I arrived in DC three weeks before the CMWC. I had been a DC messenger for six years and had moved to Boston in November '97. I had planned to be deeply involved but couldn't due to the mileage. I arrived in DC 3 weeks before the race and reported to Patagonia ready to go to work. I had hoped to be able to work for my old company and quickly realized that I would rather work full-time on the race.

In the weeks before the race my schedule was to go into Patagonia at 10:30 or so, work on various projects until seven, and then drink until two. I had to stop drinking before the race though, as I was afraid of flaming out. I managed to drink more in that time then I had in the previous year.

I worked mostly on permits. I spent so much time at the DC Permit office that I was offered a job as a permit expediter. If Kafka had really wanted to punish Gregor Samsa, he would have had him wake up at 614 H Street. I also worked on volunteers, sponsors, housing, and media. By no means was I even close to being the head man on any of those projects-I was doing my best to help the people who were out in front.

In the week before the race, people started to roll in and the enormity of the event really began to sink in. Thankfully most of the people who showed up early came ready to work. We couldn't have done it without them. A very incomplete list of people who were invaluable would be Ellis Wangelin, Nadir Olivet, Tracy Williams, Jo Yudess, Derek Chadbourne, Alex Vaughn, Joel Metz, Lisa Ramsey, Roman Peritz, Carsten Hartung and the rest of Sprint Bremen, and everyone who was willing to answer the call when we needed people.

The Friday before the race was very busy-we still had many registrations to do (if you have any feeling for the Zurich guys you WILL pre-register), the group ride, and the group meal. I helped with registration and getting the course squared away on Friday during the day. On Friday night I helped at the group meal. I worked pouring beer for a while, which is like passing out steaks at a piranha festival.

I was riding home at 12:30 on Friday night when my group happened upon the T-Serv Tokyo group. Amy Sato had fallen and broken her collarbone. I decided to go to George Washington Hospital with her to help her with English. I was at the hospital until 5am with her. The doctors were very nice and the in take staff couldn't have been worse. They wouldn't accept her insurance because it was from Japan not surprisingly. CMWC had an insurance policy which I couldn't get at 3am. The women at the desk said that we couldn't leave without leaving Amy's passport which they would return when they got the CMWC policy. She was very reluctant to do this but decided to trust me. The next morning I sent John from SF (formerly DC) and he managed to get her passport back without leaving the CMWC policy-which left GW with nothing. If you see John around SF give him a kiss for us.

Saturday was the most chaotic day. We had massive police problems, in that we weren't allowed to set up and this cost us valuable time which we paid for the rest of the day. What can I say about the rest of the day-I spent all day shuttling packages between checkpoints and co-ordinating volunteers-at one point I noticed that I had missed my starting time by 45 minutes so I said the hell with it and continued working. On Saturday night I watched the skids and left, after one of the Bulger Brothers from NYC crashed into me, to get some much needed sleep.

Sunday (as I did on Saturday) I showed up at 7am to setup the course. We managed to stay a bit closer to the schedule that day and things were a little more under control. Either that or I had had more than one hour of sleep, and things seemed better as a result. I was scheduled to race with my team the Hellbenders (hell, yeah) in the team relay race on Sunday. None of my teammates showed up so I drafted Jens from Osnabruck, Stefan from Montreal, and a Turkish girl that raced in dress shoes. She was the best out of all of us, managing to finish three places higher then when she started. The rest of Sunday is a blur. I didn't race that day either and spent the whole day shuttling packages and press-ganging volunteers. I also resolved various problems as they arose.

On Monday, I went to the group photo-if you haven't received yours by the time this is published then e-mail us as we may not have your correct address. Monday had less competitors, so there were more volunteers. As such it was an easier day to deal with. The highlight of the day for me was strapping on a helmet camera and following Michi Rahman from Bremen around the course. This was done for National Geographic's documentary and hopefully they will use the footage. I missed the trials competition as I was on the course picking up trash. I hear it was fun though. The awards ceremony had a glitch or two but that has already been covered ad nauseum on the messenger page.

After the awards ceremony the real work began. Andy, James, Sheba, and I broke down the race course materials for pickup by the party rental company. We moved literally tons of material, including all the barricades, generators, and concrete blocks that the barricades were set in. We also finished off the trash. We worked until 9am Tuesday on this and it more or less defies description. We all were working on either no or very little sleep and by the end it was apparent that next year, traffic cones are the way to go. It was the only job that has ever physically put me away. Thankfully I managed to hang in until the end.

-John Kenda

Okay, okay, you can't buy crack in the park across the street from the White House. And I didn't get to smoke any hubba rock with Marion Berry. In fact, I only saw one crack deal the entire week. On top of that, I never figured out whether or not the rats of DC cross at the crosswalk. But I did find out DC cops are actually pretty cordial, and they don't harass messengers. CMWC was full of surprises.

Like the fact that CMWC was scheduled at the same time as an international Christian convention. Like the fact that the only people that would party less than me would be a Mennonite couple. Seriously, I think Tuborg whooped it up more than me. I nominate myself for "Sickest Messenger" for CMWC 98.

This was the sixth international gathering of couriers from throughout the world: including messengers from Guatemala, Hungary, and Kyushu. I found out there are bike messengers in Little Rock, Arkansas and Asheville, North Carolina. Clearly, not unlike hepatitis C, bike messenging is spreading across the globe.

Team Glue reconvened to lose in style. This year we were: Rebecca Davenport, Jeni Ladd, Laurie Landler, Alex Leithead, Stephanie Royston, me, and our last minute ringer: Bridget May. Timbuk 2 set us up with personalized bags... We had new shirts and yet another inspirational motto: "Huff, don't puff."

The air was tinged with excitement as Laurie and I made our hungover, sleep-deprived way to our nation's capital. My roomie was busting me up, singing about Olga the Vodka girl. Luckily, there was a vodka girl on our flight (some people call them stewardesses) and we blew much important taxi money on toasting to our inevitable failure! Somehow found our way to our hostesses house, that of Heidi Woolover. She turned out to be a UC Santa Cruz student!-that's the nail in the coffin. UCSC should just get to the point and offer a degree in bike messenging. Their house was huge... and they rapidly filled it with messengers from Richmond, Virginia.

Everyone gets to complain a little bit, right? Well, there weren't enough Canadians!! How can you have a Canadian invasion without Canadians? I was completely looking forward to meeting Alex Leithead, our fellow Team Gluer from Ottawa. She had her ticket and was ready to go, but got stranded in the Air Canada strike. We all signed a CMWC 96 shirt for her and mailed it up with her Team Glue bag and shirt.

The group ride started from the gallery and 600 messengers toured DC, hooting and hollering. The ride ended at the world welcoming party at a yacht club in a bad neighborhood. I don't get it either. But Ben Thompson says he found a dead body floating in the river nearby once. As we were leaving, organizers told us not to leave in groups less than six. Ohhhhhh, I got it: SF's home advantage was hills; DC's home advantage was giving us free beer in a bad neighborhood and then letting us loose to be ganked. Well, the two immediate blocks were such that I would not care to walk them alone at night, on crutches, wearing a diamond tiara, but frankly I wish my neighborhood as good as this bad neighborhood.

The next day I figured out the real DC plot to undermine us outlanders: the DC plague. Several other people caught the bug too: I know Joel and Lisa Ramsey did. I could barely wake up and worse could barely speak. So the rest of the week when I could talk, it was like a dying frog. I dealt with it the tragedy the only way I knew how: beer.

Lur King and I shared D.T.s at the beginning of the race, while the beer truck people were waiting around for their plastic wrist bands. Getting beer took more stragetizing and skill than the freaking race! First, you went to stand in line #1 to show your ID to get your wrist band, then you stood in line #2, and showed the wrist band to buy a drink ticket. Finally, then you could go back to the beer truck (not in the same place) to wait in line #3 to exchange the ticket for beer. They should have given us points for successfully getting drunk with this system.

Set up a SFBMA information booth, but seeing how I couldn't talk, it was not too successful. Paul, Howard, J-Bone, Broiler, and I all met with the ILWU's DC representative Lindsey McLaughlin. What's a party without a labor union meeting? <Don't answer that.>

After the first day of races the Tuborg flag hung from a tree in a park, while the Tuborgians chatted not far away. Stephanie came up with the idea of stealing it. Our pilfering strategies evolved until we figured we could get Lur King to strip, smear chocolate donuts on him, and then no one would want to touch him as he stole the flag. But the next day at the finals, Korte crossed the finish line and I'm glad we didn't fuck with their glory. Anyone who wants to win that bad deserves to.

For the team relay (CWMC officials kindly decided that we didn't need a boy), Rebecca came up with the plan of switching our cranks so they both went in the same direction. She raked in the style points coming in with her four packages, biking kangaroo-like, with a flat tire! Maria was on the team that made second overall-congrats!

We saw Damon wandering around in the crowd, drinking and asked him what he was up to: racing, of course! Wendy's quote when she was told she didn't make another round in the finals: "Thank God I didn't try harder!" No surprise to us, Shawn Thornton proved himself to be the fastest biker in SF. Three cheers for Tre!!!

But forget the races, the really heated battle was for Drunkest Messenger. Damon and Melissa both put in good fights, but Lur King and Stan "the Man" Stathes were main contenders. Stan did swim in the fountain of the Kennedy Center and hurl a brick through some local business, but Lur King was drunk by 9am every day and danced around nude... I have to be lame and say it's a tie, but definitely those two share the title, making the Boston Blackouts look like diabetic Quakers.

After the main races, the more colorful contests took place, such as the Track Stand contest: amazingly enough, longtime champion Scrooge was beaten. Bridget blew our minds by making the Sprint Semi-Finals. Rebecca Reilly, Team Call Girls, was the top woman in track-bike skid contest. Remember red-haired Tim from Silver Bullet? He moved to DC and placed well.

The bunny hop contest ruled. While we were checking out the stunts, this homeless guy came up to us, holding out his hand. He kept coming back even tho' we tried to clue him in that we were BROKE. Eric Wilson commented that the guy smelled strange-like permanent marker... Aha! I whipped out my graffiti pen, gave it to him and he was ecstatic, bowing in thanks. There's someone who adhered to the Team Glue motto: "Huff, don't puff!"

The awards ceremony was in an official bad part of town, reminding me of good ol' West Oakland. Checked out the freestyle bikers who danced upon and battered an old VW. I amused myself by tagging Tuborg folks with King stickers all night. I got Pia (aka the Scandinavian Goddess!) a least four times. Some girl gave Lur King the best line I've ever heard: "Do something insane and I'll buy you drinks all night." He immediately stripped and jumped up on the bar, cavorting around and screaming, "SF RULES!" He almost got kicked out for his efforts, especially since he couldn't get redressed 'cos Away King hid his pants. A few days before, John Kenda had pinched a certain girl's posterior, then jumped away looking innocent, so Lur King got slapped for it. Life's hard when you're competing for drunkest messenger.

Buffalo Bill awarded the Markus Cook Memorial Award to Joe Hendry, for his excellent website and work with the media. Lisa won Best Dressed, for racing in her grass skirt and coconut bra. She looked awesome, but I think Maria should have won with her sundress made by Jeni out of a vinyl Alleycat Scramble banner. And Stephanie wore a different patriotic (to Cat and Country) outfit every day. With a time of 2:05:03, Laura Cromartie won DFL! I don't know who she is or where she's from, but if you know her, tell her: Team Glue needs her! Shawn Bega decided no prize for DFL team­ denied in DC ­ rough ride! Makes ya kinda wanna smoke hubba rock.

When the party started to fade, a posse of us SFers were treated to our favorite meteorological activity: freezing cold rain. If only it rained during the races, SF could have raked in the prizes after training in El Niño.
With CMWC over, it was time to partake of DC culture. Damon had gone to the Smithsonian Institute three times to see Archie Bunker's chair. After that, his King Brothers didn't particularly care to see it again. The Chair was in the Age of Information section of the American History museum, and I have to admit it was very impressive, complete with hair oil stains and a can of beer.

I saw the dumbest museum display I've ever seen in my life: Hammers and Mallets of the 70s and 80s. To compensate, the same building had Dolly Madison's inaugural gown and portraits. Let me tell you, homegirl is a babe. The Department of Delicious Snacks is no doubt housed in the Dolly Madison Building.

The Open Forum discussion was scheduled to take six hours-ewwwww! I checked out the movies again instead. The Hungarian film was a hoot and "Rookie" by Paul Kazemi and Elizabeth Lee, starring Ben Thompson, had the audience cracking up both nights. Some of the films royally sucked; wish I slipped in Jr.'s porn film. Went to the Lincoln Monument and since everyone else protested there, Stephanie and I decided to raise hell as well. Library of Congress, Women's Art Museum... neato frito, but I was ready to head on back home to the cat that made it all possible: Gluie!

Thanks to everyone who made the event possible-you guys kick butt! Thanks Andy, Heidi, Cory, Jonathan, John, Rebecca, and the rest o' DC. Good luck to Zurich, but to quote Lur King: SF rules!!!

-America

My Account of CMWC

The Smithsonian has Archie Bunker's chair. To see such a priceless artifact was truly inspirational, so much in fact I paid homage to it three times. Oh yeah, the D.C. people truly did a great job on CMWC 98. The locals were very cool and hospitable and pulled off a great event. I'm still hungover.

-Invo King #77