Not The Latest Contender

3 and 4 August - First decent night's sleep? Made my way back to retrieve the rest of my possessions from the storage - and faffed around for a while, was going to do a bit of exploring because I have absolutely no idea what the schedule for the week is supposed to be but intercepted a small group of couriers led by one of the welcome party who were off to the registration. There were quite a few people milling about but we were early but as the day wore on hundreds of messengers from all over the world (Japanese, Danish, South African, English, Australian, Irish, Spanish, German (lots of germans - they're a funny lot), Norwegian, Czech, Polish, French, Chilean, Canadian, Russian, Slovak, Crazy lookingScots, Kiwi, Belgian, Korean, Indian (???), Irish and a huge contigent of AMericans). Lots of people from last year including many who had passed through Sydney - everyone's real friendly and so many of them can drink SO much. As with any event of this scale, the quasi-celebriity champions and contenders strut around glaring at everyone, the groupies (yes, there ar groupies) hang on to their every word and the topic of conservation is always bikes. Of which there were hundreds - every type represented but at least 90% fixed. Got bit lost at several times duringthe day when I tried to negotiatt my way from one party to my accommodation to the next party to wherever we wersupposed to be goin gnext. SO many messengers in town you can just ride down the street until you find one who seemes to know what the next scheduelkd event is. Tried to get an early night for the qualifier on saturday (is 230am an early night???) - got a flat two minutes after I left the pub to go home (that's hermes way of telling me that I left the pub too early) - not terribly necessary - my 1130 start didn't happen until 130pm - couriers spend their entire lives pushing deadlines to the minute but when they hold an event like this everything is always late. Despite worrying about what the big London dublin ride did to my condition and ability to even ride a bike the adrenalin seemed to overwhelm any pain and it seemed like verythingwent okay - the courese was relatively simple and not terribly long although half of it was offroad grass and rocks which is not the most appropriat tsurface to be riding fixed) - at this stage I have no idea who I went - i've just ducked out for some lunch - maybe i'll be in in tomorrow .... Only Hermes knows?