Life and death

I did not know if I should post this. It is a bit personal, but it is written and it better to be read, than fester in my head.

Aphorism 341 of The Merry Science by Nietzsche is regarded by scholars as the first and most challenging expression of his idea of eternal recurrence.

The Greatest Weight. What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a God and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you it would change you as you are and perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

This came to mind last Tuesday morning. December fourth, about nine o'clock. I had just seen the aftermath of a collision between a moped and an articulated lorry.

I do not want to describe the wreckage. I saw it too fleetingly to know exactly what I was seeing, but from what I saw it was obvious that somebody had been killed.

I was in a state of shock, my tempo dropped, lead filled my legs. The fragilty of life overwhelmed me. Nietzsche's challenge popped inexplicably into my head.

And to the question, an unambiguous and emphatic yes!

Yes, I will live this life over again and again, in every sordid grubby detail, for at the end of this life there is only death, and that is no life at all.

Later I read that the driver of the lorry had not seen the moped as he turned right to cross over the cycle path and into the parking area of a distribution centre. The rider of the moped was resuscitated in a helicopter on the way to hospital, but died later in the day. He was only sixteen. The lorry driver was taken in by police to explain himself. I have not heard if he is to be charged with any offence, but it is fairly obvious from what I saw that he did not give way as he should. He is only twenty.

I do not yet know how or what, but I have decided that I have to do something. This is an extremely dangerous section of cycle path where "accidents" like this take place more frequently than is reported.

There is a general impression in the world that the Dutch have an advanced and fully worked out infrastructure that separates cycle traffic from motorised traffic. There is a degree of truth to this, but there are always places where the two streams have to cross. And at these places it is always cycle traffic that is vulnerable to the arrogant inattentiveness of motorists. Even here in these enlightened flatlands, cyclists have to live with the risks that motorists take on their behalf.

I guess I have to find the right people in the city council, and suggest they watch how heavy goods vehicles daily endanger the users of the cycle path here. Or maybe I should approach the drivers who use the distribution centre and remind them of their responsibilty to look where they are going. Something like this would seem to be the least I can do.

15:28 - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Another messenger moment

I was going to call this entry "Ten years ago" because today was the tenth anniversary of my becoming a messenger. But I changed my mind because I had another messenger moment.

The weather was crap. No, I have to rephrease that, the weather was fucking awful. About 7 or 8 degrees C, a stiff southwesterly, rain in many varieties, mud ... not to mention more than the usual number of assholes on the road not looking where they were going, nor the long runs and difficult combinations.

And also three flat tyres. The first in the front wheel caused by a small shard of metal, the second by a fragment of Heineken bottle - also in the front.

The third by a long thin nail that penetrated both sides of the tube of the rear wheel. I had to be somewhere before three o'clock, via two other places which were not at all on the route. It was about twenty past two, the rain suddenly changed from a fine drizzle to big drops, so I pulled in under a flyover to get out my raincoat. As I pulled away again, that spongy feeling .....

... by this time I was out of spares, and so I had to patch one of the old ones.

I wondered why this much shit was happening on this particular day, whether the Almighty was saying to me : "you can stop now, ten years is a good career for a messenger, and you have to admit, you're no spring chicken."

I was seriously tempted, for a moment, to phone fixie Femke (on despatch) and tell her that I had had enough, that she could call somebody to take over my work, while I walked home, had a shower and decided what to do with the rest of my life. But it was fleeting, and I buckled down, patched the tyre, pumped it up and was on my way again soon enough.

That was the messenger moment. The moment after I had dismissed the idea of throwing in the towel and just carried on doing what was necessary to get the job done, getting back on the bike, moving once more through the Dutch urban landscape using only the power of my body and my free will.

There is nothing else like it .....

..... I made the first two drops, and was only a few minutes late for the third - the client was not at all bothered. Then I carried on with the rest of the day, in the foul weather and dangerous traffic.

Before the end of the day, as we were planning the evening medicine run, Femke bought cake and we celebrated. It felt good.

Thank you messengers everywhere, old colleagues, current colleagues, old friends, new friends, in cities all over the world. These last ten years have been special.

Bring on the next ten!

13:07 - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

A messenger moment

I got a ticket last week after running a red light under the nose of a motorcycle cop. I hadn't noticed either that the light was red or that there was a cop watching me speed through it. I was only interested in whether or not it was safe - which it was.

The cop pulled me over on a narrow path between the high boards of a building site and a temporary concrete barrier. This path is intended to be used only by cyclists. I leaned against the board as he sat astride his motorcycle writing down my details in his little book, presenting a considerable obstacle to passing bicycle traffic.

He told me that my running a red light was dangerous. I told him that I see much more dangerous stuff than this frequently in the normal course of a day - and quite often under the nose of police. He said that he understood how I felt (this is the Netherlands) but that didn't alter the fact that I had run a red.

At which point a group of kids sauntered past on foot, having evidently ignored the large sign at the beginning of the path indicating that pedestrians are not allowed to walk along it. I pointed this out to the cop, saying that here was a perfect example of what I meant. The kids were racketing about, utterly reckless to the efforts of passing cyclists to avoid bumping into them. I suggested that the cop give them tickets too, for otherwise it would seem that he had picked on me specifically because I am a messenger. To which he replied that he could not do everything at once, gave me back my ID and told me that I would receive a letter in the post with instructions about paying the fine and how to lodge an appeal against it.

Later, I found a site where all possible traffic violations are described and classified, along with the statutory penalties applied for committing each. Apart from discovering that I would soon be fifty fucking euries out of pocket, I retrospectively encountered a whole bunch of violations that were taking place under the nose of the cop as he was writing in his little book, all sorts of stuff that he was unable to deal with because he was only able to do one thing at a time.

Ironically, the last time I got a ticket was for walking through a red light (which turned to green when I was still crossing) from a cop who pulled me over as he was writing out a ticket for somebody else. So multitasking is obviously not completely unknown to the police here. Perhaps it is just that they give the particularly stupid ones motorcycles to play with.

Whatever, there are two reasons why we get tickets here.

Most commonly, the cops are just making up their quotas. Every day ordinary plods are sent out on a shift with a specific quota of fines they have to apply before their shift ends. Cyclists running red lights are the easiest prey, so standing at the right intersection for hour or so during the rush hour can eat away nicely at a quota.

Less commonly we are pulled over by some cop who has nothing else to do at that particular moment and who wants to exert his authority, to remind us that we are still subject to the rules of the road and that if we ignore them we can be brought to book. The irritating thing is that we never know when this might happen. For it is much more common for the cops to ignore minor traffic violations that take place under their noses.

Because the issuing of fines here is to this extent so arbitary, it is clearly not simply a matter of punishing those who violate traffic regulations. There is always a reason why individual cops issue fines: either they are trawling to fill their quotas or they are just exerting their authority.

As I was being fined last week, I knew this, and it enraged me. But I remained calm. For I know that in life, if that man was not on the back of a powerful motorcycle, that if he was not wearing a police uniform a crash helmet and dark glasses, that if he was not at that moment exerting the accumalated power by which this postmodern social democracy disciplines its citizens, he would not dare to fuck with me.

16:37 - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

24 hours again

All romanticised notions of the 24 hours race that I had accumulated from the previous three were smashed to bits by the experience of the fourth. All the pleasures I had been hoping to enjoy - dawn mists, colourful sunsets, startled wildlife, starry skies, effortless eternal cycling - just did not happen.

Not for one moment was it in any way fun. Rain from start to finish, and so many flat tyres in the group that I lost count.

When it rains, all you see is rain. All you experience is the wet. If you have to stop, you cannot sit or lie down on the ground. You just stand there. Dripping.

It rained from about 20km out of Amsterdam through Zwolle to Arnhem, by which time the grey skies had darkened. It rained sporadically from Arnhem to Utrecht. And then again from Utrecht to Den Haag where the dark skies lightened to grey.

Sometime in the night between Utrecht and Den Haag, we discovered we had taken a wrong turn about 10km earlier and would have to return the way we had come in order to pick up the route again. It was raining. A very fine dense drizzle. Crazy Dave announced that he had a flat. We huddled in a bus shelter, peering at soggy maps, trying to remain positive. We had been cycling for about 14, maybe 15 hours and had covered something like 300 km. Just as we were leaving, Crazy Dave's tyre popped again and we returned to the bus shelter. For Marius, it had become too much and he said that he wanted to call the support vehicle. When Dave's tyre was replaced, we left again the way we had come to find the route to Den Haag. One group went on ahead while Jur74, Tomas and Michael took Marius in their wheels to the the centre of Gouda where he could be picked up. The group came together again somewhere on the road to Zoetermeer .....

... it was one of those moments when you find out who you are, whether or not you have got what it takes to carry on ... even Marius discovered more of himself that he knew, for he did not curl up in the rain and give up the ghost, but found the wherewithall to get himself to safety ...

... the second 24 hours race was physically most demanding - probably due to the fact that it was nearly 500 km! - but this, the fourth was mentally by far the most gruelling ...

.... later, on the road between Den Haag and Westmaas after Hattara and Shireen had brought back us to life with coffee and chocolate and Turkish bread, in the morning and without any rain, we made another wrong decision which took us to the north side of a broad stretch of water which, during the week, has a small boat that plighs back and forth at this point carrying cyclists and pedestrians. But not on Sunday. By this time we were all so wasted with fatigue, fizzing with caffiene and high on endorphines that we could see the funny side. The signs on the cycle paths we followed pointed happily in the direction of the village on the other of the water, but nowhere mentioned that there was a boat, nor that on a Sunday morning it was firmly moored.





This is me pointing to the village on the other side of the water and announcing that our destination is only another 5 km further. I look remarkably chirpy .... given the circumstances.

After that, we ate some more fucking meusli bars, smoked cigarettes and trundled along the north shore in search of bridges boats or tunnels. After about 12 km or so we found a tunnel, and on the other side an easy road to the finish where we recieved a welcome fit for heroes.

All who took part are heroes. The people who manned the checkpoints are heroes. The drivers of the support vehicles are heroes. 45 started the race, 22 finished. The group I was with let me go over the line first which made me 12th. My km counter registered 405. It was a wonderful experience. And I am proud to be one of only three people who have finished all four 24 hours races.

But it was not at all fun.

13:25 - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

24 hours

Anybody looking for something adventurous to do this weekend, should come to the head office of Infinity Express in Amsterdam on Saturday morning at about ten o'clock.

The Dutch Messengers 24 hours race starts there at midday.

This year the route goes through Zwolle, Arnhem, Utrecht, Den Haag before finishing south of Rotterdam at a little place called Westmaas where there are camping facilities, showers and an enthusiastic welcome. About 400 km or 250 miles.

This is the fourth version of this wonderful insanity. The first was organised by Arthur Wagenaar and Willem Dabekhausen in April 2004 because Jur74 suggested once in a moment of mirth that somebody should organise a 24 hours race.

Those of us who experienced this first race were so overwhelmed and inspired by the experience that we just had to do it again. And we managed to spread our enthusiasm to others - even to one or two of the sceptics who said we were very sick people indeed for wanting even to attempt such a thing. Last year there were contingents of very sick people from London Dublin and several German cities.

It is not for everybody though. And there are still those who say we are mad.

But there is something very special about that moment just before dawn, when you know the light will be rising, when you have been cycling together all night long, looking out for each other, stopping when necessary to piss, check the map or just rest quietly, that moment when you begin to realise that you are alive and breathing in a way you never thought possible.

14:09 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

very very busy

is what I have been these last weeks. I have had no time to sit down and review all the comments properly, but I do feel that there is a choice that will have to be made at the open forum in Toronto about whether or not CMWCs should from 2010 be held every two years rather than anually.

In which case the issue of the "rule book" is actually two issues.

If the status quo is accepted, all the IFBMA needs to do is to clarify and make explicit the general principles of messenger races, and to ensure every year in consultation with particular CMWC organisers that their world championship messenger races meet a certain standard.

If the bianual option is accepted, then we are moving in the direction of the "Messenger Olympics" and the IFBMA will then be looking at a completely different, much more formalised, set of rules.

In any event, the task of formally defining a "messenger race" and claiming the intellectual property rights over this would seem at the moment to have priority.

04:23 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Watch this now!

zeitgeist

04:01 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Three days

Personally, I am in favour of something like the status quo, with CMWCs every year and with each CMWC expressing the unique character of the messenger community and the city that is organising it. In which case the role of the IFBMA is simply to support and encourage said city, while ensuring that the open fora are properly timetabled, and perhaps clarifying and/or publicising in advance the specific rules laid down by the designer(s) of the messenger race.

But some people believe with good reason that CMWCs would be better if they were held every two years. I have said that I would go along with this if and only if three days of messenger racing were guaranteed - if there were two days for qualifying and one day for finals. (Under such circumstances I think it is likely that the role of the IFBMA will be greater.)

Then I got to thinking. If there were three days of racing, the structure of the races could be played around with. It would not be necessary to simply have a qualifying round and then a final. There could be several qualifying rounds, with different kinds of manifests in each, the racers with the cumulatively best performances going through to the final. It might even be possible to dispense altogether with the final, and to declare the champion on the basis of cumulative performance on any number of different messenger races over the whole three days. Whatever else, if a CMWC is to take place only every two years, then there should certainly be a very good test awaiting those taking part.

These are just thoughts. And I still think that if this kind of CMWC becomes the bianual norm, in the intervening years somebody somewhere is likely to organise some sort of "alternative" world messenger event.

01:14 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

where to go ....?!?

Ok, so in just over a week, there is the Swiss National Championship. The weekend after that is the 24 hours race here in NL. Two weeks after that, the Championships of Basel, and then two weeks later, the Paradise Weekend.

Much as I would like to visit all of these, I simply do not have the time. Our collective is expanding and there is a lot of work to be done. I also checked out the prices and availability of seats on planes and trains and discovered that I do not have the money either.

So unless there is a busload travelling from somewhere in Northern Europe which I will be able to meet up with at some convenient place and time, I will not make it to any of the above ... which is a pity, I really wanted to come to the Swiss ...

... but of course the 24 hours race starts in Amsterdam - a mere 25 minutes on the train from sunny Utrecht - so I'll be there.

For anybody interseted in the experience of a lifetime, the 24 hours race is just the thing.

Registration and information is here.

01:55 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The messenger race, episode 5, loose ends

I reckon there are three issues that remain to be clarified. Perhaps it is precisely these that the council of the IFBMA needs to work on.

3.1. there would be open qualification over two days and then on the third day a final for those with the best times ...

To a large extent the amount of time made available for qualifying is dependent on the number of participants. I would guess that if there are any more than 200 racers, then there should be more than one chance for each to qualify for the final which would have 80 or so participants. Logistically, it makes sense to do this over two days. Of course it will not always be possible to find a location where a messenger race course can be left standing for three days, but it would seem to me an ideal to which CMWCs should strive. Certainly, from the point of view of the average messenger (such as myself) who has travelled a long way, and has only an outside chance of making it to the final - but who would nevertheless like to try - there is nothing more disappointing than being faced with only one chance in a race than favours fast young legs and requires little thinking.

3.5. there would be some random element built into the design ...

This should probably best be left up to the ingenuity of race designers. Whatever tomfoolery they build into their designs though should be supported by all who take part and clearly described in the race documentaion.

4. In one-way traffic, ride only in the direction of the flow. Keep moving and do not stop. Use your time at checkpoints to think out your route. If you are stupid enough to drop a package or your manifest, you have to go round again to pick it up. Likewise, if you miss a checkpoint, go round again.

There have certainly been championships where under certain circumstances it has been permitted to return along the track and against the traffic flow. I actually think that this fact contributes to the problem. So that unless it is categorically stated in the particular race rules that under no circumstances whatsoever is it permitted to return along the race course - whether by bike or on foot, there will be those who will do so on the basis that they were once allowed to do so in ... wherever ... Personally I believe that this is something upon which the IFBMA should take quite a strong position. Since CMWCs are the only races that the IFBMA is required to sanction, I would propose that at this level it should be a general rule that under no circumstances whatsoever is backtracking permissible. This should be something generally understood by all participants, race organisers, checkpoint staff, traffic marshalls and spectators. So that breaking this rule means immediate disqualification.

If it had not been for the fact that I was asked by a race marshall during the second qualifier in CPH2002 to go round again (because I had parked my bike beyond a checkpoint and was thus, technically speaking, walking backwards along the course in order to get to the checkpoint), I would have made it to the final. It pissed me off at the time, but shit happens, and hey, I enjoyed myself at lot in CPH ... and I had also had two chances to qualify, so I felt as if I had been well enough tested. Nowadays in races I make sure I never have to go round again. 15 seconds standing with manifests and map before leaving a checkpoint, checking that you know where you are going is a lot shorter that the many minutes necessary to go round again if you fuck up.

11:01 - 6 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment