To the Russian television!
My mom and dad are so proud.

And thanks Mo for the link!

Ripped this movie from the internet, ECMC 2009 Berlin. You see us playing bike polo and for the first time ever Mitch can get out of his tooclips on time!

A game of bike polo you have to take some other measures to keep you opponent from winning.

Phil, I’m sorry but you guys were to good for us!

Pica credis, ucp_berlin’s also more pictures from Berlin.

Well I just came back from Berlin and damn it’s hard to get started with your normal life after a week of partying. But I have to make some posts because the live bloggin thing didn’t work out like I hoped. Anyway I’ll keep it short and post some pictures. There not really great (all taken with the iPhone) only from people I already miss and love.

And at last I want to thank a couple of people because I didn’t got pictures of all of you guys. Or the quality was to poor to post. 
Anyway I wanna thank Uli for letting me stay at his place even when he had to go. I also stayed at Miguel’s place and he was the main organizer of the polo event so thanks bro! And then we got Mo, Maria, Gary, Jenz, Mark,  Phil, Dustin, Austin, Kym, Lucas, Zorro, Alasdair, Buffalo Bill, Hiske, Flip, Angus (beaver), Jumbo, Copter, Austin (Copenhagen), Andrew, Ricky, Taka, Porno Stevie, Luk, Bregan, Kai, RFG crew (specially Saskia) and last but not least the guys from FUCCIT! And all the other guys and girls who made my week one big party but from who I forgot there names.

THANKS!

I just made a 55 minute mix of most of the German Electro, Hiphop and Techno Stoffel (aka Mr. Goldie Locks) made us listen to in the car to, in and on the way back from Berlin. So this mix gets me back to a perfect long weekend in Berlin!

Click here for the download.
Click on the free option, wait for 2 minutes, enter the code and start downloading!

I didn’t take much pictures at the ECMC, but you can find the few I did make right here. Although it’s mostly pics of the trip to Berlin en tourist pics in Berlin…

Today is the start of the European Cycle Messenger Championships. Right, buddy, sounds like fun. My kind of enjoyment is also partly about bicycles. And also about getting together with people I like. But lately I found out that most of the courier thing is too much about hate and too little about love. Myself, I don’t give fucc what you do, did, will be doing. Just join your fake ass in und zieh dir deine Klamotten aus.

Bag is packed, bike is o.k. and I’m ready for the ECMC 2009! I just heard today I’ve got a place to crash looking out over the race course thanks my good friend Uli. So what can go wrong? Yes I didn’t forget the buttons. Anyway this will be my last “normal” post for a week. I’ve been practicing with my iPhone WordPress app a few times now so I’ll try to blog “live” from Berlin. These posts gonna be mainly pictures because there ain’t no spelling checker to check my fucced up english. And the pictures wouldn’t be the best quality but I will do my best to keep this blog alive next week.

See ya all in Berlin!

And here is a great movie to check your German language skills!

Because this just came in by e-mail;

good evening.

according to the ecmc-registration-statistics, 523 out of 723 people registered are messenger, ex-messengers and vet-class.
59 registered as polo-maniacs, 37 consider themselves as fakengers and 27 stated that “they have a crush on bike messengers”.

485 ride fixed-gear-bikes.

i had discussions with a lot of different people, messengers and non-messengers revolving around the question “how can we keep the ecmc “real” and not sell out?”

at first, the organizing comittee decided to let everyone register, but inly active and ex-messengers should be allowed to race.

that decision did not last very long, then it was decided that everyone who registers can race.

why?

#1: how do you define a “messenger”? how do you compare? is a messenger from nyc more real than a messenger from freiburg in the black forest? how many winters does it take to make you a messenger? are you a real messenger when you work in barcelona? what about people who have their handful of customers they ride for? are you allowed to race even when you just started 2 months ago? (obviously this was not allowed in berlin 1993, personally i am really happy that this rule didn’t last, as i raced in zurich 1999 just 2 months after i started my first messenger-job. the zurich cmwc definitely tied me to the community).

i fear that these will be discussions we will run into if we decide to let only “real” messengers compete.

#2: an event of this size is an opportunity to promote the idea of urban cycling. the message behind this idea is too big for such a (comparably) small community as the messenger community is. i believe that CMCs should be about integration of all kinds of bike enthusiast, and not about exclusion.

#3: i think it is about time to try out what happens when an ECMC gets big and attracts a quite large number of cyclists who are not messengers. let’s see what happens. if we don’t try, we’ll never know. maybe it is a model for the events to come, maybe not. this decision will not be made in Berlin, but by you.

#4: it’s an “european” cycle messenger championships. but there are couriers coming from japan, canada, the states, etc. etc. its something i learned from talking to the media, and listening to their reactions: it seems to be very very uncommon that the couriers don’t really care about nations.

i think we should apply this openness to non-couriers as well.

the most important thing is, that a CMC is organized with the messengers needs as #1 priority in mind.

and this happened in berlin. we cannot look into your heads, we did it all in a way we figures out you might enjoy.

see you soon!

akeem

And although the alleycat is canceled for fakengers/possengers I really like the message they send out with this mail!

The e-mail I got about the allecat;

this alleycat will be for former or working couriers only
this race is limited, so reply to this mail in case you want to race!
start will be around 8pm – meet at keirin all day for registration
we like anyone riding a bike, but we feel the courier should get the respect!

You all know we from FUCCIT are pro fakenger and the reason I post this is just to let all of you guys and girls what to expect. And maybe I will set out a fakenger alleycat who knows.

And now it’s bed time for me got to take the train of 9:10 this morning.