The North American Cycle Courier Championship was held in Chicago last weekend. Since I was recently given heaps more spare time I decided to go. Austin Horse hooked up a free van through Redbull. We drove out in one 14 hour marathon. I compare this to touring in Bill's cargo van and it is a whole world of difference. Seeing the country while you are driving gives you an experience with the environment that you travel through that the windowless cargo van deprived you of.
We stopped every 3 hours or so to let one or five of the seven people pee or to eat. That was nice. It added a couple of hours, but made the trip go faster. Flemming drove in the states for the irst time. He was stoked on experiencing the rural truck-stops that reminded me so much my hometown of Weed, CA. I got a huge kick out of pointing out the "America" in everything we came across. "Look Flemming! That's America! Riding motorcycles shirtless without a helmet. Yeah!" "Flemming! Now that's America, a pickled sausage!"
We rotated music pretty nicely too. We got a chance to listen to Biggie Smalls, Fela Kuti, Profuse 73, and even some Digable Planets.
When we got to Chicago we took a few to Eric's house on the southside. I hadn't seen him since he got whooping cough and almost died. I saw him right after and he looked sickly skinny. This was years ago. I guess he cam back for a few months last winter, but we didn't run into each other. He looked way better now, had a little vegan beer belly.
The Essex Inn was nice. They had some Herman Miller furniture in the lobby that
got Flemming all stoked. It was an old fancy hotel, a little rundown but still fancy. It was funny bringing all the bikes into the place.
Friday was registration. We spent the day meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones. Sarah and Ian from SF, favorites of mine were hanging out with Casey from Portland. We drank some beers at Cal's, a bar I visited when I had an canceled flight and a day to kill on my way to KyotoLOCO 2005. It was this dingy old dive in downtown, right below some elevated train tracks. It was a remnant from a ancient era, dirty, wino infested, beautiful.
We rolled over to registration and put away 4 pitchers. Fergus Tanaka showed up. He had a fire in his eyes. He was hungry for this race, I could tell. I had heard that he had cleaned up his act and trained for this really hard. I was well on my way to wasted, so I went with some people to the Blue Frog, a bar and grill right next door to a larger messenger company. They we doing karaoke. I sang something, drank something, smoked something, then puked then sang something else. It was time for some other party to start and I followed some randoms over there. There was a bunch of people. I was sobering up a little. Mike Dee was there slapping people for stupid shit and generally kicking up dust. Roxanne Steffek was there all pregnant and radiant. I has talking to her, holding a half drank warm tall-boy. I told Roxy, "Get away from me!" I shook the beer out all over me and a bunch of other people. I guess it pissed some people off.
The next morning I realized that all of the fluid that I had ingested the day prior had been booze. I was a little rough around the edges to say the least. We headed out to the race. I casually rode the course stopping to say hello Kevin from Cog Magazine. I found out that the qualifier was an hour and a half long, two manifest ordeal. No thanks. It wasn't clear if sprints were to be that day or the Sunday. I hung out drinking water and smoking weed, shooting the shit with a bunch of friends that I hadn't connected with in a while. Eventually they announced that sprints were to be tomorrow and that meant I could relax.
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