updates from the far east...

1st...i would like to thank nico for sending me some info on whats going on over in japan. it is greatly appreciated. im going nuts over here waiting to hear the results of the racing and the bidding. the chicago cuttin'crew has been keeping us updated through the eyes of ben and al...thank God! like i said...i need to hear/read something to keep myself from going crazy. anyway...here are some words from nico...

part one:

hey julio... a little update from japan....
we put in our bid on monday for the open forum and it went swimmingly. augie played the role of the ambassador and gave a great presentation. the other two cities putting in a bid were warsaw and amsterdam. everyone was a bit worried just because its amsterdam. warsaw put in a decent bid as well; they had just built a brand new velodrome there and i guess the mayor there is pretty stoked on the idea. that being said, one of the points that augie made was the great vibe that is running through chicago right now. young, new blood putting on races and getting shit going. people were definitely picking up on the vibe that while work is slow, its pretty awesome to be a courier in chicago right now.

yesterday (tues.) was the qualifier. tokyo threw down. the course is insane. you can ride it fast, but this race is all about riding smart. we were given a packet with carbon copy tags... no shit. old school. single tags, no manifests. each tag has a pickup, a delivery, and a time limit. 5 min, 15 min, and 30 min were each worth a different monetary value. the winners were determined by who made the most money the fastest. if you didn't make a deadline, you didn't earn the money and probably didn't qualify. there were guys who had amazing times, but burned packages and straight up didn't qualify. chicago definitely came out with it. i finished in 48 min with no burned packages. christina finished in 49 min with no burned packages. molly finished in 50 minutes with no burned packages. the three of us are headed out this morning to the finals. they took the top 60 men, and top 10 women. today will be brutal. the qualifier had 10 runs. today will have two sets of 12, and one set of 10. its gonna be interesting.

i'll do my best to keep you up to date. tomorrow at the second open forum we vote on the host city for 2011. as a side note, the presentation that nadir and andy gave for guatemala was incredible. its going to be a race to remember. i wish i could go straight from here to there. keep your fingers crossed for chicago. i hope all is well back home.

btw...if you're interested in photo's check them out as they pop up...cmwc2009tokyo...

part two:

hey dude. just got back a little bit ago from the finals. good lord. if anyone thought yesterday's race was nuts, today would have blown their minds. it was a le mans style start. 70 racers. 60 men, and 10 women. 70 racers starting this madness all at once. the race started with a packet of 15 tags. same concept as the day before. when you finished the 15, you went back to start/finish for another 15. when you finished that, you went back to start/finish for another 20. it had to have been 80 degrees in the tokyo sun. it was intense to say the least. i myself burned two packages on the first bundle of deliveries, which i'm still kind of salty about. however it was near impossible to not have burned at least one on this race. i unfortunately wasn't able to do every pick up/delivery, but only a handful of people were able to do the 50 runs in the 2.5 hours they gave us. i ended up not being able to cover 10 of the last runs. but this was all about which runs you did. 30 min runs were worth 500yen, 15 min runs were worth 1500yen and 5 min runs were worth 4500yen. the last 20 runs they gave you were packed with 5 min runs, so when i got to that bundle of tags i tried my best to focus just on the 5 min runs to try and make up for the 15 min and 30 min runs i burned early on. christina's day went pretty well. she only burned one and made her way into the third bundle. i think her day was good enough to place verrrry well among the women, and probably overall as well. this is christina we are talking about. molly got off to a great start. unfortunately early on her chain popped off and sent her over the bars. she wound up roughing up her hip pretty bad. nothing too major, but enough to keep her from finishing. i know she is really bummed out about it, and we are all bummed for her. its too bad cos we all know she is an incredibly strong rider and certainly would have placed well among the top. that being said, she still made it into the top 10 women and top 70 overall. and thats among hundreds of racers from all over the world. the total count was near 400! anyway, we are off to the after party in a bit to catch wind of the final results. there were only about 10 people out of the 70 finalists for north america. maybe about the same from europe. japan has some heavy duty riders. seriously heavy duty. they dominated the field in number, lets hope we dominated the field in results!!! like i said we also vote tomorrow on the 2011 bids. we all made sure that everyone was aware of our presence; chicago rolls deep and chicago rolls heavy. the general vibe i got today at the race is that people really think we are capable of pulling off an exciting world championship, and the fact that we had three people in the finals kinda forced our presence upon the competition. hopefully i'll have nothing but good news for you tomorrow!!!



looks like chicago has done an amazing job thus far. i told you cats chicago would bring the great times to the worlds. good job to all...great job to my chicago heads. molly...don't worry lady...you cracked the top 10 in the world!! cant wait to hear what happens next. thanks again nico for the heads up...peace.