Breck Epic 2012: Stage Seven and beyond...

I planned on starting Stage Seven much later in the day.


That plan did not work out so well. While I managed to keep the dead soldier count down during the stage, Mike Melley showed up with a couple or sixty PBR's at the finish line. Peter went straight to mixed drinks.

Mich Ultra and PBR, the choice of not quite champions.

Peter wanted to head back to the frat (fart) house, as did I... but I wasn't leaving without my drop bags. And that is how we ended up sitting in a parking lot under the hot sun drinking PBR's for a few hours instead of getting cleaned up and packing bikes.

As not planned.

We did get to see the final rider finish.

Then there was the long ride back up Ski Hill Road to the Frat House, bike packing, bike drop-off, a search for coffee and hippie hand made donuts, and the continuation of a long day.

Awards, Whiskey Sour with cherries, beer, arm wrestling...

and then over to the Gold Pan where the real fun was to be had.

Or not.

At first it seemed as if it was going to be the lamest Stage Seven ever. Then someone younger than myself reminded me that bars don't really start hopping at 9:00PM. Eventually there was dancing, manscaping, beers, coat stealing, and general debauchery. Video when Thom uncrashes his hard drive.

Mike McCormack talked a few of us into a long walk to another bar. Eventually I snuck out around 1:15AM to head back to the condo via the many shortcuts up the side of the mountain.

As I lay there half sleeping and hoping to be able to make the drive to Denver at 6:00AM, Peter came creeping down the stairs.

"Dicky?"

"Yes, Peter?"

"I fell into a giant mudhole. I smell like raw sewage."

Peter does not know how to have an uneventful walk home from the bar.

Dahn Pahrs will never see his security deposit.

Tonight I will be going to see the premiere of the new bike messenger movie "Premium Rush."

It looks bad... like not very realistic, super contrived, and made for a mass of people who have no concept of what real messengers are like.



I mean, we're handsome like movie stars and all, but this whole "brakes are death attitude"?



Jeebus Anne Heche Snipes. Yes, it's just Quicksilver all over again. An attempt to hit a hot button of current culture and turn it into a movie, this time "fixies" being more the focus than actual messenger culture.

Culture?

While I was in Breck, the Charlotte Observer ran an article on the Jimmy John's delivery personnel.

Trey Boyd, Jacob Mead, Nick Barlow and Ben Hulse
photo cred: DIEDRA LAIRD

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/05/3446202/jimmy-johns-delivery-men-bike.html#disqus_thread#storylink=cpy

"Lean, sinewy young men on sturdy bicycles with bulging backpacks"

"defy time, pedestrians, traffic congestion, rain and heat."

"Brothers in arms, these street warriors share a love for the open road"

ad more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/05/3446202/jimmy-johns-delivery-men-bike.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/05/3446202/jimmy-johns-delivery-men-bike.html#storylink=cpy

more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/05/3446202/jimmy-johns-delivery-men-bike.html#storylink=cpy"

"Riding in the rain, braving 100-plus-degree temps and dealing with road construction are all part of the landscape for these guys."

Glamorous descriptions for our profession. Perhaps I'm just old and jaded, unlike the 33 year old man that was interviewed ten years ago.

Worthy of note? Big Worm, The Wonderboy, and myself (in the photo) make up 3/5 of the current non-Jimmy John's bicycle couriers in the uptown today. Nathan now lives in Serbia with his beautiful wife (I think he was a mail-order husband). There were at one time as many as 16 full time messengers in Charlotte. There are now two owner/operators, two part timers, and me. Eeesshh.

Anyways...

That decade old article wasn't much different, longer but just about as glamorous.

My favorite quote?

"I plan on being a courier until I can't do it anymore. Of course there are days when I wake up feeling miserable and don't want to work. But then I remind myself that I'm getting paid to ride my bike. . .I don't think I'd be happy doing anything else. Maybe there's another job out there for me, but I doubt it."~ Dillon (that's me, BTW)

Scary realization? I've been a messenger ever since the guy on the far left of the Jimmy John's photo was a pre-kindergartener. Sooner or later someone's gonna show up that wasn't even born when I ran my first job... in November of 1996. It's coming.

More Breck Epic and Premium Rush/messenger related posts as they fall out of my head.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/05/3446202/jimmy-johns-delivery-men-bike.html#storylink=cpy"