper tree farms. Almost as soon as the rickshaws began to slowly climb up into and then down the Western Ghats the monsoon clouds burst open, filling the roads with puddles filled with red earth that varied from moderate pot holes to small lakes. All on a slim 2 lane national highway with large trucks zooming up and down in both directions.

I was in the 2nd support car trying to reach the hotel first (not successfully). Infinitely better than the foghorn of having to listen to Herr Aravind's banal cell phone rantings, we actually got to stop on the side of the road to gaze up at the waterfalls. KK showed me the delicate native plant that recoils when touched. I'd never seen this plant before and the whole experience made me feel like a child discovering the world again. He told me to try the water flowing from the waterfall. I felt a not unwarranted amount of doubt (the Hosur Buffet had made me almost deathly ill) about a white girl lapping up the native waters, but I figured I'd probably have just as much fun in a hospital, and KK was so happy to be there, that I figured, "why not?"

So in the middle of a tropical Indian Jungle, just off the Northern Highway #17 I bent down and drank the crystal clear water from a massive waterfall. And it was delicious. The waters passed under the road and into what appeared to be a muddy raging canyon of water. The massive size of it looked like the impossible photos from a tsunami or hurricane. How impossible that something so massive and destructive should be a normal, beautiful part of life. But it is.

My Personal favorite were the seemingly endless petrol tankers driving up and down with hand painted decorations filled with local icons, motifs and religious saying impossible to understand in any language. From autorickshaws to tankers, "We Two Ours One" seemed to hold great meaning, of some sort. Pasha had warned me it was some kind of Christian slogan and I fooled myself into almost getting it at certain moments. Beyond all others the STANDARD warning on all petrol trucks was the one that won me over: Warning Highly INFLAMMABLE.

It’s no surprise then, that teams began experiencing crazy mechanical problems. Ironically the mechanic’s support van was also taking a beating with organizers and mechanics working overtime to get everything running smoothly. Poor Kausar. The superhero of the event, in charge of everything related to making the damn things go, he got the worst of it. From having to put all the autorickshaws together at the last minute to ensuring that repairs actually happened (without the mechanics getting so drunk they couldn't screw things back together.) Plus he shows up with a smile on his face and turns the whole thing into a crazy impromptu party that you would have wanted to go to even if there had been an invitation.

Have a major breakdown in a ditch in the middle of the jungle during the monsoon?

Kausar's your man. Anyone who hadn't figured that out yet would soon.

Despite the chaos the overwhelming beauty of the landscape and the regular breaks of sunshine dazzled everyone. Waterfalls poured from almost every rock formation and rushed into raging rivers and huge flooded plains.

Thankfully teams had learned their lessons about timing and pace and reached the BASE hotel in time for a presentation and buffet with the local Round Table group in Mangalore. That everyone got there (and in good time) seemed like a miracle or at the least -highly improbable. Yet it happened.

The Mangalore Round Table event was held at the BASE hotel, The TAJ. It started with a rather awkward series of presentations and the weirdness of participants paying for their buffets and drinks but after enough drinks everyone was just happy to be together, rocking out to Bhangra and laughing their asses off at the silly white boys eating Indian peppers. Bets went to charity but the red faces and embarrassment of lackluster performances are the real souvenirs.

Kids, Water Buffalo and a Giant Naked Guy

2008-09-10T04:31:00.000+01:00

Day 5: August 5, 2008

Hosur to Hassan

Located just outside of Bangalore, participants were bussed to Round Table School, a project of Bangalore Metropolitan Round Table-44 (BMRT-44) in Roopena Agrahara village on the outskirts of Bangalore city. Once again we were greeted with opulent flower garlands and traditional blessings for a good journey.

This time the school had been mobilized into formation. The girls lined up playing flutes and participants were able to talk to the BMRT-44 tablers who described the difficulties of getting the children, most of whom come from a nearby slum, to come to school at all. Parents often need persuasion to send their children, particularly girls, to school. The largest difference they found was that by offering free meals, the attendance has greatly improved. Also notable is that the cost to feed and educate a student for an entire year is only about $50.

Once out of the hot and dusty school parking lot, almost everyone (including the pace car) got lost and confused navigating out of Bangalore. We repeated the usual 1, 2, 3 inquisition method of navigating. Bangalore seemed nice. The streets are filled with tropical vegetation and we passed the gates to the (apparently) massive botanical gardens, a fort of some kind and numerous large traffic circles that gave the impression that we were driving through a gigantic MC Escher illustration made horribly real. The realative calm I felt being in the pace car was mitigated by the nervousness I felt for teams that would have to crash their way through this alone. We were officially in Karnataka, the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu and they seem to have their own view points as well as a different language and tropical jungle climate.

After watching the desert landscape became tropical and filled with small local farms, the challenge for the day was the incredible Shravanabelagola monolith and Jain temples. After losing time with a late start and the confusion of Bangalore’s traffic heavy streets, most teams risked losing all of their daily points to make it to the temple and correctly answer the challenge questions for the reward of a mere 30 extra points and the chance to witness the largest monolith in the world with one of the most spectacular views in the world –at least for those willing to climb over 600 stairs.

For those not familiar with Jain icons, it's also a bit of a sausage fest as the main deity is a naked -and clearly uncircumsized- male. The temple is a small open courtyard and the perspective you get is first admiring the enormous stone feet and then looking straight up at the holy genitals. Perhaps only the Americans get uncomfortable in that situation.

With too many factors working against them and drivers still learning the ropes, most teams arrived to the flag down late and were forced to forfeit the day’s points. The really shit part was that the cold monsoon winds and rains began to approach in the late afternoon and a handful of teams learned the hard lesson of breaking down just as the rains and darkness began to fall. It wasn't the last time this would happen, but it was the moment when many realized this wouldn't be a pleasure cruise.

The upswing was that the waiting hotel (well, the standard anyway) was awesome, the best bar the JWMarriott in Mumbai. After entering the town and wondering if the hotel would be as dire as the one in Vellore, I couldn't help but recall what Javier, my old Cooper Union crush once said about his renovated apartment in the lower east side (this was 10 years ago, kids). "It's like finding a beautiful pussy on a fat woman." Shocking, but memorable.

At the delightful Hotel Ashhok teams regained their strength and spirits by exchanging incredible stories and relishing in the special camaraderie only the CEAT Mumbai Xpress 2008 can create, bringing together 39 participants from 9 countries together.

Yep, 9. It turns out that I made a wee error in compliling the nationalities list. Since Raj applied from India and had an Indian name, I incorrectly assumed we could add India to the list of participant countries. But no. The white sheep is American.

Road Tripping with the Rickshaw Posse

2008-09-09T04:26:00.000+01:00

Day 4: August 4, 2008

Vellore to Hosur:

After a flag off from the hotel driveway that led smack into the middle of typical Indian street chaos; teams were supposed to make an easy trip requiring only 3 turns to get to the next school visit. On the way, many were lost... stalled by the adventure of refueling (immediately across the street, but good luck getting across!) or just misdirected by locals directing them to go straight but pointing in an entirely different direction. Arbitrarily. The pace car was immediately lost and having native Tamil speakers didn't help. Our general navigation policy, courtesy of the extraordinarily polite Abdul, was to ask and sit through either:

A) totally couldn't understand his mutterings
B) Didn't believe he had any idea what he was talking about or
C) Just seemed like he was trying to fuck with us

He'd drive just far enough down the road to be out of immediate visibility and ask the next guy who has nothing to do but stand next to the road. This might seem like it would take awhile, but in India there are millions of these guys. Literally. Standing on the side of the road doing nothing except occasionally talking to the other guys doing nothing appears to be the #1 occupational choice across both urban and rural demographics.

Once there, teams in Batman and Robin costumes were swarmed by thrilled school children. All of the participants and organizers were welcomed with beautiful flower garlands, asked to shake hands and give autographs and pictures with boys and girls - who loved the colorful autos and the attention. It was an overcast late morning but there was something about it that was magical. The school itself was located in a hard to find alley with old traditional buildings. Nothing spectacular, but it was homey. The area had a sense of community and pride, the children were happy and people on the streets seemed pleasantly bored. Or at least that's how it seemed.

Participants surrounded by kids requesting autographs and being photographed by local media were overwhelmed by feeling like celebrities, but managed to really enjoy touring classrooms and learning more about Sri Ramakrishna Middle School, Kosapet, Vellore.

Day 4 saw the landscape begin to change from desert to rolling hills with vegetation and rock outcroppings. Temples moved away from the multicolored South Indian styles to the more muted single color temples more typical in the north. Road conditions were still quite good and with a little experience under their belt, teams began playing tricks on each other.

I took off with Raj, the still solo member of team #17 - Luft Der Freheit, or the "white sheep" as I likedcalled him. Raj was born in Queens, raised in Jersey and educated at Stanford. His parents were Jain, immigrants from India and though he's working in Delhi for the Wall Street Journal, he has an undeniable NYC accent. He's more out of place than any of us and it confuses the hell out of everyone. To escape the Nazi camp in the pace car I jumped into Raj's autorickshaw.

I hadn't planned on driving, but apparently he needed to get some work done, so I started driving. It's incredibly easy, particularly if you've ever driven a motorcycle. The clutch can be a bit difficult so I always had a nice fellow to do the heavy lifting. Indian motorists were absolutely flabbergasted, then in hysterics to see a white woman driving an Indian looking fellow in a candy colored autorickshaw. I imagine that's how miss America feels when on tour.

It's a great thing to travel across the great subcontinent with the wind and petrol fumes. Half way along the Spanish team, who had a far better engine, rides up along side us dying in hysterics displaying huge black sneakers, shouting something incomprehensible. I can't tell if it's my aged hearing or the accent or the wind. Regardless, I have no idea what the hell they were trying to tell us. Raj agrees he can't either. But we all break down and play turns leap frogging over each other's respective break downs. Ours turns out to only need a push start and this feels mighty embarrassing.

We stop to help another team, then break down, and this is how it always goes.

The Spanish team stops and turns around to make sure we're not assed out in the middle of nowhere and when we sheepishly start up, they invite us to lunch. This is where the story unfolds.

One of the highlights of the day;Team #16, the Spanish team called the Thirsty Riders, went into a local temple to find that their shoes had been stolen. Furious they asked locals standing outside the temple entrance who had done it -and typical of Indian directions- they said it had been a black autorickshaw. In fact it had been the other Spanish team, Madrid 2016 in a white autorickshaw, but by then it was too late. They were already searching local shoe shops and trying to track down the British team, Two Tukkers in Tukxedos, who they suspected. By the time they reached the hotel everyone else knew what had happened and their friends returned the shoes.

The poor Tukkers were already having an adventure of their own. At a toll gate a drunken local driver began to harass them, puling off their meagre windshield wiper and demanding the police. Attendants called the local authorities and the Two Tukkers in Tukxedos dutifully waited for 30 minutes for authorities to sort out an incomprehensible situation. Luckily five more teams pulled over to see what the situation was, just as the police arrived. Just possibly under the influence (!) the other driver disappeared in the other direction, while the police chief tried to determine what had happened between the attendants, the Tukkers and organizer, Nona Varnado. After a tense five minutes we were all waved on. The lesson learned: it pays to have friends and travel in a posse when the authorities turn up.

Leaving Las Vegas, er, um... Chennai.

2008-09-07T04:20:00.000+01:00

Blast Off:

Day 3: Chennai to Vellore

The Flag off ceremony held in St. George’s Indo-English school and orphanage, a 300 year old series of buildings, behind the madness of the main streets on what looked like a miniature desert was supposed to be an epic gala event. And in a way, it was. The original idea was a gala with 10 representatives from the embassies from each participating nationality with national anthems, a RedBull arch, a celebrity guest, flame throwers, jugglers, a live band and a bollywood DJ duking it out. It was also suppposed to start promptly at 9am.

Since it was organized exactly 2 minutes in advance it went something like this: a Christian revival event had booked the vast desert/parking lot/playground in advance and we could take over the entrance/corner before they could wake up and make it back for another day of hawking inspirational and/or devotional products. And yes, analog tapes were available from hosts with incredible brylcreme pompadours.

Participants placed the final decorative touches on outrageously painted autorickshaws, from the Disco bottle hanging from Compact Pussycat’s rickshaw, to the bell pull used as a tail and male blow-up doll to complete team Nip ‘N’ Tuk’s autorickshaw that had been transformed into a pink elephant.

Participants got their first taste of the local media crews that follow the event, posing in costumes that ranged from pirates, to superheroes and hippies.

Right out of the gate, teams began breaking down, in fact Tip ‘N’ Tuk created a new event record by having a massive breakdown less than 100 meters from the flag off.

Poor bastards. The first days are infamous for having the most mechanical problems as newbie foreign drivers learn the subtle nuances of driving a two-stroke, 3 wheeled bottom of the barrel autorickshaw. Team 6, The Jokes of Hap-Hazzard had the dubious distinction of having their rear wheel fall off and roll past them as they came to a stop.

The first major stop of the day was a school visit organized by a local Round table (MERT- 30). Since this happened on a Sunday, there were only about 60 children, rather than the hundreds we would see in the coming days. Technically no children were supposed to be there but we'd bribed them in advance with the promise of chocolates, handily supplied by a local Cadbury rep. There we were greeted by teachers and students with fragrant jasmine garlands, small milk candies and a blessing for a good journey. Participants dressed in costumes thrilled the kids and there was just enough time for a brief game of ball. Teams and organizers then met with local Round Tablers and teachers who gave a history of the school, the impressive achievements of the humble staff -notably that despite all the difficulties not a single student has failed the yearly examinations. Participants distributed chocolates and began the rest of journey to Vellore.

The pace car got the luxury of an additional stop: the Rajiv Ghandi memorial. It was at this spot in Tamil Nadu that the dubious figure met his gruesome end. The assassin was a suicide bomber, a young woman. She approached him and appeared to place something at his feet (a flower?) and blew them both to bits. The memorial site itself, is quite lovely. Lush green lawns that are in stark contrast to the rest of the landscape.

Large pillars with intricate dark metal sculptures circle the exact spot; where there is a large vertical mosaic depicting the exact moment of splat in which it is said that Rajiv died with a benevolent smile on his face.

Somewhat questionably the artist uses tiles and a circular base that continues the "mid air" theme. Since the pillars, landscaping and large stone socialist-stylized mural are heavily dependent on idealized symbols it's even stranger. But hey, I liked it.

waking up in the DEEP SOUTH

2008-08-21T21:00:00.015+01:00

of the subcontinent. The Indian one. It's hot, dusty and dirty. I admit it, this is the trouble I've been looking for; since the early wannabe days in art school listening to Asian Dub Foundation and one of the Shankar clan while commuting to the tech heavy South Bay and getting a leg up on Indian English and eating curry with my right fingers. That was several years ago though and being broke in Eastern Europe is like a giant dose of chalky antacid destroying everything from curiosity, robust stomach acid and single speed/fixed gear bike fanaticism to the desire to careen into the unknown.

Which is to say, I'm back.

It started off, ironically, enough with a wedding. I'd make the familiar analogy into a puerile joke about how when one soul is born, another dies and such, but in my rush to experience the new I think it's best to cast off comfort and routine and this should definitely extend to bad stand-up routines.

The cast system in India is still alive and I found many ways of being fascinated, frustrated and confounded by it. I'm American so my lines of distinction tend towards the economic. Social, inherited, political or racial boundaries tend to be confusing. For the sake of clarity the wedding I'm about to describe is from the coconut picker's caste, which is apparently pretty "up there."

First, it takes damn near forever. The process is so complex and intricate that only the women in the family understand what's going on. After mutually being selected by the families, they can veto the selections until eventually invitations are made and the week long carnival begins. Naturally it must be on an auspicious day, though that can involve numerology or Hindu holy days or even a combination of those and the consideration of the monsoon season. Still awake?

They get engaged several times. There is a stage and everyone they've ever met comes up to bless them in a long procession. In explaining it to me the sister of the groom proudly explains that 1) He has no idea what's going on and is only following along. This enhances the "universality" of the marriage experience, as far as I can tell. 2) She says that there is one caste above the lofty coconut picker, the Brahman caste that has an even longer wedding ceremony. I can't help but recall various Richard Pryor routines, mainly the one where he explains the sexual differences between blacks and Chinese.

In the wedding invitation you've already missed the first engagement party that happens like 3 months prior. Then there's the regular engagement festival the night before where we have to take the Mexican party bus to the bride's banquet hall to bribe her with things like marzipan fruits and sodas particular to the Tamil Nadu region, then the wedding with the elephant trip, the convention center and the ride back in a red velvet cart pulled by imported white ponies. Finally the white guests are sent off on an air conditioned mini-bus.

The idea, I believe, was to show us the sights and distract us through what was likely more ceremonies that preclude catering to white people in English and (shudder) the consummation. Or something like that. Hopefully it is limited to a very meaningful handshake.

We're sent away and pass by yet another temple covered in renovation bamboo sticks and dead palm leaves. Feroz insists the bus stops though no one give a shit and I'm the Tamil version of a naked ghost in my halter dress. The cigarettes and faux vodka/Indian made grain alcohol help with the embarrassment factor. That and the charming Russian fellow.

For dinner we are going to this famous Tamil chicken hut. Apparently all the movie stars have been there and it's really famous. When I see the dirt floors, back alley approach to the place I can only look at the 5 different men making the parathas. And honestly it is immediately clear that these will be the best parathas that have ever been made outside of an inspired Indian mother's kitchen. It's like dumplings in Asia. The shop that sells only dumplings for 30 years is likely to have the best dumplings. The construction line; the mediation of repetition ensures it.

But it is the chicken that they are famous for. So we try the chicken.
On palm leaves it arrives with the standard sauces. Everything is super spicy, though it's clear that yes, this is the best chicken that has ever been produced outside of certain southern US establishments. We all eat until it hurts.

Then, since time is short we leave for the waterfalls inside the Tiger park. I have no idea where the hell this is and everyone knows that the reality is that no one has seen a tiger in this park in the last 20 years. Regardless, they have a waterfall that doesn't dry up. Instead of facing another bucket shower, we grab out towels and let the driver take us there.

In my post sexual revolution American brain, there's one big falls and everyone is in pilgrimage garb, waiting the spiritual purity of the falls. I'd just read something about Japanese warriors doing something similar under freezing waterfalls and was prepared for my awakening or at least the dawn of some kind of new superpower. Instead there's a line and metal railings, like at the cheaper amusement parks. His & Hers falls, never to be cross sampled. When Eni had called Aravind to ask about it he said not to wear the usual bikinis because the SHEER FORCE of the water would rip them off. So, we reasoned, we could wear shirts and bottoms. But upon seeing the actual thing (with floodlights illuminating the falls and the crowd there despite the late hour) we decided that it would be safe in a t-shirt and bikini bottoms.

So us Euro chicks are stripping down when the whole place comes to a stand-still. The men's side has completely abandoned the waterfall in favor of ogling us, while the men in our party rush to the front of the line and get right to enjoying the falls. In the meantime a nice Muslim woman in charge of things lets us know that we must put our pants back on.

How embarrassing. But really the strict women in full saris and Muslim wear bathing should have been a clue. At least we helped the boys skip the line, which was quite sizable.

The only other highlight of Courtallam in the Tirunelveli district was that while staying at the Esakki resort a crow decided to get insane and peck at our bedroom window starting at 5am. For anyone who hasn't seen an Indian crow, their beaks are ferocious and they are very intelligent. This thing threw his whole being into trying to crack the window with his beak. I was terrified. What would happen if he succeeded? I've seen "The Birds" and I laid there in terror until about 8am when he must have gotten bored and decided to bother someone else. Right about the time we packed up and had to be back on the bus for the trip to wherever, which was a very long drive. Good company is truly a saving grace.

Bicycles in Budapest -this is no Paris-

2007-08-22T11:17:00.002+01:00

After along hiatus from injury, traveling and getting distracted I'm back to publishing at semi-regular intervals.

Unlike before when I was racing alleycats and working in New York city the new focus is on straight up travel and incredible stories.

Here's the mild observations that made me think that writing on the internet might be a good idea again:

The big Scandal in Budapest this summer was the story of a messenger that was riding along the main boulevard Andrassy when a car started maliciously swerving to hit the messenger. At the light the cyclist approached the car to say something about sharing the road only to have the driver present a Parliament ID and a hand gun threatening to kill the cyclist while maintaining the god-like immunity that comes with any parliamentary position here. The cyclist first went to the police, who rebuffed him then the media. What followed can only be described as a shit storm.
Yesterday it rained. My boy is a messenger and after coming home he casually recounted 3+ major accidents including witnessing a taxi run down an old man who's head exploded on contact. Major car accidents like this seem common and after riding here it's clear that drivers have a genuine contempt for life in general and for cyclists in particular. This is further exasperated because the bridges connecting the city are almost all under major reconstruction and even for a very small city the congestion is... epic.
Paris has just instituted a major bike share program and New York (via Transportation Alternatives) is studying alternative street planning in regards to bike lanes and how to integrate cars, bicycles and pedestrians. Budapest has a number of unique solutions and problems that make for a real mixed bag -excellent examples of what to do and what to avoid. I'm a big believer in learning from the mistakes and good examples of others. I'm also interested in traveling to and reporting on the problems and solutions found in other European cities.

So whenever I manage to get myself some place new or stumble upon something epic and ridiculous. Like before there will probably be a good amount of social and adventure reporting/storytelling. Of course it's also a lot more relaxed around here so the frequency will be whenever something happens.

Budapest is an unusually lovely city.

2007-03-03T18:54:00.002+01:00

Accommodation:

Generally there are two spots with ridiculous prestige: the Hilton Buda immediately adjacent to Matya's Templom

and Fisherman's Bastion (the lovely white castle over looking the whole city). Since I lived 1/2 block away I can tell you this is totally over-hyped. There's a hotel called "The Burg Hotel" that seems like the holiday-inn version (and possibly more charming). As well as a hard to find Hosteling International option. That's if you're excited about staying inside the castle walls. It's also pretty convenient... if you like stairs.

By far the most decadent and desirable hotel is the restored Four Seasons in full Art Deco at the Pest side of the Lanchíd (Chain Bridge, Híd = bridge) This is handy to know because Budapest has many, many bridges for a small city and all of them are different and most offer a gorgeous view and being plunked into a new part of the city that you may (or may not) be looking for. The Lanchíd is by far the most famous, as well as the most centrally located bridge in Budapest.

In Pest (and also Buda, but other than the Castle you don't want to stay in Buda (see Gellert exception below) because you'll waste your time trying to figure out how to get around) There's a huge variety of hostels as well as low-cost hotels. Hostels are the cheapest and have the benefit (or detraction) of forcing you into interacting with other travelers. I can recommend the Mandragora hostel, which also has a website and online booking.

If you want to revel in the lost Grandeur of Budapest/Europe/Civilization, et al. The best option is the Hotel Gellert, which also houses the famous Gellert baths , is made out of this incredible carved stone stone, looks like a dirty fortress, immediately adjacent to a major university and

The famous Gellert/"freedom" Bridge . FYI this is also the most popular bridge for suicides and is currently under renovation on the south side. Crossing over to pest (Gellert & the university are on the Buda side) from both Gellert Bridge and the Lanchíd you'll find major tourist attractions like cafe's minor (not very exciting) shopping; postcards, desk trolls and your best shot at hearing English spoken on the street. (these will be other tourists)

Depending on how much time you have and what your personal inclinations are Budapest is good for a few different things:

Getting semi-naked in ancient bath houses
Drinking surrounded by incredible (largely crumbling) architecture.
I hear the museums are great but I really don't know.
Music

1. Bathing:

The first thing about the bath houses are that they're OLD, which as an American winds up being surprising that they're not totally pristine modern (or recently renovated). Judging also by experiences in Japan it might be a little weird from that perspective too. That means some crumbling facades and everything feeling a bit like a once-magnificent old house.

This is a Hungarian maintained information site listing all bathing options (there's a LOT more in the summer with water parks and seasonal pools in the Islands between Buda/Pest and in the city outskirts). The site is in English, but it's a little weird as it's clearly a babelfish version.
Pictures for each of the sites are great.

http://spasbudapest.com/tartalom.php

The easiest, most grand experience that will make you feel like you've entered a movie or new world is the famous Széchenyi Thermal Baths. It's also really easy to find next to Hero's Square and the big Circus/Museum Park area (kind of like the Budapest version of Central Park).

Keep in mind these are natural thermal waters and while they are constantly filtered and renewed they've got different mineral/natural content that turns them weird colors and sometimes a natural "smell" that I was surprised by.

2. Drinking:

First off: the Hungarians don't drink cocktails unless they're a gangster/prima donnas and the rest are all tourists/ex-pats willing to pay the price hike.

What does that leave you with?

An INCREDIBLE amount of cheap, bountiful beer, wine and strange local concoctions. Namely these are Zwack Unicum (often referred to as Balon) or one of the variations of Palinka, similar to a fruit liquor with an alcohol content that would send anything into outer space. Plum is the traditional favorite.

You can drink in the streets, so you can go to a corner store and get a beer, a wine and sit along the Duna, one of the parks or streets and just look around. Hungarians, like New Yorkers are really funny to watch and that alone might be a good way of checking things out.

Other than playing the street lush there's an enormous variety of options, from the local pubs that appear every 15 feet tucked into buildings looking like Eastern European VFW posts. Look for one with a menu sandwich board outside the entrance as that means they'll cater to your English speaking, even if it's only pretending to understand. Eating and drinking are inseparable and generally eating options seem to be an add-on to the drinking options in most places.

When/if you have to eat:

There are Vegetarian options: if you're vego like Nona, prepare to suffer. There is, however, restaurant/shopping info for how to survive in a meat and beer society. Some are lovely, some are strange and all of them are kinda funny.

Since it depends on where you are at any given moment let's go over the general layout:

The city is laid out in a giant circle (the Grand Korut, which depending on which district you're in will have a slightly different name (Josef Korut (near Josef town in Pest), Margit Korut (near the Margit Bridge in Buda)). Cutting through them are some major streets (utca) like Andrassy, the major route for just about everything pattered after grand Parisian city planning and just to keep things consistent the Opera House, Shopping and Cafe Boulevards are all along Andrassy. Where Andrassy and the Korut intersect is called "the Octagon" or oktagon.
Being the most central and easy to find point this is a great location to memorize as a meeting point.

Here you'll be impressed at the Giant Burger King, Subway, TGIF and other favorites you've just sat through a 11+ hour flight to get away from. But if you're feeling sheepish about language barriers or want really cheap familiar food, it's an easy option.

This isn't Italy or Paris, so the "cafe culture" doesn't actually care for coffee (or anything about the genre) except as a facade for tourists. There are some exceptions but generally the best coffee is not in a KaveHaz but in a local bar/restaurant with kave on the menu. If you're jonzing for American version of caffeine it is known as a "Long Kave/Coffee." If you ask for it with a gutteral accent, you'll get a close approximation of what you're expecting.

That said, the Central Coffee House in Pest is an epic place to spend an hour eating traditional foods, having coffee and sitting in a big grand place that's neither crumbling nor youth oriented. It's also got a dictionary sized menu with good English translations. All the waiters spoke decent English and likely several other languages, which should make you feel really grateful for whatever employment you've got with just one language.

HEAVY DRINKING:
this can be done anywhere. But there are a few places that the kids really love:

Szimpla (at least 2), West Balkan (there are something like 4 west balkans, which range from the mega-club complex to little cafe or small club sized venues), Godor, Tandem.

There's also the venues that open up on the islands along the Duna...

All have websites that are almost impossible to navigate. If interested I'll send directions, etc.

3. Museums:

Again, I'm not an expert but I've biked past nearly all of them. The ones along Hero's Square are particularly easy to find and majestic looking from outside. It might be a nice cultural add-on if you go to the Széchenyi Baths. There's also the Zoo + Circus in the same park area.

The thing is also that there are a million little impromptu mini-museums all over the city, particularly in the castle where you can learn about everything, though potentially not in English.

Aside to Museums is TEMPLOMS, this is the Hungarian word that encompasses all churches/temples regardless of faith/affiliation. The Grand Baszilica and the Grand Synagogue are the two exceptions you might want to visit. Huge, gorgeous and beyond snippy description.

4. Music

The really nice or possibly frustrating thing about music is that it's everywhere and often impossible to coordinate on a particular schedule. Most touristy spots along the river, in the castle or along Andrassy will have environmental music for patrons, from local gipsy performers in the restaurants in the castle across from the abominable Hilton to violin players or crazy trance parties.

Major performers come to Sziget the major venue on one of the islands in the Duna, like you'd expect from Madison Square Garden but more pretty and with public smoking and drinking.

Godor, the easy to find centrally located venue always has concerts. It's the one with the fake lake above the actual venue and as far as clever public projects go its' a must do for any urban planning fanatics.

The big West Balkan is epic with many floors with different kinds of music. All DJ as far as I can tell.

There's a symphony/Orchestra but that might be hard to coordinate on the semi-regular schedule they seem to haphazardly operate on.

settling down or something like it

2007-02-14T15:54:00.005+01:00

I expected something different.

But after two months+ of living in Budapest I've settled into a relaxed somewhat uneventful routine. Boiled down to the moments of serendipity of having both camera on hand and presence of mind, here's my report: This is the view from my doorstep, so there's not a lot that I can complain about. The first few days as a tourist I imagined one of the crumbling, black grime-covered old houses would be the monastic location where I would weather out a brutal eastern European winter writing an epic modern novel. It's nice when life sometimes pitches a better reality than your small brain was capable of imagining. Instead of the brutal snowy winter spent in a Tolstoy-esque story of poverty and dedication to writing in exile, I practice my best Cinderella routine in the castle.

Like all good fairy tales the princess in question must go through a transformation of some kind. A through makeover would be too much of a pain in the ass, so instead I got a killer haircut from Budapest's most famous HAIR ARTIST. Singing, dancing and impressive choreography between languages later I looked like this:

I even decided to try my hand at 'the domestic arts.' It was edible. It's kind of cute to bake cakes in the tiny tin box that constitutes the castle oven. Less so to explain that the mini chocolate sprinkles were small enough to require tweezers to insert. Insert how? Very carefully.

Budapest also has this really killer holiday exhibit called Fenye Evolucio, or Light Evolution. It's located on the Pest side of the Duna and takes up the entire park block above the most modern of all of the lovely bridges. At the center a huge tower houses giant projectors and to levels of plastic-enclosed DJ and bar space. While at first it looks like the hallucinogenic recall of a late 90's trance party, it was actually gorgeous and... strangely well thought out for a public program.

The beautiful old buildings glowed in tropical colors and the maze like grass and foundations that the projection tower were based on became a wonderland for everybody; couples drinking foralt bor (mulled wine), families drinking hot milk and the teenagers all vaguely stoned and pointing out the way each tree or shrub became technicolor.

Deciding to stay.

2006-11-29T19:14:00.002+01:00

Budapest attractions include: the most kick-ass messenger friends [Cycle Banditos Illegal] a personal castle complete with Dracula and being able to hide from NYC. Not to mention the smooth, circular European streets that make alleycats crazy and everyday riding like somekind of hellish keirin race. {pics}

Let's face it: New York is exhausting. It's Fucking expensive and I'm just tired of all the crap that's been going down for the last few years. And surgery?

*Fuck that.* I just got well enough to ride a bike again.

So I'm working on project:apocalypse remotely. And if my experience means anything I think it will be a new trend: outsourcing yourself.

The thing that I like best about living in a country and not knowing the language is how crazy things are with key parts of everything missing.

For example: the 14 Less Americans Alleycat posted on Alleycat.Hu Is it real? Faked? By whom? Why?

Conversations are like recalling a night out after a black out no matter what you try to study or clarify. I can't tell if the story I'm hearing happened today, five years ago or is completely imagined. Was the jail sentence served in this country or somewhere else? Are these ideas or real plans? What is serious and what is not? Damned if I know.

Slowly I'm understanding words and pieces of the 25 different ways to conjugate a single word. Being in a new place is a lot like being young: I'm filled with energy and ideas. Business opportunities are everywhere and art is life. Which is really just a more wonderous way of saying that I seem to be surviving easily enough to avoid real work and dedicate my faniciful imagination to the things I'd be daydreaming about anyway. The nice thing about Budapest is that everyone here wants to see it happen, from tea houses to Graffiti projects.

project: apocalypse

2006-10-16T20:36:00.001+01:00

While it may appear that I've got a magic leprechaun doing all the real work it's not true: at any given time I'm busting my ass working on marketing and various internet projects for a wide variety of clients.

The car accident put me out to pasture for a while as I wondered how I'd pay for the medical bills that could easily have equated into a resepectable townhouse in the midwest. Through long, dark hours the search for a way of uniting sports and other idyllic passions came. True to form my guardian angel appeared to me in a hot tub in Las Vegas.

Possibly under the influence of white wine and a garden level executive suite rather than our usual Cooper's and Kentucky burbon, Bianca agreed to go into business together.

The Premise is quite simple: we're outrageous and clever so why waste time trying to work with and through the usual corporate marketing channels? Hm? A few weeks of brainstorming, pulling together content and talent and we can proudly announce the formal creation of project: apocalypse a full-service marketing/pr company with full web and media services.

[and you thought we were goofing off]

Check Us Out: www.projectapocalypse.net

Ultimate Sports Heroes: Nyack to Track

2006-10-15T04:24:00.001+01:00

IT WAS A BRUTAL, EPIC CONTEST

My doctors said it shouldn't be done.

The roadie at the Runciple Spoon, who pretended to have once been a messenger said that it was "like 130 miles, impossible."

But advertising had already taught me the most important lesson of all: Impossible is Nothing. With that knowledge comfortably engrained on my impressionable brain I enlisted the help of Messenger Guerilla CK, a lawyer by day father and revolutionary by night.

All stories need some kind of preface. Some pulling of the heart strings so that the characters and their struggles might become your own. Not having those particular artistic skills, I'll just launch into it: Amadeo, more popularly known as Dirty Cookie and Chombo, popularly known as Chombo concieved a race that would go beyond the troubled format of illegal messenger street race to something wholly unheard of and completely delicious... a race that included 3 disciplines: road, street and track.

{And as awesome as that is -I really wanted to go to the Renaissance Festival at Fort Tryon. So if there's anyone reading this who agrees that I should have done that instead holla and we can skip Halloween to go to Portsmouth, NH for their "end of the faire season" blowout. I'm already studying dirty limericks and getting stoked about fairy outfits, swords and giant tofurkey on a stick. }

Where were we? Still sleeping in Brooklyn at that point. We all met in Columbus circle where hilariously enough a bunch of cops were reenacting a high school marching band for Columbus Day. Who knew? With the bright fall sun and crisp air we were all excited to ride our bikes like caged ponies.

Secretly hoping that my entire summer of injury and atrophy might have mysteriously produced some kind of reverse deterioration whereby I might have developed incredible speed and endurance I prepped with HAMMER GELS and a repugnant willingness to drink from a fungus encrusted camelbak tube -reminiscent of last years triumphs. I pulled out my last cliff bar and somewhere around 90th street it fell out of my open camelbak-fanny pack. Being a poor and frugally minded lass I let one of the dudes in the back of the pack stop to retrieve it but being a busy street, it was already gone.

So too was the rest of the group ride.

That's right bitches: I even DFL'ed the non-competative group ride. I've also neglected to mention at this point that I was the only rider ~IN COSTUME: rocking my smelly and road splattered old Jersey in orange, puffy green cargo pants and black grease face paint it appeared that I'd be alone in taking the ride less than totally seriously.
"I'm a pumpkin" is a surprisingly amusing thing to have to tell fellow riders and confused locals. Looking around it was a highly spandexed event.

That's where CK and psychedelic chocolates came in. We ate ours in front of the organizers as the very last to register and reluctantly walked over to the start. Before we were out of Piermont we were already firmly positioned as DFL. The scenery was staggeringly beautiful, exploding bouquets of reds, yellows and greens. Ponds and victorian houses I'd never before noticed or fully appreciated. I spotted at least one house with two levels of wrap around porches and my mind was fully blown calculating the kegger that the lucky offspring would be throwing.

We ran into Bianca and Andrew who had crashed. As the stronger rider Bianca ended up pulling the guy back to Queens while I briefly admired how her outfit and bike were set off by the fall colors. It went like that until we hit the George Washington bridge, which irritatingly enough had the main route closed so we had to haul our bikes across like seven miles of metal grating above highways and the Hudson River. It was about then that I realized I was completely high and terrified of heights.

By then CK was riding with the messenger guerilla mask on and the jewel thief gloves that were to terrorize so many with such efficiency. We made a *great* team.

By the time we got to Central Park we both realized that we had no idea where the Booth House and that we were completely out of our minds. We began traipsing about previously unknown parts of the park like the Blair Witch Project; discovering little waterfalls, little white flowers, dirt trails, crack deals and a large gay man with a French accent and a little dog who had to keep giving us directions while we ran back and forth with our bikes around pretending to add cyclocross and sloth-like trail running to the three disciplines. It was so beautiful...

When we actually found the checkpoint it started to be a little disappointing, kind of like finding out that art school is a big waste of money. Which is to say the drugs started wearing off and my shoulder started hurting emmensely. Riding through Park Avenue, CK terrorized couples and tourist families while running into some kind of ethnic parade where short white people were dressed up like bali-nese temples with big pom-poms and drums. Incredible.

Debating on taking a detour 160 blocks to get a snack we decided on going to the Queens Hall of Science before finishing to firmly establish our DFL REIGN OF TERROR.

When we rode into Kissena I did the 1,000 meter time trial at an ~impressively~ slow pace before eating Izumi's delicious BBQ'd squid and finding out about the amazing performances by all those incredible athletes and psychos: Yatika's heartbreaking flat, Crihs' 311 navigation skillz, Niki's crash and all the real narratives that made it such a gorgeous, epic race.

In the end though, Jersey Dan and Crihs took first and everyone else didn't. Ha, ha.

the good, bad and the ugly: or the facts of life

2006-10-12T03:06:00.001+01:00

Injury Report: Being injured really sucks. And since I'm still competative my injury sucks more than yours ever could. [finally, first victory this year]

I go to the accupunturist referred to me by the only doctor I've ever really trusted (nurse practitioner actually and she just moved to Colorado, d'oh.) and I'm already Tminus 3 months into being injured. Since the titanic mess of splintered bones, muscle, tendon and scarre tissue haven't been making the expected progress I'm all decked out with my EBI Bone Growth Stimulator Pack.

Trust me when I say it's the best ice-breaker EVER for parties. Especially when your friends are all alcoholic athletes. I'd been contimplating suicide every three seconds and was getting ready to develop a drug problem just so I could be institutionalized in a place where someone else would have to clean and dress me while insurance actually paid for something. Ah, dreams.

Have I mentioned a life long terror of needles? Perhaps the very reason why my imagined drug problem would remain forever inattainable. But I'm not a wuse and acupuncture had been the only thing so far that seemed like it might offer relief. God knows the Vicodin that the other doctors kept shoving at me weren't. I reserved those for all the parties and future make-out sessions that kept my imagination occupied when I wasn't wondering if drowning in Newton Creek could actually be considered drowning and not toxic shock.

She trained for years in China, so despite the yellow hair her Chinese is excellent and right away mentioned gua sha or cupping. I'd never tried it but being a bit of a masochist it seemed like a great idea. What the medical justification was less important that getting someone to care for my useless broken sack while being entertained. See kids? this is what being injured really is. Wear your helmuts.

The sessions are long and involve 2-3 positions that often last several hours so that all the points along my head, shoulders, ankles, chest, shins and hands can have their turn. I'll never be able to look at Hellraiser again without thinking, "He must be totally relaxed."

Weeks later her teacher from China came to New York to visit and she rushed me in to be examined. I didn't have the x-rays or the MRI because frankly it's way too much of a pain in the ass to get that stuff.

{I mean, I've already left X-Rays in the bar 151 Rivington and I still managed to get drunk without having the bartender examine them or ask for my phone number.}

Without any of it she was able to determine everything that had slowly revealed itself over months to my other American yahoos with all their fancy medical imaging. In Chinese she correctly told my acupuncturist what had happened and what needed to be done. The worst part was this: while the bone hasn't yet fully healed it has fused together -a bit- (thanks to the bone growth stimulator!) so even though it's in a shitty position that's how it's going to be for the rest of my life. The other doctors didn't want to operate to fix it because the operation is too big and risky and it's better to, "let nature take care of it."

Except this old Chinese lady shakes her head and sadly smiles at me looking like my grandmother (same age and hairstyle) and says that she could have realigned the break without surgery if it had been brought to her while it was a fresh injury. I felt like shooting myself in the face.

Anyone with a "Catastrophic Injury" like myself knows that it's never one big problem, it's several and they change over time. The other part is the muscle/tendon tear in my shoulder. She pulled my arm around, smiled some more and told me that if I didn't fix it soon I'd have what amounts to a dead arm by the time I'm 40. I'm currently 26.

I went home cried and made another appointment that I couldn't afford.

The next appointment the gua sha started. That's what the photos are from. As you can see I'm red and puffy from the tissue trauma and bruised from the contact. Since those pictures I've gone in again and I'm more of a purple, with the general skin real estate going from palid to looking nearly dead. I feel much better however and my range of motion is really improving. If I'm lucky I can run into someone who will humor me and tell me how pretty and fast I used to be.

Gear and Loathing: NYBMA does Interbike Vegas

2006-10-02T02:57:00.001+01:00

Get Sum Entertainment is Mike Dee and Hodari's Goldsprints company that pre-interbike became a real project. We made crazy marketing materials and started getting psyched about the biggest bike party on the planet and how we would swing our large fantastical NYC selves into gonzo marketing and general partying. Even before arriving it was already going to be awesome. Whitesnake was excitedly posting pre-event bragging on MESSNYC and mike was making "the first rule of interbike is don't talk about interbike" jokes. It was on. Traveling with mike is surprisingly awesome mostly because the drinking and loud socially stupendous commentary is far more engaging around delicate midwestern ladies than your average flee bitten new yorker.

Perhaps one of the best surprises of the week-long Vegas experience was that LeVeL Components' two geniuses and perverts were our companions helping us navigate everything from the maze like hotel after too many cocktails and the wheeling and dealing on the convention floor as populated by exhausted and completely unamused company reps. Who was there to suffer through Kinkos? Yep, that's what real friends are for.

Not that it will come as any surprise to anyone who's ever drank, partied or ah hem.. done business... with those crazy Crumpler kids but they were the best thing going at the convention once you got exhausted from drooling all the bikes you'll never be able to afford.

Not to get a head of myself -here's the report from interbike:

Big fads:

Crazy Paintjobs like cannondale did for team puma but with individual artistic sensibilities in mind. Custom bikes and paintjobs are getting to be huge. Independent Fabrications, besides also being an incredibly cool crew from Mass. makes delicious custom rides with some of the hottest custom colors on the planet. Even cooler you know that JILL is the hot goddess who's the one pimping that ride.
Sprinter's time trial helmuts. In the future everyone will either look like Jan ulrich or queen amidalia (or however you spell the name for that bullshit character) see below.
Carbon V.2 After engorging on carbon fibre like hell was freezing over people are starting to think things out a bit more. Companies like the German TIME cycles include fibers woven differently at key parts of the bike to get those key stiffness/extension points worked out while others are developing several types of materials and forging them together while all claiming to have the BEST RIDE EVER. It's mostly misguided but who am I to say as much. The dirt demo was really the only place you could trot out these gorgeous $ 5k + bikes and formulate opinions before they were put back on their pedestals at the convention.
Totally cute Body Armour. as a girl and as a mutant bike aficionado, I've got mixed feelings about the pink BMX armour and the cutesy new helmut patterns. This smacks a little bit like over protective parenting for yuppies, but after recently acquiring massive physical trauma I'm a little less fatalistic. Plus tall bike jousting with a pink face mask really appeals to me.
Custom everything. From The Sock Guy's new socks, booties and layers to team jerseys, jackets and merino wool there's almost nothing you can't customize for between $10 - $65 USD per piece for the local team. I think this is great because I'm really looking forward to neighborhood militias and vigilante justice while wearing really gay colors.

Just to remind everyone that we're still in America, (DTA) most people pretty much ignored the small Asian booths and Campy decked their shit out in sealed plastic cases on blue velvet top pedestals. The BMX zone even had a skate shop and the various disciplines mostly hung out by themselves while talking shit about the other guys 30 feet away. I had almost forgot why I hated high school.

The Good News is that GoldSprints NYC represented hard by working the floor, demo-ing the warez and upcoming Halloween to Cranksgiving series at LuLu's. All that was left was to invite the rest of the freaks back to our *Bling Bling* hotel suite at the Valenzia Tower's Garden Level. To my eternal disappointment Bianca and I never took a gondola ride through the fake Vegas-Venice night.

As you can see it was a good time and an epic drug and alcohol fueled contest of wills and thighs. I realized while taking the picture of Alex that I have shots of him winning goldsprints in several states and countries (KyotoLoco, JP). Ah memories... or at least whatever I can remember of them.

Alas, all good and over priced adventures must come to an end. In our case it happened at the Bellagio's Buffet. Roman feasting our way through every last starch, fruit, vegetable, sauce, fish, cow, puppy and bird that had the misfortune of being hacked down and processed into magnificent piles of heart clogging calories. We all swore that we'd vomit our way into consuming more than any of the fat tourists surrounding us but in the end CK and Mike Green had a plane to catch and when they left the six or seven remaining plates of desserts that each of us looked down at seemed to lose their lustre. If you can't vomit with all your buddies in a unisex bathroom, what's the point?

Before the completely criminal consumption of natural resources, we discovered that the Bellagio's hipster bar venue is called FIX. Since any pretense of dignity had already been thoughrally dispensed with here's all the boys doing their

best mimed trackstands:

Fuck Yeah! Being Healthy Rules!

2006-09-14T19:47:00.001+01:00

It's official: my last x-rays no longer showed the black hole inbetween what looked like two broken pieces of a large tree felled by lightning. It was a beautiful, wierd white branch from sternum to ball socket. The office visit, which usually resemble a conversation with an undertaker had all the heartstring moments of a sports/kids team movie in which the underpriviledged kids/convicts prove their unexpected worth through an epic game performance.

I HAD GIVEN UP HOPE. (well, not totally but I had been crushed for too long to imagine The Miracle was within reach) I sat there, slumped over on the exam bed, waiting for the doctor to repeat: "let's wait another 6 weeks." During which I would be billed an additional $750. for x-rays and the above 5 words. Was it even worth it? He turned around and had the same facial expression that I had seen everytime, throughout even the worst pronouncements and asked me how a push up felt.

"I wish I knew."

"So drop and give me five."

I quivered like a reed at the bottom of a rushing stream. I was down, then up and it didn't feel like getting kicked by a quarterback. I was dumbstruck.
While it still hurts and the second surgery isn't ruled out I can RIDE BIKES!! RUN like a gazelle and KAYAK the mysterious waters of the East River!!!

I'm so freaking happy -I'm alive again! HOORAY! It's been 48 hours since I thought about killing myself while walking like an ex-con down the demolision zone that I live in. And talk about serendipity,
I'm going to INTERBIKE in Las Vegas! And a whole NYC contingent is going to be there from all of the usual suspects: trackstar, kingkog, messenger guerillas. Apparently ...

there's going to be gold sprints in a certain hotel room -t.b.a

SUPER definitive HEROES results

2006-08-31T00:01:00.001+01:00

1st Annual SuperHeroes + Sidekicks

70 Wannabes Started
30 Superheroes Finished
1 Organizer: Nona Varnado

1 CP volunteer mugged at gunpoint
in Harlem wearing joker facepaint
1 destroyed glass door at Union Pool
2 Fights
3 Videos
100's of miles of brutal city riding
1,000's of awesome photos

RESULTS:
1. Victor -Ken Stanek
2. Team T-Mobile (I'm not making this shit up) Felipe Corona + Cris Cali (together)
+Tied for 2nd place:
2b. Team 49/16 Yatika Fields (14 min)-Hugo G. (14 min)
3. Team Undercova Brothas: Kym Perfetto-Brooke Dubose (1st Female)
4. Team Action Force: Ellen Fedors -Adam Staudt (1st Co-ED)
5. Team Killers: Blunts(Quinn) -Yeti (3rd male overall)

6. Team Triple Triage: Crihs (12 min.)-Dan C. (jersey) (13 min)
*HIGHEST NERD BONUS*
7. Team 5%: Graham (13 min.)-Shawn (13.5 min) DQ'd for missed CP
8. Capt. Superfund & Adm. Turnpike: Dan F. (16 min.)-Ellis (16.5 min.)
9. Team Jersey: Tim Sullivan(19 min) - Niki Yoshiuchi(20 min.)*Nerd Bonus
10. Team Anti-Heroes: Justin(15 min.)-Dagga (2nd Female)(15.5 min.)
11. Team Youth: Yuri Cantor(15 minutes)-Heidi Goodson(18 minutes) DQ'd for doing only 'fun ride' CP's and missing manifest.
12. Team RAB: Joe Lawless -Will G.(20 min.-together)
13. Team Sabertooths: Brad Sabertooth -Dan Sabertooth (First Tandem) (17 min.)
14. Team "Ninjas w/ Attitudes": Kevin Palmer(19 min.) -Cameron Kelly(23 min.)
15. Team Confusion: John -Luke (25 minutes -together) DQ'd for missed CP
16. Team Munich: Beni -Rich (23 minutes *biggest sprint difference)
17. The "A" Team: Anna Telcs -Jason Beberman DQ'd for missed CP
18. Team Super Skuls: Mike Green -Nick Golebiewski DQ'd for missed CP
19. Team "King Cunt Death 2": Matt -Chris (32 min. -together)
20. Team Los Lobos: Pablo -Nesto (32 min.-together)
DFL: Joe racer #29A from the DQ'd team "South Brooklyn Sluggards" Joe got all the CP's and finished like 3 hours after everyone else. What a guy! No one deserves a Golden 40oz more than that guy! Plus it was purchased by a Straight-Edge Vegan! (adam)

Even before the race began there were problems. The CP volunteers were, for the most part, my family members and I had forgotten what that ment. They would be

1. Late
2. Lazy, easily lost and distracted by girls
3. Riding the subway to their CP.

Frank: the brother in JOKER make-up was on a train that BROKE DOWN in a tunnel. Later he was held up at gunpoint for $12 and his CD player. They let him keep his cell phone because it was busted. Although he was pissed to have to walk from the CP at 125/2nd ave to 42 street he managed to take pictures with Midwestern tourists for spare change to call my other brother at the PUNISHER CP. When he finally made it to the after party he said he didn't feel too bad about it because he'd also managed to get a phone number from a hot girl on the walk down.

Kansas, C.H.U.N.K. 666's own SPIDERMAN, inaugurated the race with the first CP on the Brooklyn Bridge. What racers SHOULD HAVE KNOWN is that the Brooklyn Bridge is where Mary Jane dies at the hand of SpiderMan's nemesis, the Green Goblin. It's also the busiest, WORST bridge in NYC on a Saturday with a shit ton of tourists and a complete bottle neck. From there racers split up into three groups to attack the course.

Check Points:

1. Spiderman (Brooklyn Bridge)
see above.

2. The Tick (Moonlight Diner/Tribeca)
yet another brother was going to be dressed up in gallons of blue paint but instead just got lost. Racers had to declare what their battle cry is. 90% chose: Aaahhhh!!!

3. Punisher (Central Park/UWS)
My middle brother managed to talk his girlfriend into getting covered in blood, hanging out in an underpass in the park and shooting racers with a watergun. This was a highly problematic CP because most racers couldn't find it. Suckas

4. Superman (News Building/Midtown)
Dirty Cookie (amadeo) gave out stylish DC Stickers and the top 10 racers to the CP plastic "is it a bird, is it a plane?" plastic airplanes worth bonus points. Only Yeti managed to turned his in.

5. Ninja Turtles (The Cloisters/Inwood)
My Sister and her then boyfriend (the one with the rubber Leonardo mask) had pizza and yellow gatorade (secret of the Ooze, dudes!) for the poor bastards who made it all the way up to the Cloisters. PIZZA TIME!

6. Joker (Harlem)
What was the joke in Harlem? That you had to go all the way to City Hall. Damn.
I was getting cell phone calls from everyone with my number screaming about Frank not being there. (Victor: "yo, this shit aint where it's supposed to be") People are so smart they even wrote down the name of the burnt out business next door "Jimmy's Chicken Shack"

7. Daredevil (Hell's Kitchen)
I was super freaked out that someone would die at this CP, but it wound up being okay. There's a one way street that's a giant, unpaved pit with an enormous overhead walkway between skyscraper construction sites right where the West Side Highway empties out. Damn. There's a cop shop and a hospital within 5 blocks so I figured it'd be fine.

8. Batman (City Hall/Financial Dist.)
We were pretty sure the cops would totally bust this up after 5 people had come through. Miraculously this didn't happen. However, Redman and Massamba got into the CP right after 1st place Vic & Ken and got into an 'altercation' with Austin Horse, who was the dashing Batman Check Point Hero. Red got mad and belted Austin in the face before splitting.

The Batman CP was where you and you team mate had to make some hard decisions because both of you got matching time stamps followed by a dead sprint into the FINISH in Williamsburg at Union Pool to find out who was the SUPERHERO and who's the LAME ASS sidekick. (ironically Ken's words, not mine)

Winners and psychopaths, like the sabertooths, took the roadway. There were a few ways you could get lost and lose time getting to the finish. I suppose it might have been heart warming to see people come in together, refusing to brutally beat each other after suffering together. Of course this did nothing for me and I was instead delighted with those who viciously tore away through dowtown streets, LES traffic, the bridge and the dangers of taking Marcy street in Williamsburg to completely TROUNCE the weaker link. History needs it's leaders.

By the time most people made it into Union Pool I was already wasted. Sorry.

This also means that 3+ months later I'm not exactly sure where the manifests for the top finishers are (or were) exactly. What I can tell you is this:

FASTEST TIME TRIAL TIME: 11.5 minutes

Austin and I synchronized our cell/nextel set-up before the race, though seconds were generally not taken into account unless a sidekick handed their manifest in within 1 minute of the hero and were given an automatic hero time +.5

If you consider how freaking far away that is, and that people had just KILLED it for 30+ miles and then managed to also traverse some of the most difficult NYC traffic and navigation in that TINY period of time I can only take off my hat to you. I'm proud to have been your arch villian.

THE AVERAGE TIME for the top 10 teams: 14 minutes.

This is still retarded fast.

THE AVERAGE TIME
for people who bothered to finish: a still impressive 20 minutes.

This of course, does not account for Pablo + Nesto who waltzed in 32 minutes later.

The story most people have heard is the Austin/Red drama that after all was said and done, Red & Massamba were DQ'd from the race entirely for hitting a CP volunteer. Followed by another swing and a broken glass door. The only point of reiterrating is to mention how completely stupid it is to get gangster over something like a checkpoint. Do you really think a professionally sponsored athlete would hit and disqualify himself from a major competition?

oh wait, that fuck Zidane screws all that up. Just don't hit each other, okay?

Big Thank you to Chris Habib of VisitorDesign.com
for the poster, shirts, upfront cash, patience, insane text volleys, sick DVDs and personal awesomeness. I Heart Visitor Design - and those nasty high end rug ads.

The biggest problem with compiling beautiful full results is the staggering number of you idiots who upon being handed a manifest with fields like: "Name: ____ Race #:___" did NOT fill in either so I can't say what your sprint time is, how (or if) you even managed to finished the race. So let this be a lesson. If you want to be famous, get yer readin' & writin' skills down.

And word: this is a team race. So while yer suppose to spank the weaker link into submission.. you're not supposed to leave them for dead. So Teams that only had 1 finisher (or only had 1 manifest with a name or race # on it counted as such) were officially DQ'd.

Additional Sources:

Photos:
Mike Green!s flickr set
My flickr:
flickr notmine:
NYBMA: aka. Ken aka. amy bolger
more photos, NOT FLICKR! Order prints! WALLPAPER your parent's house with THESE!

Video:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3vsmk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/SUPERHEROES.mov
ALSO YouTube: Search for Superhero Alleycat (3 parts!)

Carlos-Diablo (MonsterTrack NYC) made this video that I have been living in WRETCHED EMBARRASSMENT ("I'd probably die if I ever had to take the subway") of since he posted & played it at the Messenger Art Party a week later. I deserve to look like such a posuer. Enjoy!

Chris (www.visitordesign.com)
filmed the race with REAL FILM. However he's a real designer and too busy to have it edited already (and you thought I was late)

if you ever forget how much NYC dominates the North American Alleycat scene check out this shit: san francisco kids competing for our swag. dig it.

[Physical] DESTRUCTION reigns

2006-08-01T23:39:00.000+01:00

No, I'm not better yet and apparently one problem (broken collar bone)'s solution (immobilization) can create another more severe problem (something with an -itis at the end).

It seriously fucking sucks. I could detail the many ways in which being injured really blows but that's usually only interesting to other busted individuals. The really awful thing is that there have been a CRAZY number of really severe injuries this summer.

A partial account:

Andy Ohio the week before me
me
the kid who died on Houston
my bike lawyer who is in a coma
mike dee's head trauma

plus lots of others, thankfully less severe.

There's a lot going on politically that's clearly indicative that environment and city policy has a really big part of that. Check out TA's website for a well documented roster of trespasses and failures from a civic point of view.

Then there's the bomb: the new york post actually published steve dunleavy's drunken, inarticulate, war mongering rant against all city cyclists under the premise of despising critical mass.

letter sent to the post:
I am absolutely shocked at the gross irresponsibility
of the article TAKE BACK THE STREETS FROM KAMIKAZE
JERKS. It is written as if Mr. Donlevy had an
irritating encounter and penned a reactional missive
to a friend, not a city of 10 million. If he is
comfortable using the term 'civil war' he ought to be
more careful about flinging his opinions in a life
threatening debate that is more intelligently
discussed and resolved by mentioning the current
situation: cycling environment in new york (from bike
lanes, construction and enforcement issues) to social
ones.

Critical mass is a well known cycling/advocacy group
but it is MINISCULE in terms of the general NYC
cycling community. I recommend doing 5 minutes worth
of research on Transportation Alternative's website
before spreading a total disregard for cyclists who
are facing death and dismemberment by simply trying to
bike to work, to a friends house even while obeying
traffic laws. Mr. Donlevy has clearly gotten too
comfortable in his column and cab seat. If it's as
dire as he says, he's just uttered the modern, "let
them eat cake."

Since I have so much freaking time while not riding around and doing things [or working for that matter.] I've decided to write (or at least propose and pitch) a books tentatively titled "How to be Broken in NYC: a guide for the newly busted and those who love them." I know I've had to learn a lot through this whole process on the typical fronts -medical, legal but also in that huge nebulous space: having your whole (EXTREME SPORTY completely wonderful and adventurous) life put on semi-permanent and totally-boring hold.

I'm looking to interview and recommend people who are into:
1. Medical doctors who specialize in broken bones, muscles & tendons, head injuries.
2. Alternative practioners (Chinese doctors, acupuncture, feldenkrais, etc.)
3. Kick-ass physical therapists (my heroes)
4. Massage therapists/ spa and Gym resources for the busted
5. Therapist/mental resources.

you know- to legitimize my arm chair expertise.

So that's what I'm doing. I'm also looking for friends who know how to have fun even with out a bike being involved. I'm still confused about that one.

Sorry for the delay: Injury Report

2006-06-29T04:23:00.000+01:00

Problem: Status:
Concussion Healed -I think.
Broken collar bone BRoken, ugly, painful. Immobile. Not t-mobile.
Black eye Recovered, but it somehow left me with debilitating freckles.
Stretched tendons Swollen, immobile slow.

apparently the shoulder might be seriously whacked. i find out friday. no word on when I'll be able to ride. If anyone knows a good sports specialist/surgeon please let me know where to find him.

The alleycat stats and pictures are slowly coming together, shirts are still available (M & L) it's just taking a long fucking time.

Superheroes NYC Alleycat

2006-05-06T18:48:00.000+01:00

STAY TUNED:
RACE RESULTS TO BE POSTED BY TUESDAY 9pm EST (did i say which tuesday? keep yer pants on)

The shirts are available NOW. check out the detail below.
there are still shirts available, mostly in LARGE. give me a shout at:
qanda.nyc@gmail.com if you want to BUY one of the last of these precious keepsakes.

Shirts are $25 if you're not racing.

[update: Andy ohio got into a bit of an accident on the williamsburg bridge. So we're asking for $5 extra for the shirt and/or registration to be applied to his uninsured Belleview Vacation]
*bike forums chatter here*
Flickr

MIchael green's bikeblog has a great write up as does nybma... not surprisingly both site owners kicked butt on the course as well.

The GodFather Alleycat: A race I couldn't refuse {or lose}

2006-04-27T17:47:00.000+01:00

Trackstar had everyone rushing to their local video stores and DVD collections to review the Godfather movies on the premise that anything might provide a critical clue as to where checkpoints would be, trivia that should be known or other WINNING ADVANTAGES.

My confusion was straightforward: was it just the first movie or all three? Who would have time for such research? My only hope was stealing someone else's study notes or going the cliff-notes route. I knew social manipulation would have to dominate where training and preparation had been completely neglected due to work and general ennui.

Regardless, after the previous weekends disapointing show at the DUMBO ScRAMBLE, I was still psyched to get a strong team together and at least give it a strong show. I'd badgered Bianca into joining me and the thrird girl was kind of up for grabs due to my previously mentioned lethargy.

At the last moment (48 hours pre-race) the boy got really excited about my racing it and started suggesting things I might want to pay attention to, potential teammates, etc. Things began to look up. I got Bianca's # friday night while we were all getting hammered, er. um 'carbed up' and we agreed that it was on.

That morning I got everything together, prepared fluids and food (a MAJOR step forward in planning for me) and put new brakepads on the cyclocross. In doing do we were getting pumped up by eating godfather deli sandwhiches and drinking xxx-tremely ghetto energy beverages bought at the local bodega across the street from the chunk lair and directly underneath the JMZ in Bed-Stuy. We were getting ready.

Unfortunately so was the weather.

The entire work week had been amazing. low 70's, sunny cool breezes from the water. City smells were at their lowest levels in years.

Then Saturday the temperature plummets and it's a down pour. No relief is expected through the remainder of the weekend. To add insult to injury Matt's rooftop party is canceled. I put on my rain jacket, to realize the rainproofing has been ... lost to overuse... and get ready to ride it out with Brittany and Bianca.

When we get to the start Bianca's been harrassed into joining another all-girl team and I have to go smack her and the other pimp around until she's wearing our #14 team number. We coordinate navigation, routes to the bridges and we get her drinking the ghetto energy beverage and amino vital, courtesy Kansas via Brit. We're ready. We've studies the boy's notes and I've got some last minute tips from Brean while wasted after the party the organizers had the night before.

We start off strong and make it with the lead male pack out to red hook for the first (mass) CP. After each CP the teams have to always return to the start in chinatown to pick up their next random "hit" or CP. The hits have different points value based on distance or some other half-thought out system. There are ten in total. We've been warned about 4 particular CPs, which winds up helping up out not at all because of 10 possible CPs, we hit 6 and none of the 4 we knew about.

Bummer.

It was fun, picking up fish carcasses at the South Street Seaport (now that the fulton fish market is no more), getting finicky about the precise location of the Belleview checkpoint, (where michael goes to discover an unguarded Godfather) though it's been remodeled about one million times since the movie was filmed (I might have won a special prize for "most recently addmitted to Belleview" if there had been such a category) and generally huffing it through a major down pour, keeping the three of us riding smart and motivated through major Saturday traffic. Fun!

The race to be first female team was not the heaviest of fields. Dagga was racing, but with some other women I'd never seen before. The big news was that we also came in 5th overall, which is super awesome.

Brittany had a great time rubbing that in kansas' face and he claims to have been completely robbed. Bianca claims she's going to be wearing her winning Trackstar DFL shirt *UNWASHED* for three weeks straight. Look out.

SlaughterRama: VIRGINia is 4 LOVErs

2006-04-04T03:39:00.000+01:00

So the preparations weren't exactly... exacting.

The weekend before, in between total dissonance and the ever present lure of alcoholism, distraction and the velodrome, a few people managed to work on welding bikes, breaking down and building up the rides that would be our chariots -and- our undoing (well in his case).

It turns out the bike shop is fully functional beyond the immediate role of make-out closet. Hm, do you smell that waterproof grease? Oh. Ohh.

Friday was totally messed up, we left too late, I was massively depressed and wound up passing out all over the minivan, likely over my polite male companions who were kind enough to look the other way.

Except for the boy. Who apparently has pictures of me sprawled out. I've forgiven him because he seems to be possessed of the unique flavor of discretion that ends with posting on the internet. {apparently not. Well, two can play at that game...}

Eventually I wake up in richmond virgina, strap on my blonde wig and crawl out into Karen's diner, which is straight out of a social history book.

We get to Ana's house, a few people pass out and I waltz around the neighborhood buying yet another pair of oversized cheap sunglasses and big white plastic hoops to compliment my dark moustache. The "sparks" begin to fly and the boys begin sailing down the tree-lined historical residential block on tall bikes. Ah, spring.

Everyone begins drinking in preparation for the big event. I'm assigned the role of ship's artist and get to make good on the $100,000 USD arts education I'd previously pissed away until this moment.

Totally. Devastated.

2006-03-25T20:19:00.000+01:00

I don't know. It didn't seem like a big deal. There was so much going on yesterday, and it seemed safe. After dinner with Pier and the boy we went to Lincoln Center, the very epicenter of NYC culture and priviledge. We lock up and go into the theater to see V for Vendetta on the IMAX screen. We walk out and it's gone.

My bke is still chained to his, the front wheel is there, the frame is still wrapped and lovely.

But it's just lying there, like a quietly dying person. The back wheel has been stolen.

I guess it's the same story for everyone. I had just gotten the wheel. I never really had the chance. It was perfect, nothing will ever take it's place. I don't have the money to deal with this right now.

Hurt. Angry. kind of nervous and hungry.

Rumbling indications of the next Cult of (drinking) Athleticism. Sort of.

2006-03-24T03:17:00.000+01:00

So I've been working. and I've gained all the real job problems I've always skirted: shitty hours and being trapped sitting (professionally) and looking forelorn out of a window. Surprisingly enough it really isn't all that fun. Still the health insurance is pretty cool. I'm eating ridiculously well, and thank you for asking.

As could be predicted I couldn't sit still. Plus I've found out that it's really fun to be a girl with a normal job and a secret life.

Enter C.H.U.N.K
666

Sure...
it started with a boy but I stayed for the bikes. I mean who wouldn't be down with the cats on the cover of this week's Village Voice?

The whole fall out is from the Tall Bikes that mysteriously appeared and then disappeared once the store fronts they were 'prop'ed up in were acid etched in protest in every Brooklyn Industries shop that pimped them. For the full inside response read the bike forums novel.

Now everyone's happy: Brooklyn Industries has Mad Crazy publicity and the bike gangs are bubbling to the surface of hipness with exposure carefully checked like the NSA in the 1960's.

Word.

Besides, who wouldn't wanna be down with this crew?

uh, thanks darko666 for the pictures. your flickr is the best.

Dude, where's my Board?

2006-02-07T05:32:00.000+01:00

Ah, hem. I have a confession to make. It might be painfully obvious to everyone else but only recently has it occured to me that it might be Completely Out of Control.

I have a sports problem.

Witness: I fell in love with yet another sport that requires scads of self abuse and dedication of any income. It all happened so quickly... Wendi, my super awesome partner in sports-crimes {skateboarding, running, adventure racing... shit. Wendi was the first person to go on a big 9W river road bike ride with me. Girlfriend is seriously the most amazing girlfriend I have.} So she invites me to go snowboarding and invites a big group so I'm less likely to feel Hiddeously Embarrassed at my complete lack of Skillz. The idea seemed to be that a gaggle of her girlfriends would all do the "learn to board" program, falling all over our cute selves.

Except.... everyone else but Heather totally punked out.

When Wendi rolls up that morning, I see she's geared up: Her board (!) has been freshly tuned [huh?] and her super cute boots are already in the backseat. She's just pulled a fast one on me.

See, here's the thing: we're both super-girls but we're supposed to be approximately equal super girls and now she's going to OWN ME. I'm more competative than she is so I'm already feeling kind whiny. We pick up heather and it's a big pruduction with the rental shit and waiting around for a 16 year old boy teach us how to hang out on the bunny hill and begin falling. Wendi wishes us both good luck, promises to check in on us and promptly disappears up the mountain.

I found out a lot about myself that day that I think is a critical benchmark in either growing up or just mellowing out. I sucked and it was frustrating, but I had a great time. I went absolutely no where but I could feel what I was doing or not doing. I stayed irrationally positive and enthusiastic about just going through the learning process and had a better time than anyone else. I was also better than anyone else. I could say it was my paltry skateboarding but really I think it was the change in attitude. Dude.

So much so that I had to take off. I had to break away and challenge the bunny hill....

A black and blue butt later I knew I'd found my next thing. I tend to dedicate a year to a sport and move on, but this requires more logistics and I think that means less over-zealous 5 days a week kinda love. Not that I wouldn't if I could. Let me illustrate my fervor: The above super gorgeous boots are already mine. What is the singular daytime fantasy that makes the intolerable 12-14 hour workdays bearable? Failing love or ambition what could be worth waking up to find joy in?

I want this board so bad it hurts. C'mon!
Mostly because the next time that I went, I didn't fuck around I went straight to Vermont's Mount Snow
And it's freaking awesome. I had the good luck to have the company of Paul, who besides being a super cool alleycat kid also happens to be the blonde Johnny Cash of the mountain with his own Black on Black Ghetto Board & Reutgers hoodie instead of all the gay-ass goretex gingham burton gear that the trust fund kids wear. Not that I have any shame, my new waterproof pants totally match the boots. I've never felt so pretty.

Am I committing adultery?

Consider the following videos:

Life is Forever Changed. Congrats! It's a track BIKE!!!

2006-02-01T07:24:00.000+01:00

I remember the exact moment I knew I would own a track bike. It was right after I had borrowed a friend's fuji and gone from Williamsburg, across the bridge to Trackstar, feeling like I might die at any moment but totally excited with the vague sensation of having grown steel wings.

It was also a hawaiian sunset moment with the late summer evening melting into hanging out with the other track kids and me slowly imagining how it would be.

My other bike is a black on black cannondale cyclocross and though it's taken a back seat in my day to day and racing, I remain firmly dedicated to it's prowess. I was kind of a nerd about it and did eveerything black on black, like some kind of teenage Jersey boy listening to metal. Oh wait. Anyway I thought it would be fun to jump into the extremeness of fixed with a pink on yellow combination or something equally girly.

Even the best laid plans get smoothered and mine were put on hold because I had no money and kept the red/yellow fuji for months. Kind of like living with your parents with the idea that when you move out it will be straight to the penthouse. And as luck would have it...

I took the Fuji to Japan (yes, the obligatory "look ma!" photos were taken), And while in Kyoto for KyotoLoco I found the GanWellPro factory with Jason B After the King Kog Kids came back with some serious booty. We both nearly pissed ourselves.

i walked away with my baby, with the frame strapped to my torso ridding all over kyoto as people wispered, "Engrish!" I engorged on matcha udon, ice cream made out of twig tea and then went back to the festival like a freaking viking. Best Day Ever.
Oh, yeah -and then we got wasted.

But once in New York, I was still broke and the frame languished with me in my studio, waiting for the day when my refridgerator would be full and the wheelset would be born. It only needed a Christmas miracle.

Then I got a semi-decent job.

I immediately split hairs on what debts would wait so that my life goal coulf happen in time for DC's Midnight Frostbite. I took the situation up with Brad, at Trackstar. He promised me a deal and I jumped. I was especially piqued to get voicemails about my rims at work.

Then-a day late- the magical day arrived.

I'm pissed at trackstar, but look at those drop-outs!! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? I didn't think so.

Year of the Pousenger

2006-01-08T05:41:00.000+01:00

While several not so subtle hints have been sprinkled among major marketing campaigns, it looks like messengering is on the very edge of becoming glamourous, eXXtreme and acceptable round dinner tables nation-wide.

The first I recall seeing was the Coors Billboards I was in San Francisco at the time and looked religiously to find the sunny california messenger who might legitimize such a paltry image. To my relief I didn't find one. Though I can't swallow that piss water and all too vividly recall the stench of the colorado factory with some nausea, I do appreciate their European translation.

When I returned home to NYC I saw something even more disturbing, a banking ad poster displaying a blonde dread-haired man on a bike in what looks like the corporate cartoon version of what a messenger might wear. It bears a startling ALTERNATE UNIVERSE resemblence to Mike Dee, who's a famous messenger and an awesome guy. (I'll try to get a shot of it later) And, as ever it's nothing new. Other than the gag inducing reflex of a major banking corporation with the particular reputation of being more evil than most, co-oping messengering But Why?

The experience can be summarized as such: you generally don't earn more than a subsistance living, you're treated like a second class citizen -at best- through the security checkpoints that garantee that the people who work in the buildings you deliver to will never see (and presumably be upset by) your most likely filthy ass. Sure it's extreme as cycling in Manhattan always will be and more so for the more aggressive messengers. But of the 22 cyclists killed this last year none were messengers. The road is disgusting and the weather unforgiving. [If messengers look like hell it's because the working conditions are. ]

In New York City, you don't even make decent money to have new clean clothes like the couriers in Tokyo do. Hell, I already fetishize Tokyo messengers. They're stylish, clean (the streets are also clean) and they have Keirin racing... but that's another post.

So the storm clouds of advertising begin darkening over our beloved community.

And it's hard to tell where the line is -at times- though the above examples are easily distinguishable. Like the upcoming 12 month CALENDAR of DIRTY HOT MESSENGER BOYS.
It's a bummer because there's a lot about messenger boys that I think is totally hot.
Except I know all those losers. It's gross like trying to check out a first cousin. *EW* But... it might be just the thing to get more ladies to come to parties... Then there was some wierd casting call at Trackstar for a messenger to be featured in a commerical or something, no one really knew anything other than it was the spur of the moment and it paid $500 if you got it. I missed the whole thing entirely except for various voicemails that tormented me.

And one can't forget the most humorous Ad: the major sponsor of KyotoLoco 2005 was Georgia, the Japanese canned coffee (a subsidiary of Coca-Cola) that was freely distributed through out the whole debaucherous affair. The omnipresent "We are GeorgiaN!" poster ads that blanketed everything were only mildly amusing next to the minute long commercial we were obliged to watch, which featured our pink track jacket wearing Japanese messenger slamming a Georgian canned coffee, deftly manouvering through wicked traffic and delivering a large envelope in pristine condition, without sweating and while employing only the greatest of Japanese-style courtesy. I think he's also riding Fixed so that's just retardedly sexy.

I drank several cans of the vile fluid that had the benefit of such a charming spokesboy.
(free at the outside tent)

But I'm a wierdo, with no money.

Next in line (it had to happen) is an AmEx casting call for a Female Messenger. Trackstar actually posted the call on their front page with details that included the $1500. fee for the lucky lady who gets to sell out/buy into the whole mess. And of course I went. Brean has been absolutely convinced that with my great beauty, great messengering and racing skills that I'm the only possible answer to such a call. It's sweet, like having a kindly uncle who thinks you're the smartest in your class. And maybe I am but it's a subjective thing for sure.

I take time off work to go to the casting call with the additional and humiliating forethought of emailing a confirmation and link to this here blog. I get a vapid, yet positive response. At four I show up and get met by a white room that looks like it belongs from the TV scene in the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's full of biker chicks and sleezy model wannabes with borrowed mountain bikes. The biker girls are thigh heavy roadies who have worn straight-up spandex and dirty performance fabrics with *gasp* helmuts.

There is one lone messenger girl waiting on a white couch. She doesn't make eye contact with anyone there. I'm busy and forsee a shit ton of waiting so I ask. The guy asks me for my headshot and tells me it's going to be a half an hour. With no headshot or any idea of what my measurements might be I announce I'll be back after I've retrieved a beer. If I'm not going to make any money I might as well sit around drinking.

It winds up being super fun: I take myself out for a little run around midtown for a 24oz bud and return to the wierd white room and begin chatting up the girl who's brought her IRO to the casting call. It's a great waste of an afternoon.

The only sexy insider knowledge that I got was that the real agency was located in Australia... of course the little wheels of my mind begin whirling at the thought of being the obnoxious posterchild for CMWC 2006 in Sydney.

Cranksgiving

2005-12-29T06:12:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving (you're gonna start recognizing a pattern if you pay attention) really sucked for me. I'm not a big fan of the holidays and at this point I'm not sure if it's one of those chicken Vs. egg fights or not.

ELLA VERSUS THE HOLIDAYS

Ella- 0
Holidays-3

Regardless, the day of Cranksgiving came and I was still in pain from the car hit and I was barely pushing the 48/16 without wincing. Everytime I planted my left foot down I could feel it shoot into my hip.

At trackstar everyone except Zach and Brad, who had to work the shop were getting psyched for the race and Brean kept trying to talk me into. As usual I got a gigantic beer, swilled around and made some diasappointing plans to write if I was too lame to race. I would write about the cruelty of existence.

Brean tried to convince me to do it anyway. I went to Pier's and sulked. He left to get some fruit and came back all flustered and excited: in a city of 10 million my hermit friend runs into the middle of a cranksgiving checkpoint, only to inform me that it was incredibly awesome and exciting and that there are hot girls in it.

Fucking A.
After another beer I was ready for the afterparty and (endless beers) went down to the finish.
This is the first alleycat I had to totally sit out on. I felt like a jilted bride. It should have been mine. It all takes too long but eventually were all at Time's Up! and I progressed to getting ridiculously spun. Oh.
Just incase you were wondering all of my stories have a happy ending and they're all the same: And then I (we) Got Wasted!! IT was awesome! The end. So if you're holding out for a suprise ending; goodnight and thank you for your time.

The really rad thing about New York and all the other big messenger communities are that messengers are awesome. They're fun, drink heavily, party and have better stories than anyone else. Not that mutual funds aren't interesting but our banter involves epic life or death situations that read like: Man VS. MACHINE. How to spend 40+ hours exposed to the outdoors without getting too wet/cold/sick. or Fighting Facist Regimes and How to Survive NYC with a Multi-Tool and $5. For the gear heads we can talk about makes and models and then there's the friendly competion. {For Example: Everyone know's I'm faster than Brean, Adam, Ken, Brad, Izumi and a few others.}

Oh.. back to the race (that I didn't do... why am I writing this again?) Brean took 2nd place and got the snazzy red jacket. That's us getting wasted (surprise!) and arguing.

Below is a mid party shot of some drunks. I don't know the two guys on the left but the two on the right are my guys Jason (middle right)+ Prentiss (far right), both of whom are super fast and super awesome. I did R:1 Boston-NYC with Prentiss and R:1 Japan with Jason.

It was good.

Hit

2005-11-18T06:34:00.001+01:00

Hit by a car on thursday. can't work. head and hips hurt (the fatty parts).

typical, typical.
screwed for the loss of cash, the driver's an idiot and a total prick (but did stop) and the cops are fucking jerks.

You've heard it before, there's no need to reiterate. Forgive the silence.

I hate feeling vulnerable.
I'm pissed I can't race this weekend (missing cranksgiving & the DC Simpsons race).

*Minor Update*
Since my head's still not right, my bank account is seriously busted and my sports adventures are slowing with winter... Look for new posts -should you be so inclined- in the older post list on the right. I'll be detailing the R:1 Japan trip, KyotoLoco, Santa Cruz courier race and more. It only looks like I'm not doing anything...

Halloweenies

2005-11-02T22:16:00.001+01:00

Okay so I don't even wanna talk about la calavera. Halloween kinda sucked for me since I got so drunk after the race on Saturday that the next several days were a very necessary detox-recovery. Let's just say it isn't every party that you wake up from the next afternoon still wearing yer bike shoes, wondering why the cell phone has logged 27 missed calls and a completely foreign bike is parked inside yer studio apartment. I briefly looked around. No body.
Later Victor & Brean reconstructed the scene like two CSI nuts. Let's just say the highlight involves more racing.

As fer the real halloween I was just depressed, still all toxic from over doing it on Saturday. Luckily it's New York City, so even just riding around and gawking is pretty entertaining.

Mad props to victor from music man for keeping people together and hitting hot parties with the gold-standard of free drinks or corner stores.

Cycling: the Deal with San Francisco

2005-10-18T21:24:00.001+01:00

I waltzed into San Francisco like a cowboy. I knew the singular downtown courier hangout and I figured that all I had to do was ask around about alleycats and I'd be off and racing around the city.

Except since SF is punk as fuck and it didn't exactly work out that way. First: I had just missed the epic King of the Mountains annual alleycat that has racers beating it up the worst hills in the city. Considering my NYC flatlander status, I was bummed about missing such an epic race and the deliciousness that a win would have brought after a certain King of the fucking Streets race... but it's better to be prepared and give it a real go.

But it's San Fancisco, the perfect city for alleycats: crazy hidden places and it's safe and well lit. The numerous colleges tend to have open campuses and nice people. The average driver is less hell bent on physically harming cyclists and big signs point out that bikes have the right to a lane. Heaven it's not but it is pretty damn luxurious by comparison.

Loose Scruz Courier Challenge

2005-10-17T21:24:00.001+01:00

Death Race 2005

2005-09-09T20:34:00.001+01:00

deathRace2005
Originally uploaded by News Clues.

I first heard about Death Race 2005 because it was the date that I wanted to throw my alleycat on. So when I contacted Jason Chaste from 4916.com, I was prepared to hate both him and his race. But when he called me back immediately and was super cool, I had to check it out. Besides I had seen the movie a few years ago and after googling my memory of it back up to par... it looked like a pretty fucking awesome concept for an alleycat.

It was teams of two and of the only two riders that I had been riding with, Adam and Brean, Adam was leaving to go hang out with his Queer pals in Philly. He doesn't have any friends so I figured it was just as well that the fat jerk got some more cheesesteak. So I was left with Brean unless I wanted to find someone at the start and just hope it worked out. Being a total girl, I went for the safe option. For reasons totally illogical (mostly) I was pissed at the start, hungry and emotional. I had spent the first half of the day biking way the hell over town to get things ready to leave for Japan. After not eating all day, I just wanted to punch someone in the face. Like a team mate... But the crowd looked good. Some of the fastest, grittiest racers were there, ready to rumble. The two awesome Jersey guys were fully representing. Paul dressed up like a gimp ninja and the Garrett had tied a gigantic floppy silver pirate sword to his frame, making it look like his bike had a huge erection. Then there was his costume... Team costumes were in full effect, with sleezy tight ridiculously short man-shorts. Scary.

The crowd was unruly and it was pretty obvious that there would be some fisticuffs leading onto the Williamsburg bridge. Brean and I had plotted our course and determined that the hospital CP was first, followed by the 41street CP. When we got there it was clear that this was a fast race and that people were in tight packs and winners would be the ones who did everything perfectly: Speed, navigating the fastest, easiest ways of getting to each CP and performing the point based challenges the best. At the top of the hill overlooking the United Nations building there was a big chinatown pink plastic washtub filled with red fruitpunch and plastic baby heads. Each had a number on them. Like mommy's little piggy Brean got down into it and triumphantly pulled out the baby head. Points were noted.

Next we got back on 1st Avenue to make it up to 108th street for the ring around the pylon toss at the Grafitti museum... a nice location. Then, cutting through the park to the next CP. It's becoming obvious that the best way to get from each CP to the next requires a serious knowledge of all of these streets and a willingness to go down one way streets in the wrong direction while out gunning lights and saturday afternoon drivers. We decide to take the park all the way down, even though it's packed and the road is filled with families, bored ghetto boys on bmx bikes, roadies, runners, peds and every imaginable road bump possible. For the most part just yelling is enough. I begin to feel really freaking tired and regret the big ride I had done earlier in the day to retrieve my contacts in Park Slope whilst providing me a reason for ditching Brean. I try to get him to pull me but we're totally not working together and it strikes me as only appropriate. And out of nowhere he almost runs over this little toddler. Clips him. I'm totally suspended in fear and the undeniable urge to laugh. Death Race 2005 won by default... a toddler is worth all the CP points times a thousand. In my gawking I nearly clip Junior's dad who has finally realized that he might want to actually watch his child.

Thankfully we're only a few hundred yards from the Columbus Circle exit and we're out of there before anything can be said or done. The next CP is at 57th street and 8th Avenue where we get drenched with a super soaker and are forced to massage each other. It feels nice because it is HOT out there. Mmm. Brean decides that we're going to take Central Park South (which I think is a bad idea on a Saturday) but he's the messenger so there we go to get to the Queensboro/59th street bridge.

He's pulled up ahead of me when it happens. Alongside Bloomingdales at 59th street and 5th avenue there is a row of heavy wooden barricades blocking some kind of construction on the road/sidewalk. On the left is a long platfom/tow truck. It's the kind you see transporting 10 cars on the freeway. The platform is at shoulder level on a bike. There's a space in between the truck platform and the barricades and I start to shoot through it. Instead of moving straight ahead the driver turns right and starts driving. The gap closes until I am getting pulled into the wheelbase of the trailer.

The instant that happens in every major accident happens then.
I can see all the variables spread out like a banquet: the wooden barricade that will only press me into the trailer like a butter knife, the clips in my shoes that won't let me flail, leaving my upper body as the only thing to resist the impossible. And it is impossible. The driver can't hear me and it's too big, too fast. I will get sucked into that giant rubber wheel and my upper body and head will be crushed underneath. I am trying to push myself upright and away from it with my left arm but I can feel that it's not working and the physical anticipation of my chest being crushed into two is real.

Inwardly, I give up. I Let go.

Something happens.

The perfect bubble that contained everything that had happened was only a few seconds and it was located in front of one of the nicest shopping facilities in Manhattan on a Saturday. The sea of pedestrians had done what I couldn't -yell so loud that the driver stopped. Just stopped.

There was no time for anything else. I slammed the pedals down, sprinting ahead looking at the driver to see something: anger, remorse, confusion but nothing. He hadn't known or cared about whatever was going on. I managed to blow past the light and positively flew out of there on the andrenline of having come so close to death. Brean was ahead and commented that he thought I was dead. Not that he was concerned or upset, just sorta impressed that I wasn't.

Later, I would get two things out of the situation in regards to other people. The first being that an enormous crowd of shoppers, tourists and pedestrians almost witnessed a brutal death and were horrified enough *in unison* to scream sufficiently to save me. Thanks, guys! It's pretty funny too, when you think about the pleasant day of consumption that I ruined with a near splatter. The second is that Brean is a total dick and that I'm not racing with him again.

What happens when you've just passed out of the shadow of death? Why an exciting new lease on the whole broken down disaster of course! Brean and I made it up to the Queensboro with my shortcut and found a team with a really obnoxious habit of riding side by side so that I couldn't pass them. Then one of them (the guy) brakes as we're going down superfast, just to fuck with me. FYI I'm also riding single speed brakeless for this race. Having to back pedal makes me wanna kill him. There's another CP at the bottom of the bridge and we pass those motherfuckers. Again, my QNS-BKLYN insider knowledge helps us smoke the pretenders. Cut me off, will you? Nona will have her revenge.

We make moved to get to GreenWood Cemetary and get there pretty efficiently, but not as fast as I would hope. I'm kind of exhausted but when I see the cemetary and get smacked with a glob of fake blood I feel a bit high. Dead or undead? I could wax poetic about having escaped death to find myself rushing to and from a cemetary but it wasn't concrete like that. No words, just sensation and I could feel that the long tiredness of the race was over. I only wanted to destroy the other team that came in to the CP at the same time and pedal hard, Harder than Brean, harder than anyone else. I needed my legs and lungs to fuse into a machine capable of burning everything to the ground.

We flew down GreenPoint Avenue and I passed Brean coming over the bridge and made the turn onto McGuinness. The juxtaposition and similarity to the King of the Fucking Streets race was bittersweet. When we turned down Lorimer it was over: we had hosed the other mixed team but had come in after the top 3 teams and wouldn't be considered for placement. I immediately blamed Brean for not pulling me and then holding back. And once again I was furious.

Thankfully, there was also lots of beer. The finish line was genius, a scarecrow with a crushed melon you had to run over while Amy Bolger took photos/video. I was interviewed again about the nearly getting run over incident, but like the KOFS race I have no idea what became of the footage.

As alleycat parties go, I had an awesome one. Jason and Gina had done a magnificent job with the beer and grilled food. More than that, it was the last summer race with everyone in the park getting wasted and loving it. Some kind of Wonder Years, late summer light cast a glow of cheap beer and sanctity over everything. War stories were shared, and everyone was happy. I felt like a total warrior princess strolling from burning fire to burning fire along the camp of beloved miscreants.

Of course, if you'd like more pictures and a different (less verbose) take on the whole experience check out: http://bikeblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/death-race-2005.html

Criterium Races: Central Park + Prospect Park

2005-09-01T22:22:00.001+01:00

One of the best reasons to have *and love* a track bike in New York City is the Prospect Park Crit races that happened just about every Thursday for the last several months. From what I can gather -through oral legend- they were started by Tad, aka. The Polish Hammer. The exact details of how and why haven't made their way down to me but that's not important. The only details you need to remember are:

Thursday night
10pm
Grand Army Plaza entrance
*Fixed Gear Only*

If you're really curious you can go to bike forums and check out the fixed/singlespeed section under the delightfully obvious thread thursday night prospect crit races thread.

Presuming that my delightful musings are adequate enough I will continue.

The races are a grab bag of the kind of thing you would see at a velodrome. There are names for all of them and once again I'll reveal my true status as a newbie pretender. There are miss-n-outs, win-n-outs, 2 lap eliminations, time trials (sprints) and other shenanigans in either individual or team formats. For accurate descriptions, spellings and other information on such things I recommend a more reliable/experienced source.

On the evenings that I have gone, as with most of the races that I do, it's a very simple procedure of getting on the bike and pedaling as hard as possible until it's over. Of course that's not particularly smart or effective for winning, but it does help with getting the nerves out of the ways and a little experience under the belt so that the next go can be a learning experience: how to draft, learning where you need to be in the pack to perform at your best, the strategies that you develop for different kinds of races and different kinds of competitors. It becomes extremely important to know the people that you are racing with the better you get.

The delightful -if maniacal- aspect of these races is how mental they become; knowing how practiced or tired each racer is. Have they been training or were they sick or tired during the last week? If it's a messenger you know they are probably maintaining fitness better but they might be exhausted from working that day. People care about each other and it's a small group, but the guys that are there regularly push each other as hard as they can. Guys who start out slow and keep with it get obsessive, training during the week and fighting it out to improve their lap times {see forums thread for general times} and the mental endurance to attack on that damn hill.

My absolute favorite line to come out of a sporting event has been here. At the starting line, I am waiting for either Brean or Ken and the guys start talking about who is super fast, who has the hottest bike... the usual. It's a tense, sporadic conversation as we all wait for our team mates to come blazing around the corner for the hand off.

"Tyler, yeah. He's like a whole new man since he got that new bike."

Yes, I recognize that it's not a particularly eloquent or deep phrase that will ever make it into a Cambridge compendium, but that's not why you're reading a sports blog. It felt like we all recognized how wonderful it was to be here, to be racing together and getting better. There's a school that believes in raw racing power (messengers) and another school that believes in high performance bikes and gear (the dudes with job$).

But maybe we'd all be untouchable with the right training, the right bike and enough races through the park.

Valkyries on track bikes, shrieking our way into the night.

Apparently there are also crit races in Central Park though for various reasons I have never participated in these. Here is my excuse list. Feel free to borrow from it where necessary:

I live in Brooklyn, it's too far away to ride there and back on a weeknight
Central Park *always* has cars, runners, cyclist or other obstacles in the road/bike lane. The likelihood of blazing down a hill or turn to run into a situation that will cause you to slow down or crash is much higher.
It's 3.4 miles in Prospect Park. It's 5.1 or 5.5 in Central Park. Crit races are HARD. It's like track racing with hills and no light. So 5 miles is like FOREVER. And you can forget about multiple laps, which is kinda fun especially in teams.
People. And when I say people, what I really mean is police. They're no good. All we wanna do is bike really fast around a closed circut. What's wrong with that? Apparently some people think there is. Those people should all be destroyed.

Sponsorship: The Big Bust

2005-08-27T22:21:00.001+01:00

Okay Kids. We all talk -even if it's only quietly to ourselves- about sponsorship.
That wish-upon-a-star fantasy... but what's stopping you? Talent? Of course not.

Merely the ability to write and send off one of these babies: a sponsorship proposal. I sure thought I had the world on a string when I came up with this little doozy.

Standing in front of Mount Fuji aftert the 2nd flat. Arguably my misery
would have been lessened had it not all come directly out of my own pocket.

Sponsorship Proposal:

1. Party Requesting Sponsorship:
Name: Ella Vader
Who to Contact: Ella
Street Address: XXX Street NY, NY XXXXX
Contact Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxxx
Email: i'mabigsucker@duh.us
URL: http://girlsport.blogspot.com

2. Description of Proposed sponsorship:

R1 Japan: the first annual stage race from Tokyo, Japan to Kyoto September 19-22, 2005. Beginning with Mixpresion in Tokyo and followed by the KyotoLoco competition September 23 -24, one of the premiere annual alternative cycling events. Racers will traverse nearly the entire length of Japan.

During the race, as well as being detailed and updated afterwards, a personal blog will we maintained to document all aspects of the race from the point of view of a female cyclist. All aspects of the race will be covered; from social events and interactions to race analysis and product reviews. The goal behind it is to encourage and promote women of all ages to actively pursue sports and particularly cycling. Sponsors have a great opportunity to reach an enormous, growing demographic in a way that is welcoming to those still curious, educational for beginners and intermediate riders and empowering to women who want to get active in the sport.

3. How Sponsor benefits from sponsorship:

Due to the extraordinary nature of the race, the colorful international competition and the popularity of cycling in Japan and the KyotoLoco festival, We expect to receive press through independent, specialty and mainstream media in Japan, the US and Europe. As of right now, before any media work has been done, a member of the AP in New York City is already interested in photographing Ella and writing an article on the race. Sponsors logo will be prominently photographed, the nature of the sponsorship promoted through interviews, the web and media outreach.

At their discretion a sponsor may choose to request a personalized Jersey to keep their company logo prominently displayed at all times. Depending on the level of sponsorship, Sponsor may request to be the sole or primary artwork visible or placed in a smaller position alongside other partial sponsors. Approved cycling products and accessories may be used during the event to further promote the sponsor.

The interaction that riders will have along the route with spectators, locals and other racers will have a strong impact and is an excellent opportunity to clearly display sponsor’s logos and products while in use. Business cards with the URL of the blog and sponsor logos will be passed out along the route so that people can stay updated on how the race is going, what products are being used and how to find those products to start their own cycling adventures.

The blog may prominently display a link or banner ad for the sponsor as well as being hosted or linked to from the Sponsor’s website to further gain interest and readership.

4. Costs for Sponsor

Depending on the interest of the Sponsor, a variety of options exist from Full Sponsorship that includes airfare, accommodations, entry fees, bike parts, accessories and promotional costs: Press Releases, Blog/internet promotion, Sponsor Jersey, cards and other marketing/promotional materials to be distributed throughout New York City, Tokyo, the race route and Kyoto.

The total cost for Full sponsorship is $2,500.

Partial Sponsorship may include: sponsor’s products and a negotiable dollar contribution with corresponding promotional benefits. Partial sponsorship is a suggested $600.

Interested Sponsors must confirm their interest and what they wish to contribute by September 8, 2005. Contributions may be made anytime before September 12, 2005.

5. XXX HAS BEEN REMOVEDXXX

6. Other Sponsors

Approached potential sponsors are contacted based on the personal experience of their products in a racing environment and a distinct emphasis on female specific products.

7. Terms of Sponsorship

Sponsors are asked for a one-time contribution of products and/or financial sponsorship. In exchange their logos and products will be displayed for the duration of the R1 Japan race and KyotoLoco. Web links and reviews will be available online for at least 6 months or until the website is modified or updated but will remain searchable through major search engines as google, yahoo, and MSN.

After the race, sponsors will have the option of continuing the relation through the development of a female oriented sports website.

8. Projected attendance and reach of the event

Because of the tour like format of the Tokyo to Kyoto race, there will be an impressive range of spectators, participants, volunteers and locals as we travel from the megalopolis of Tokyo, through small towns and countryside to the cultural gem of Kyoto.

9. Demographics of target audience

Although the target audience for the website is women in their late teens through their early 40’s located in the New York metro area, the Japan trip will extend that reach to a wide range of Japanese cyclists and spectators. There will also be the home audience based in New York that is checking on the status of the race and learning more about what it’s like to race in another country.

As time goes on and business cards and internet positioning increase the range of readers will expand both geographically and in terms of age and gender.

About Ella: After being involved in several endurance sports in the NYC metro area -from Running with clubs as diverse as Niketown, the New York Road Runners, Jack Rabbit Sports and the Hash House Harriers, Kayaking with the Downtown Boathouse, The East River Kayak Club and Hudson Valley Outfitters, Adventure Racing with the New York Adventure Racing Association, and Genesis, Cycling with several advocacy groups, sponsored clubs and local messenger races- it became clear that there are many boundaries that prevent women from participating in sports as freely as men do. The longer and more intensively she trained with different groups and in different sports, it was apparent that there is a definite need for a free, fun resource for encouraging women to get more actively involved in sports.

Having completed the original Route One Stage race as the second female,
{is it necessary to mention that it was a technicality and based on that same logic I also technically "Qualified" as DFL. See! sports are just as subjective as art sometimes...} the opportunity that such a race presents became obvious: you are highly visible and present an attractive image racing through towns and highways where cyclists, especially women, are not expected. The general response is extremely positive and curious about how it works and how to get involved.

A sports resume with times and finishes for various races is available if requested.

East River Kayak Club [the new rules]

2005-08-10T22:14:00.001+01:00

Red Devil
Originally uploaded by News Clues.

The East River Kayak Club is one of the best things about living near the East River. We are also one of the only kayak clubs that actually gets out on the water. It's an awesome idea that's been paraded around before, but somehow we get the boats out. It's the grown up, city version of Huckleberry Finn. The grapevine rings and before you know it, there's an impromptu 6 hour epic tour happening or moonlight paddles that scare you when the water's rolling and woo you with the heartbreaking beauty of the city when seen from the water.

My first trip Robert had promised me that I would roll into the still freezing spring waters and that I should accept the inevitability that something horrible was only moments away for my beginner self. Quite the introduction/welcoming committee... I had paddled several times on the Hudson on a plastic open air kayak, but never with such a sleek vessel and never in such intense waters as the East River.

Miraculously the water was calm and my boat upright through a full trip up to Socrates Sculpture Garden up inn Queens and back. It felt just like the first time I rode around New York on a bike: like the city had reblossomed and revealed a secret, pristine layer. The detroitus of filth and past disappointments disappear from the water and the city positively sparkles.

And I totally love getting myself into tricky athletic situation that require agressive manuevers and narrowly avoiding outrageous physical disasters.

Kayaking with the East River Kayak crew is directly analogus to alleycat racing.
Smokin'!!

But all things must either end or grow up and it would seem that in fits and starts the Kayak club is... maturing? Rob and Monica are getting married, Tom's moving into a new wood shop, the waterfront's being developed and someone's eventually going to get the fundraising and organization together...

Which means liability and the fallout: responsibility, waivers and ...beginner paddles and skills tests.

It's a bummer, I know. Well, if you're like me and you want to go from 0-60 all the time. But generally it seems to be working well for new people who get overwhelmed by the power of the water and traffic while the boats themselves are faster and less stable then the ones newbies generally have experience. (see earlier paragraph)

Tracksploitation @ Kissena Velodrome

2005-07-31T22:23:00.000+01:00

Tracksploitation was put on by Trac kstar as a benefit for Ozzy & Spencer who had been in horrible car accidents just after CMWC, leaving them fucked up and without any insurance to cover the astronomically high hospital bills. They's already had the idea to have the event so the theme was somewhat inappropriate considering.

It was the best time to jump into velodrome racing, it was the worst time. I had been riding fixed gear for the first time ever for a little less than two weeks... the same period of time that I had officially been diagnosed and given over the top anti-biotics for Limes Disease.

Wandering about the emergency room, wailing about being cut down in my prime, I had no idea if my new disease would permanently gimp me out or if I would ever walk, er... race again. I was then informed that the pc phrase for disease is now officially: Infection.

Interestingly enough STD's have also become STI's. When the stigma catches up with the terminology I can't wait to hear what the next iteration will be. I'd like to propose Sexually Transmitted Misfortune.

Back to the bicycle racing.
So there I am all weak and not exactly training but still excited to try out my new skills and go fast on those groovy banks. My only goal was to beat someone. Unfortunately my anti-biotic schedule called for eating one of those bombs (which required a pre-feast to neutralize the nausea) followed by an hour or two of being mentally absent and totally dizzy. Actually faint is a more accurate descriptive term but I couldn't ever knowingly describe myself as such. I mean really.

Since Brean was the bike donor and Paul (of the Jersey guys) was staying over we did the pre-feast at Dunkin' Donuts, which in retrospect was probably a really stupid idea. But is was pretty fun to rock the pink wig in Bed-Stuy --->

*The Rational behind the wig (no, I'm not just some dippy fruitcake that wears wigs to turn the everyday into yet another day in art school) was that I would be picking up our team's Streetwars packets and wanted to start my disguise repitouire. Unfortunately by the time I got to the track I was so out of it that my only disguise was looking like a nutcase on a track bike. I'd like to think it's a flattering aesthetic as it's one I've completely adopted.

The first things you hear when you get to a velodrome are the rules. They aren't exactly clear so it's like going too a ceremony in another country: you know you're going to fuck up some rule or convention that you've missed or forgotten. In sanctioned track racing they don't let you race if you fudge something up.

Most of the rules make sense if you bother to pay attention: Only drop bars, no brakes, sprinter's lane and myriad others. Of all the ones that I must have screwed up on I particularly remember not wearing a jersey of any sort. It might have been HANES or something equally gauche.

Perhaps that's why I'm not more popular.

I get up on the starting wall and I know that I'm not ready either mentally or physically, but it's do it or drop out so I do it. On the wall before even starting I get seriously dizzy and do a 0 mph crash.
It's quite impressive.

So much so that people there still remember it as I managed to roll with the frame; instinctually protecting it and messing myself up. The aluminum drop bars were wrecked and someone managed to hammer them back into a semi circle again for the race. I was nervous as all hell that they'd snap while I was racing and I'd look like the motorcycle guy from Rotten.com I asked Brean if they were safe and he replied, "you don't weigh much. I'm sure they'll be fine for a little while longer." This made me feel convinced that they would DEFINITELY snap. I mean, let's put it in context: I'm completely relative in terms of size and a complete fraud when it comes to self representation. Which is another way to say that I'm easily 30 pounds heavier than I say or look.

I actually have DARK MATTER contained in my being, which as everyone knows is impossibly dense and immeasurably heavy.

Needless to say I didn't win, but I think I did pretty well considering. And if it sounds like I am soothing a broken heart and a bruised ego well then -that's exactly what it is.

Otherwise it was a great day with the mixed crowd of beginners and old hands, the messenger community and the track racers along with wierd Queens families just checking out what in the heck was going on. I was particularly jealous of the large (physically as well as numerically) black family that set up their picnic tent in the middle of the field and BBQ'd away without ever paying any attention to where they were.

Our BBQ was largely vege-vegan with a few crappy frozen patties. It definitely pays to eat like a vegetarian at these things. Still the wadting scent of thick slabs of charring meat was cruel after exhausting my own little chicken legs.

Niketown + Runner's Shop = marathon training

2005-07-29T22:08:00.001+01:00

Running, more than most sports, is based on several premises. The first being that you won't get injured so that you can build your training to infinitely longer and faster runs without screwing yourself up the way I did last year (I can Run! I can't walk...)

Most sports have an interesting dynamic between training alone and with others but the NIKETOWN runs are amazingly fun and provide just enough education and discipline to be welcoming and fun for people who are just trying out the sport (or the social & fashion aspects) to those who really want to train.

And for as much as I personally hate NIKE, I think they're doing something wonderful. I'm probably extremely contrary (your average punk rock sports princess) so I can honestly say that I've never been to the NIKETOWN runs -which I fully plan on doing- but to the New York Runner's Shop-Nike runs.

As an experience, it's super awesome.

[The attentive beginner to athletic clubs and sports enthusiasm will notice that there is a distinct and tiny vocabulary in use. Based mostly on a physical (ie. non-verbal) experience and a generally optomistic perspective the conversations tend to be directly descriptive. But based on the premise that the audience has already shared a similar, if not identical experience and so the required interpersonal dialogue consists of a small matrix of word staples. King of all athletic descriptions is the word "Awesome."Writers and other linguists may want to take special precautions when entering such realms.]

Overall- you get to meet as a group, do some stretches (that you know you wouldn't do on your own) and find the mile/time pace leaders who get small groups. I tend to be a real jerk and seed myself so I'm in a group of runners who don't have anyone too fat that would bruise my ego too much. Generally that means I'll be running with the 7 minute milers for the longer 5 mile loop. Of course sometimes pride takes a backseat to lazyness. Since you're much smarter than me, you should make your decisions based on previous training and how you feel.

The golden ratio in running is to only increase your miles by 10% each week. When you're in decent shape and full of energy it's hard to stick to something so slow when you know you can push yourself! But trust me, it's not worth it when you're benched for 5 months with joints that hurt like hell and forced to start from scratch all over again anyway.

Starting off by selecting your speed and distance this way is good because you make your decisions while you still have your wits about you. And while no one is going to shock you with a cattle prod or publicly humiliate you afterwards if you can't keep up... but you will get some rather curt positive words ment to whip you into sticking with the goal that you promised yourself a few minutes ago- before the hurt.

It's always a mental game, but more than anything I think these runs are like mental training lite. It's this beautiful oasis -central park- and you're running with a group of local hobbyists under the umbrella of a major corporation with LOTS of insurance. Nothing bad is going to happen.

The subtle games that you learn to play with yourself to push through; discomfort, exhaustion, the herd, boredom anything that will come up later are all here is easy to digest durations. In the same way that an ultramarathon (30+ miles) requires incredible amounts of mental endurance, so does crossing the line between occassional jogs and learning how to stick it out for a hard, fast 5 miles. Everything after that is just building on what you already have.

Damn. I haven't been running in a while and just visualizing the bridal path and reservoir makes me want to get out there.

You should too.

Oh, I almost forgot the part that gets everyone so excited: they have free water (sometimes juice!!) and muffins, bagels and fruit waiting for you when you're done. It's so lovely and extra motivation to finish before everyone else (so you can eat their share). You stretch again and sometimes there's another neat surprise like a drawing for a shirt or an author who's a famous runner for something or other. Not really my bag, but it's nice that they spice it up with a charming variety of product and sponsor placements. I appreciate advertising that comes to me, feeds me and generally puts me in a good mood before making the pitch.

Baltimore's courier gangbang alleycat

2005-07-12T08:19:00.001+01:00

couriergangbang
Originally uploaded by News Clues.

I never would have had the determination or wherewithal to get it together enough to get to Baltimore for an alleycat if the email list from R1 wasn't still in full effect with rumors about upcoming events and offers for rides. In the least amount of effort, I managed to piggy back onto a ride that was leaving with Prentis, Niki, Izumi and a new cat named Jason.

Coming off the rollercoaster of success and failure between R1, CMWC and the King of the Fucking Streets alleycat, I decided that doing real training was absolutely necessary and should begin immediately. Or specifically that morning with the group ride to Nyack and back. With a bit of a late start I wound up turning back at Piermont but making it back in plenty of time to meet up for the voyage.

Instead of taking it easy, eating and most importantly hydrating properly, I threw my shit in the back of the truck and got cramped up for the 4.5 hour trip that felt like going to hell on a schoolbus. Vroom.

The conversation mostly surrounded on extreme shit that we would do in hypotetical alleycats. Niki has his "king of the mountains" alleycat that would hit every hill in the Bronx, to which Prentiss interjected Staten Island's fine and outrageous inclines. All four of them. Izumi, who didn't do R1 proposed R1: Tokyo-Kyoto. And of course we're a bunch of crazy kids on a road trip so we all pretend like it's going to happen. Shit, none of us have real jobs or responsibilities and cash grows in dumpsters under the BQE these days...

When we finally get there it's taken way too fucking long. So we're all sorta putting out bikes back together and trying to figure out what the deal with registration is. It's like, expensive dude.
The bikes get laid down before I've had a chance to look at the city map or relax enough to realize that I'm increadibly dehydrated and really tired from the morning's training ride and afternoon torture session. I'm not like a professional athlete, so it's not like there are people checking on you and the idea is that you just DO IT. No cry babies, all rage. Hydration? You mean beer. Tons of foreign messengers from CMWC have come down so it's loud, busy dirty and already getting out of control. And with that the scene is set.

The race is in teams of three. Arbitrarily I am on a team with Prentiss and Jason. Which is a good thing because I don't know Izumi and I'm still pissed at Niki for fucking up the King of the Fucking Streets team ranking. I would prefer to win, thank you.

Each of us get a FedEx envelope with maps to a checkpoint. Upon getting to the CP and performing whatever retarded bullshit they've pulled out of their asses, you get the next map to the next CP until the fucking thing is over. Which is kinda good because I don't know the place but kinda sucky because there are 16 CPs. Each team member does them in different order and the team meets up at the last CP and finishes together, er something.

Queen of The Fucking Streets {NYC}

2005-07-07T20:33:00.001+01:00

King of The Fucking Streets NYC
Originally uploaded by News Clues.

edit cmwc entry with all the appropriate links [amy bolger, cmwc, R1, etc.] and photos.

King of the Fucking Streets:
include links (nybma, pictures) photos, etc.

By the time Victor and Carlos were actually taking registration two hours had passed and I was standing around Riverside park in my sissy halter top, freezing and pissed off. That was around 11pm and we were told to hold on, that the race would start any minute. There was still rumor that there would be another alleycat (the third had never materialized) and some semi-concrete details made this seem plausible. So the strategy going into the 'first' race was to hit the checkpoints in a clockwise order that would allow me to go home to finally change my shirt, pick up racing glasses to protect my fragile hard-contact wearing eyeballs and ...as long as I was puttering about the house in the middle of an enormous race... I might as well throw on a helmut or lights for safety.

I jumped onto a team with Prentis, Niki and Izumi who I had only just seen a few times. There might have been another member of "Team Prentiss" (Adam?) but it all happened so quickly and with zero planning that you'd have to ask Prentiss. Before the race I was pretty sure that the next race would be the one to really shoot for. I was just so angry about being jerked around and having to watch other people race at the finals while sitting on the sidewalk, getting ignored by everyone that I needed to get moving before I got into a fight.

And really, that's the not so delicate secret to messenger racing. Not too sensitive about self preservation? Inwardly exploding with a host of conflicting emotions? (hate, sadness, frustration, disappointment, irritation, etc.) Then alleycat racing might just be the right solution for you!
It worked for me!

So fucking whatever. Lay the bikes down.

I look at the manifest and it's cute: pictures and boxes clearly delineating that we'll be doing some fun checkpoints but when I look up I realize that the race is HUGE. There are a shit ton of racers from all over the world. So this is it: this is the alleycat for cmwc and most of all it's the ultimate new york city messenger race. Compete with the best in the world and see who comes out on top. No closed courses, no insurance. I feel secure in my navigational plan for the race, now I just get to go do it.

Starts are always fucked up. They plan it that way so that the tweakers wreck each other right off the bat and the winners who have to pull out in front almost immediately have to dodge that shit. Strategy takes place before anything happens. Try to out-guess the organizers (who have been doing this shit longer than you) and lay down your bike in a way that will get you out of the enclosed area barring any tricks they will have and so that you can get on the bike and out of the pen super fast and without crashing. GOOD LUCK!

I generally let the psychos bang heads and kill each other through the gate while I make sure that I can mount my bike and pedal without crashing and THEN crank up the panic/speed. And there's just so many bikes and people running around, not looking that I let them go: I'm not going to win so fuck the rush. I know where I am going, not like these turkeys. So i get up to the main trails and know exactly houw to get out on riverside drive and cut down to Broadway. My first checkpoint is going to be the angel in Central Park.

I get there in the first wave, leaving my bike at the top of the stairs, waddle down the steps in my road shoes and get my manifest signed. Back up the steps. I race down the esplanade as a few europeans are asking me if I know how to get to...? I scream, "you don't want to follow me, I'm going to my house." Which is true, but I also don't want to pull a gaggle of confused foreigners who have no chance of winning. I might be a lonely loser but few things piss me off more than being held back. Racing at my level or piggybacking onto someone who's just a bit better is one of the best things in life. Any residual sense of polite obligation disappears entirely.

The next checkpoint is at the apex of the Queensboro (59th street) bridge. I get cut off at the entrance by a team of guys (also as per the Poussengers racing style, Team Prentiss is every man for himself -race hard and don't disappoint.) who make me fall back at the tight entrance that turns and opposes traffic in three different directions. Extremely rude. I wasn't entirely pissed, because I knew they were from out of town and that if they decided to go through Queens to the Brooklyn Checkpoint, I'd have the navigational advantage and passing them, while denying any directional guidance would be far more satisfying.

So we have to fold a paper airplane and sail it off the bridge. Fine. I fold mine, show the dude and he starts saying that it's not good enough and to do another. Which is total bullshit because it's way better than the guys who have just crumpled their sheets up and have already gotten their sheet signed. I am halfway into folding a new airplane when I just bark at the guy to fucking sign it already. I tail it after the guys down the bridge, smiling because I know that there's two parts where the path is almost ended by large barricades and sidewalk edges that are almost invisible in the dark.

Is it evil to gain pleasure in knowing that someone is wondering into a situation that could kill them? Probably but that's how this shit works. You know that you're running into these situations and you knowingly race out into it assuming that #1 your mad crazy messenger skills will save your ass while propelling you to new heights of fame and glory. At the root of my grinch like desire to see them get hosed by this shit is that it will fuck up their race and allow me to trounce them like a school girl with pom poms. I don't actually want them to experience permanent damage or anything genuinely fucked up.

And like a little present perfectly packaged that's exactly what happens. They get off the bridge and hesitate. They turn left towards 21st Street and I book it into the opposite direction to take Jackson Blvd to the Polaski bridge (spelling?) Right as I'm passing the citibank building I can feel that I'm having a good race. I'm keeping my speed up, not laying off when I can feel the burn and it feels sustainable and delicious. I fly down McGuiness Blvd and down Driggs. I debate about just continuing without going to my house but FUCK IT. I won't win this so I might as well make it all about my personal comfort. I get to my house, unlock the front two doors, prop the bike up against the door and open up my apartment. It feels weird to be there knowing that I should be moving fast, that the clock is still on and I'm opening the fridge to eat some yogurt and granola, grabbing a new shirt, looking for the right pair of glasses and debating about the helmut/light situation. I'm already super sweaty so I decide to go without the irritating helmut and I can't find the lights so... eh, I made it that far, right? Mid race thinking is often not the most grounded.

A few more drinks from the nalgene in the fridge and I'm off. Lock all the doors, pull the bike out of the hall and get back on. The food was a good idea and I rocket to the Rockstar Bar checkpoint to see a motley crew of fixed gears booking it back up south 5th street to get on the williamsburg bridge. Up above us I can see a line of riders coming down the bike/ped path through the red trussing of the bridge, illuminated by the yellow lamp lights, making everything look like a hellish Total Recall scene. I get into the bar, knowing it's going to turn into a pile up I want to avoid.

Again, ditch the beloved bike and run in. It's empty but for the bartender and two bar flys. A veritable banquet of plastic double shots, filled lovingly with ice are getting cheap vodka poured into them with random amounts. I get lucky with a triple shot that I pound down. Greenpoint and Williamsburg are extremely Polish in terms of demographic make up, so after my prodigious performance with vodka the bartender chuckles, "She drank that like a good Polish girl!" I was already running out the side door but turned around and yelled, "I'm Irish, you jerk!" They were still laughing when I got outside and saw Adam rushing into the bar. I told him "they're going to make you drink vodka!" He muttered something about a straight edge option but we were already speeding in opposite directions. Pushing it up the bridge I really felt the booze. I wobbled up the last half of the ascent and tried to figure out where the hell Trackstar was located (I'd never actually been there).

I start seeing more riders and after having to circle the block an extra time, I find trackstar, which is absolutely swamped with cars parked outside, people hanging out both inside and out and the general tiny-ness was accentuated by the totally confusing checkpoint. You had to go in, do a "party punch" shot they names something clever and probably sexual, then you had to pick up a condom (that they had strewn all over the floor and give it to a Trackstar employee or team member. THEN you could get your manifest signed. Sounds simple but it was confusing as hell and all the booze definitely didn't help. As I was getting out of there as fast as I could I can hear thane yelling at me to chill out and take my time. He had been a great part of R1 and charming during CMWC but suddenly where his lax "enjoy the ride" had propelled me to finish the monster 120+ mile stage, this just pissed me off that someone was trying to mess with my race. I show you chill out cocksucker.

I start getting into soho traffic and cut down the wrong way down streets to avoid traffic until I get to the Greene street checkpoint. We have to paint something on this stupid fucking canvas and them paint our manifest, which is going to be a big fucking mess. I already hate the jerk-offs who thought this would be a cute way to display one of the most obnoxious neighborhoods in the city. Fucking wankers.

The next checkpoint is the Irish Hunger Museum. and I'd have been totally fucked on that one, except NYARA's urban bike-o (the yuppie adventure racing version of an alleycat) had taken me to that very spot for a checkpoint. I knew exactly how to get there and *more importantly* to get on the West Side highway that would take me all the way up to the final checkpoint at the New York Times Building and up to the finish line back at riverside park. The time trial had taught me the folly of the bike path and that when time's important you risk the highway.

At the hunger museum checkpoint the guy tells me that I'm only the second female he's seen. I get super excited because I know that I now have a really good chance at placing in the top three... even with my little detour. So getting up to 42nd street I push myself and it feels amazing because I'm surprised at myself how fast I'm actually going, hitting all the lights just right, not running into any traffic disasters and no police. Better than sex.

Traversing the island to get to the New York Times fucking sucks because I get tripped up by both lights and traffic before I realize that I'm not entirely sure about the address and how to get there. I'm yelling at people for directions and finally get the manifest signed. I feel like I'm loosing time, that everything is catching up. I finally make it back on the high way and follow it all the way up. At 86 street I get pulled over by an undercover cop who makes me take the next off ramp. I plead ignorance and he's nice. It was my exit, anyway.

Then I am coming up and I see three guys pulling into the park ahead of me and they are going kind of slow. This is heart breaking because it means that they aren't going to place well so they've slowed down. So much for my hard work. But I can still beat them!! So I huff it up the hill and try to pass them. I have my bike on my shoulder and am running down the steps when all this shouting starts. Screaming.

There's already a bunch of racers chilling out and we have to get in line for our final place. Carlos looks at me and shouts "FIRST GIRL!" And everyone goes crazy. I get my final place and there's a big camera in my face. Somebody places a grown on my head. There really should be a rule of decorum that prevents people from being recorded or required to think or talk in those situations. I had just gotten off the bike and my head was reeling from everything. Everything that came out of my mouth was the gibberish product of endorphins, booze and surprise. Thankfully whoever was filming hasn't seen fit to do anything with it, so it appears that I might be safe for now. Filipe has taken first for the men's category and he's tanked. He hands me a Budweiser and we smile for the cameras. On the spot we get handed $250 in cold hard cash. Rent's gonna get paid! Screwing up on work paid off after all! See? It's all about the love. And who do you love? Your job or your bike?

The word is that he'd managed to catch a skitch for a full 56 blocks. wicked. Sort of, I mean that means that the driver was down with it, which requires not only less effort than actually pedaling but less skill in staying up. Epic though.

Adam has come in well before me and I challenge him to race back to Brooklyn. He accepts and I get caught up with all the clingy dweebs who want to chat & chill. After turning down the after party at LIT I look for Adam whose taken off without me. Jerk.

Instead I fly home solo and meet Ranger around times square as I'm riding with my crown, like a gigantic nerd. "Oh, you're the princess." We ride together for a little while and it's nice. All these things go down the same way. If I do well everybody wants to cling to me, demand my full attention but when it's over I'm always alone. High heights and all... so company is good. I hit Trackstar, hoping to see the trackstar guys or adams or those cats. They're closed but I see Brad & co. on the Willy B. the plan is to hit Rockstar bar again and we're all down until we get there and they're closed. So we all scatter. I get home and Sideshow wakes up enough to ask how it went. I reiterate the important parts (winning, the money, the crown...).

It's not over because we'll get the rest of the winner booty at the cmwc awards ceremony at the velodrome on July 4. Hotness!!

Cycle Messenger World Championships {CMWC} NYC 2005

2005-07-06T08:24:00.000+01:00

Ninja
Originally uploaded by News Clues.

R1 didn't so much end as it just dissolved into the Cycle Messenger World Championships. (Alternatively referred to as CMWC and "worlds") Other than the diss-appointment of an awards ceremony that never really happened or was never completed without drama and rioting (more anon or just fast forward to the WARSAW), that might have been okay. After all it was billed as "The Race to the World's."

So all the R1 people and organizers, coming off the adventurous high felt kinda out of things as messengers from all over the world started converging in the streets of NYC. On the day of the time trial final stage I could see them already: brightly colored cyclists with enormous courier bags, bitchin' rides and no clue as to how to navigate the traffic or find a snack. The irony appealed to me: that the people who know their streets better than anyone else, still wearing the uniform of logistical and bike superiority should be as lost as those timid little families from the midwest.

I wasn't registered for events because I wasn't a messenger and didn't want to be a posuer or beat up. R1 was over and I felt like my new pals would quickly forget my nerdy self. Maria from LA and some of the other people had encouraged me to come to the more social events; the party and goldsprints at Capone's, which was conveniently 4 blocks from my front door.

I showed up a bit late and ran into Maria who was out smoking with Alfred. They were having a good time outside the bar that was overflowing their huge capacity and sitting out on the street. Every inch of sidewalk, gate, fence, pole was covered in bicycles, often five deep in places. It was as if it had snowed bikes of every possible color and variety. It would soon be the de facto way of finding where the cmwc events were by the spray of bikes. I had a smoke and went in with Alfred who insisted I do goldsprints, simultaneously yelling at the organizers and throwing me up on a bike. It was what a punk club is supposed to be and the whole experience was highly disorienting but increadibly fun. I did well, but lost and wandered back outside where I found Adam. He had just returned from one of the Prospect Park Crit races and had won. He was in a great mood and suddenly it occurred to me: we were all having a great time, and we are all united by our fanatical devotion to our bikes and city riding. He invited me to the next races and with that I made up my mind to keep at it, not to left messenger racing fall to the wayside like other sports that eventually become borring or mirred in socail stagnation. I agreed to take on Sideshow---->
a messenger from Minneapolis. Adam, being a smarmy little bastard made a bet that Sideshow would intuitively guess my midwestern background and he bet me some vegan cake. Being a superior person, I wasn't miffed since he's from Missouri, which is worse.

The next day was the big welcome party at the WARSAW, also conveniently located right next to my pad. I find out that my goldsprints made the finals time requirements but I wasn't registered so it was a NO-GO. Turns out Paul (one of the awesome Jersey dudes) also had qualifying times that got dissed. D'oh. Time for more cheap beer. How cheep? How 'bout free and poured by hot blonde Polish chicks? Yeah, that's a NYC messenger welcome for ya. We even had "valet" parking provided by the NYPD. Claiming that any bikes locked to any private OR public property would be clipped and confiscated they corralled the thousands of bikes into the tennis courts north of McCarren park, set up some bright lights and overweight piggies to make sure everyone knew that NYC really cares, unless you own a bike.

Other than some bullshit at the door involving some RIDICULOUS bouncers it was a great party; cheap beer, lots of fun people to talk to and get into international skirmishes, checking out styles, watching the goldsprints finals and tattoo competition. Sideshow was getting tired and wanted to be in top form for the Main Race qualifiers the next day: I biked back to my apartment to let him in and went back.

Here's the style sheet: I'm wearing black capris and a black shirt (several germans had already spilled the free beer on it already) and riding my black cyclocross covered in black bondage tape. Riding along Bedford Avenue I get sandwiched by a black Northside Lincoln Towncar into a black Honda Civic. I scream as the pedal on my left starts to snap, with my foot and my torso geting thrown to the right onto the Honda. Screaming bloody murder he sort of rights back into the lane and I zoom past to recheck my baby back into the bike nursery. Back in the Warsaw things are getting sloppy. We were all waiting for the cmwc program to finish so that the R1 awards could happen. Eventually when they did, it was all a mess. We were all ushered on stage only to have the same security gorillas and a very drunk Hodari scream about getting everyone off the stage. Some awards were passed out and the announcement was dropped: Alfred's missed CP's on the time trial had cost him the title. First ovreall went to Pete, from Strangers Racing in Boston. (AKA "Best Moustache") At about the same time that people were getting thrown down from the stage [we were all too nice and relatively sober to punch back] it all kind of devolved into fighting and beer and water everywhere. Everyone scattered.

I decided to sleep and avoid the madness on Saturday.

The finals were held on Sunday in Jersey City. It was fun to see everyone and learn about who didn't make the qualifiers for the usual accidental disasters: corrupt/stoned organizers, bike malfunction, smash ups involving plebes, etc. It all felt kind of anti-climatic. After it all ended there was a group photo. I'm there, but you can't see me. If you want to try, though you can check it out *here*

Afterwards there was a huge group ride from Jersey City to the George Washington bridge and over to the Riverside park where the film night was to be held and more importantly: the Alleycat. The alleycat that everyone knew about was "King Of the Fucking Streets." But there wasn't any concrete information and during the day rumors circulated that there was going to be another alleycat that night put on by NYBMA. When we finally got there, it was rumored that there would be THREE alleycats, all we had to do was stick around.

Time Trial: New York City.

2005-07-05T18:04:00.001+01:00

so fucking cute
Originally uploaded by News Clues.

On the broshure for R1 it noted that each alleycat and the final NYC time trial would be created and run by local messengers. The idea might have been the sussinct answer to several problems: finding volunteers to run them, mapping courses in strange cities, keeping everyone on the same or rotating level of familiarity (advantage/disadvantage) while earning a certain level of credit for racing with some of the most extreme cyclists in their home territory.

The word getting out was that the New York Bike Messengers would be doing the Time Trial and that 1st avenue was the likely course. The New York kids were happy about it: 1st avenue is big, it's faster than a lot of the other avenues because there's less crosstown traffic being on the far east side of the island and there's some fun points that you get to know after a while: the tunnel around 37 street, the hills immediately thereafter until the Queensboro bridge at 60th street and then the potholes all the way up. Plus it's a trucking route and the traffic is usually both intense and fast. Construction around Belleview hospital also means there's plenty of bumps, lanes narrowing and people walking aimlessly into rushing traffic. It's a bit of a circus, even on a sunny afternoon.

Not having the experience I do now, I didn't know those things with the exception of how to weave in and out of traffic without getting scared. But considering the unique skills that NYC riding requires, I figured I'd at least kick the crap out of the out of town kids, barring Boston and possibly Philly.

But after the the extended disaster of getting in the night before, I'm exhausted. In the truck the night before it's apparent as Craig is going over the time trial route, that he'll be doing this one on his own. We debate the merits of crossing at 110th versus 125. I opt for 110th street having suffered 125th street traffic before. Getting onto the Westside highway/bikelane remains the problem. It's a time trial afterall. It's supposed to be the city version of a track; fast and with as few obstacles as possible.

The time trial is scheduled for 6pm the next night and a few go to work that day, the rest sleep. Riding over the Williamsburg bridge to get to the starting point at Delancy and Allen, it's raining and the streets are slick, oil spots are forming under parking spots and the whole city seems to be out of it. We're doing a timed/delayed start with each rider leaving in one minute increments starting with the slowest. Thankfully I don't leave first, but near enough. Craig announces that all the places are pretty much set with firm times that would be almost impossible to upset, with the exception of 1st & 2nd place,"but I don't expect to see any moves made on a team member."The reasoning behind such an admission was the weather: wet is dangerous and even more so at dusk. We were all urged to take it easy and ride within our limits.

It was my first real time going all the way up 1st avenue and I did get passed. I hit the first checkpoint, yelled out my number to a guy standing on the very questionable corner of 1st avenue and 125th street and tried to make it across the island as quickly as possible. I got to the West Side highway and almost got onto the highway itself before making it over the 10" of concrete that seperates it from the bikepath -the recommened route. Even on the path the twisting and weaving of the asphalt path and the enormous waves of water from the cars was enough to slow me down until I get past by one of the fellows from team Philty, on this homer simpson track bike. He's totally focused and leaning forward when I notice that he's got a huge, bloody wound on his forearm. It's grotesque.

And he's passing me.

I realize how stupid the bike path is and how much it's slowing me down so at the nearest turn I try to get off into the road. I take a wrong turn, not being more familiar with the upper west side, and wind up going smak into some ritzy rotunda cafe overlooking the Hudson. Except that I'm going too fast and it's too wet, so I take this wooden ramp and carefully apply the brakes, dismount after navigating a 90' turn with a marble wall and dismount. I run through what looks like a wedding reception, and find another ramp, leading out. Walking carefully on the miniture version of what I had just ridden down, I almost slip and fall. The sudden realization that I should have seriously injusred myself makes it a little more intense. But it's still a race: I make it to the road and jump on the west side highway. And this is my favorite part: it's clearing up, the cars are moving in a straight line, I'm going super fast and I'm starting to see people. Pete flys by and we say hello, then Alfred, and after the checkpoint at Canal Street I turn and head to the starting/finish point when I see Adam. We're riding together and get cut off by traffic. He takes the faster, more dangerous line through the cars and the next street and I cut left to meet up at the next light. When I see him again, he's behind me looking a bit wrecked and yelling: he's just gotten hit by a cab and he's pissed, yelling at the cross traffic: GO, Go, GO! When the light changes he rockets past but I'm there a few seconds later anyway. Aeron checks me in and tells me to move before the cops bust us for congregating.

We all head to Time's Up on Houston and just sort of mill around, waiting to hear something while all the international messengers check in for the Cycle Messenger World Championships happening that weekend. Once there, everyone's dispersed, or drunk and it's clear that there were two accidents ont he time trial: the first was team Philty and a terrifically gross wound from smashing up the back window of a cab while colliding. Thom takes him to the Emergency room at Belleview and then we hear that Marie had got hit by a cab and fallen on 1st avenue and that her team has stayed with her.

With the ongoing drizzle and the obnoxious Dutch & Germans starting to get all euro-frat over the Budweizers, it felt like the collective bummer that might be compared to watching your house burn down with your neighbor. I chatted with Nik and had a beer while feeling like my inclusion into all things bike related had now come to an end.

Route 1 was over and no one knew what would happen with us as a group for awards or meeting. I wasn't a messenger and not participating in CMWC. I wasn't on a real team, I wasn't a good rider the way the others are and I'm a nerd. I write business documents for a living. They have extensive tattoos and their bikes are more cool. I felt lonely.

I was invited to join a group ride back over the bridge and did so. Beside cheering me up a bit it was also safer and after all the crashes and smash ups I wanted to feel like a baby elephant in a big herd. I split off at Metropolitan and went to Eric's house to tell him all about my adventures and eat all his food.

The Long~Stupid Road Home

2005-07-03T17:02:00.001+01:00

The next morning I get tons of shit from everyone around the breakfast table. Niki makes fun of me for sleeping with Alfred and everyone giggles and heckles. I preen my prudish feathers and retort that I know how to handle myself. Brad utters a kind and thoughtful comment that causes me to become an instant fan.

It's been raining through the night and the morning is a mixture of rain and drizzle. Our last road stage is 67 miles from New Haven to some wierd point in the Bronx. When we start off the road is heavily under construction and almost immediately I lose my manifest, which just happens to be the most detailed and complicated of the entire race and me with my talent for getting lost. I figure I'm totally fucked and to just stay on R1, paying special attention to the signs on the side of the road. At this point I'm thinking: it's only 67 miles. All I need to do is get back to new york. I have a bike with kevlar tires and a credit card, who cares how it happens? The first time that I get lost, I'm going through this red muddy pit of a town when I spot Kevin, who has a manifest and seems to be traveling at about the same speed. He's also still got a copy of the manifest, so we figure we should stick together. He makes the misery loves company joke and I start missing being solo, especially when I want to go faster but don't want to be a total jerk.

After the first checkpoint, I just can't take it anymore and zoom off just planning to stick to the highways signs. I'm really getting the revolutions up and I feel like I should be catching up to the second group as I fly through downtown...Stamford? Someplace with an enormous Macys. Anywho. Instead of following R1 to the left I go straight. Right up one of the most enormous hills of the whole R1. I'm totally proud of how I get to the top and enjoy the meat patty shop that's called Top o' the Mountain. Yeah! Then there's some really fun fast turns and rolling hills when it becomes apparent that there have not been any R1 signs in a while. I'll have to ask directions and this is never good, because people never know where shit is or they can't explain how to get there. The rule is this: look for bad mom hair or alpha dudes, because moms drive everywhere and are maternal and dudes because it's their job to know everything. Moms are usually the most reliable. I go all the way back to the big hill and get told to go all the way back and circle around to R1. On my way there, it's all the nicest wooded or landscaped housing. Including monster hills and a long straight shoot alongside some kind of lake with a tunnel of overhanging tree boughs. Gorgeous.

I get back to the stupid strip mall rolling hills that categorize most of R1. As we get closer to NYC the strip malls get newer, more expensive until we're rolling past Jaguar dealers. At the second checkpoint, that I almost miss Kevin is there, hanging out with the Jersey guys in the red pick up. I've finally reached the Prentiss stage of not liking it. The sun had come out finally until it had reached a respectable fireball and I was burning an even deeper farmer's tan while loosing all this time from having gotten so totally lost. I was tired of strip malls and asshole drivers. I wanted to go home. Or at least see my beloved skyline. So I barked at Kevin and we took off. Slower than I wanted but it wasn't worth getting lost again. On the way we got stopped and yelled at by a cop that looked like a homosexual Ken doll. Later I find out that right behind the lead pack a cop had pulled over a group that consisted of Steven, Adam and a few others. The all got big tickets and were held there for 34 minutes. apparently after 26 minutes Tad blows by and they're all pissed. Or at least Adam, who's told the story at least 30 times by now.

Then not too far away Alfred gets T-boned by a truck almost at the end of the stage.

After I finished I see Niki who's preparing to go home. He tells me that Adam said to say congradulations and that he's sorry for leaving but that he had to go to the airport to pick up his own German houseguests for the Cycle Messenger World Championships that weekend. There's a few people all waiting for everyone to finish so they can get a ride with the truck back into a more reasonable part of the city. Crazy Horse, the official strip club located at the stage finish line was totally unvisited by anyone. Waiting for the German to finally finish, Craig shows me the video of the first finishers. It's on a bridge with a huge incline and equally steep descent shaped like a bell, both a block in length. The finish is a sprint that Alfred just pulls out from with Pete right behind and like a rocket you can see Brean on the fixed gear, bouncing up and down to chase them down to an incredible finish. They bomb down the hill like rockets and I think it's incredible how they could stop within 1 block before smacking into six lane cross traffic. Damn.

I want to bike to the train and get home but a local mechanic starts starting at me and repeating that it's not safe. It's only 4pm. Craig insists that I wait for the ride with the vehicles. Waiting for the German I finally get to chat with Craig about the logistics of the race. The total lack of sponsors, not having any money until the night of the Boston alleycat when we registered, how we spent all the money on food and gatorate that ran out after a day and a half, traveling and planning during the race, trying to keep it together without enough volunteers, not making it to the first checkpoint before the lead pack and trying to drive a 13' truck through a 11' clearance. As the sole new yorker, or person with any knowledge of how to get around, I got passenger when we were finally able to drive back. It seemed like a simple drive: everyone would be waiting for their stuff at Brean's house that had a large backyard for people to flop out at.

Except. Except that we couldn't take the truck on the FDR so we swung around to second avenue because we were also avoiding the triboro bridge toll. We get to the Queensboro with a new directive: Diesel as soon as fucking possible because the needle is, um at empty. Thinking back to the time that Wendi drove me across the bridge I suggest the outer bridge, because the view is nicer. After sitting in traffic and circling the block, we start going up the bridge and see that there isn't enough clearance. We'll never make it. This is in the ramp leading onto the bridge. Craig is also fielding a 100 calls from everyone tring to make plans, ask questions, make special request, say hello, anything that might pop into a head. He answers everyone calmly, while dealing with all this crap. Luckily the Mafia is right behind us and we get them to slowly back out so we can back out in the wrong direction in one way traffic just after rush ourso we can circle the block again to get onto the main roadway. Finally (and miraculously) we're in Queens and the Mafia gets lost and we've got to explain how to get to Jackson Blvd. Everone in the back of the van looks more than half dead. I feel profoundly guilty but at least I've adequately proven that I'm a cyclist and not a driver. When he drops me and Marie off at my place he's trying to figure out where to go: there's a party at Alfred's as well and how to get to Brean's as originally planned.

Marie and I shower, clean up and make pretty before heading over. When we get there, there's not many people there. But it's nice. Mostly the Trackstar guys and soy burgers. But it feels really good to go home to my bed, clean and blissed out. [The beer helped]

And on the Third Day They Rested. Sort of.

2005-07-03T17:01:00.000+01:00

I woke up Monday after everyone else except the Polish Hammer, who had gotten wasted and couldn't be woken by anything. We all kind of flopped around making plans to go eat in small groups and come back to go see a movie. I went to a falafel jointand engorged. Before actually getting there, I was checking to see what had happend to the cash that I had put in between my sleeping shorts and skirt when I realized I couldn't find either the skirt or the cash. I wanted to shout but it was too embarrassing to ask what the hell had happened. On the street, Niki returned some dollars saying he found them on the floor. That left about $7 and the skirt to be acccounted for. Before going out again I find the skirt hung up in the bathroom and recall hanging it up. So much for the wild night it implied...

We decide to bike 20 miles (it couldn't have been, maybe round trip) to the local theaters. On our way Brean or one of the other top masochists decide that we should all do a little training and takes everyone up this monster red peak just outside of town. Arone, Brad and Zack stay behind to watch Dune, while we all head out. I get dropped, but only just a little. At the theater we all decide on Batman: Begins. We all settle in.

It was a total pile of dog crap, as movies go, but unilaterally everyone else seems to have really enjoyed it. I get heckled for not liking it, which was kind of funny and I felt like a sour tart for making fun of the comics flick in its' 50th remake. Steven starts calling my bike the Batman Bike and insisting that the Trackstar shop gets a batman bike that they can take out to go fight crime and injustice around the neighborhood.

We take our time getting back and ready for the alleycat. I try to study two different maps of New Haven, a tiny college town, hoping to not get lost for once. In the parking lot behind the Devil's Gear, it's announced that it will be a straight messenger pick-up & drop-off race with one rush and no particular order to the CP's (pick up & drop off locations). I actually get excited because it's the closest to actually being a messenger and I get to try it out. The Pousengers ready themselves. I borrow a bag from Adam because all of mine are back-pack style and over the shoulder tote bags. We get five minutes to study the checkpoints and map to create a plan. We lie the bikes down and then head off. I have come up with a plan but as I'm taking off, once again being dusted by the general herd, I realize that my body is a lot more tired than I thought. After the first Pick up in the Canarsie of New Haven, I figure I can make the Ikea CP double-time because of an off road trail that I saw on one of the maps that isn't on the manifest. And I'm on a cyclocross, so I'm psyched to use it instead of taking backseat to the fixed gear fanatics.

Up until that point I had been riding with Niki, Tad and two other guys. When they took the normal road to get to Ikea, I broke off and went to the trail entrance. It's there! Except that there's a chain link fense that's closed, presumably because it's after hours. Screw it, I just throw the bike over and hop it, psyched at what a fun adventure the race had suddenly become. I plow through some sandy stuff and construction equipment before it becomes clear that it's closed off for a reason and that I won't be able to take it anywhere. I have to double back. And doing so, knowing that I had lost all that time and momentum is super depressing. The sun begins to set. When I throw the bike back over it's with less heft. And when I throw myself over, it's with less clearance. I get caught by the fense spokes and rip my bike shorts on my left thigh and right cheek. And the alleycat has only begun. I get to haul my exposed bum all over New Haven for the next hour or two. Joy.

As a race, it's extremely uneventful except that the final checkpoint is a joke and I wind up having another one out where the first one is on the totally opposite side of town. The town is fairly tiny, smaller than Ames, Iowa... a totally random and arbitrary reference point. Ah hem. Except that, like a real city, the middle and outskirts are filled with poor under educated black people who seems to have a very mysterious reason for living in Yale-ville. At a red light an obese kid wearing ghetto-jailbird clothes who looked to be about 10 years old tries out a pick up line on me. I realize that escaping New York doesn't always mean what you imagine it means. I traverse the place enough that I know it very well know. A fringe benefit of the trip, this odd and intimate knowledge of a place I'd never been before and will likely never return to or spend any significant time at. I come in towards the rear but manage to beat a significant number, including Niki who had been doing really well on the other stages. It's decided that we'll stay at a vcant loft owned by some woman who is somehow connected to our other hosts through a vauge bike activism network.

A bunch of others follow us over later after the roof BBQ, which The Pousengers totally miss trying to shower and settle in. I'm showering first because my team mates are thoughtful and considerate. Until Adam comes bursting in screaming, "fuck!" His sunburn had turned purple and started an enormous blister that he has begining to burst with a nail. I wrap up and take care of it while our host wonders what the hell is going on. It's all kind of exciting. On our way back it's increadibly foggy. We're sailing through clouds on our way back and it occurs to me that I'm happier than I've ever been. That I could ride all day everyday forever. We get back and the food is pretty much gone. It's a major bummer but they're all watching a German messenger documentary, featuring (who else?) The German! He's just as much a wierdo there as he has been on R1! Then the New York Bike Messengers Associations' Red Light Go. And I recognize everyone! It's like a documentary on all the people and race stuff I'd been slowly getting into fo the last month. It's like watching a family video, except actually giving a shit.

Eventually we get back to the studio, where there's a bed-cushion thing big enough for two. Initially it's me & Adam, the two fussy Pousengers, while Prentiss & Niki were being less demanding on the floor by the windows. But when word got out that there was plenty of floor space and Air Conditioning, suddenly 20 more people showed up to crash. Alfred shows up and takes the futon, while Adam moves to the floor. Not surprisingly we stay up half the night talking about nothing.