alleycat in lausanne

i just returned from a very cool alleycat in lausanne. normally an alleycat is about 30km “go as fast as you can”.
Blaize from velocite made that one different: there were 6 pickup places around the place de l’europe in lausanne (which were in a diameter of maybe 400m). at the start you got a list that was maybe 1-4-5-2, so you had not only to drive fast, but also think hard on how to go and pick up the “parcels” (which consisted of rubber stamps), then when you finished that list, you got another one, then another one, and so on until you finished seven lists.
and guess who finished first of all twelve messengers that were there and got that nice t-shirt that Blaize made himself?

me.

pictures, rankings, and manifest from the alleycat

the pictures from the alleycat last friday night are online:

the results were:

1 Michel – 41::2320
2 Ismu – 43:50
3 Urs – 48:36
4 Mischu – 48:38
5 Mättu – 49:24
5 Elia – 49:24
7 Päscu – 52:49
8 Rachel (1st woman) 56
8 Reto – 56:23
10 Michu – 1.08:58
11 Dewi – 1.11:15
11 Renzo 1.11:15
DNF Hämme & Simu

the manifest can be found here (38kb .pdf) and the list of all the posts can be found here (40kb .pdf)

alleycat in bern

if you see some freaks on bikes driving around bern like mad on friday night, then you know it’s an alleycat1 organised by bene and me :-)
so, if you see one of the messengers (sometimes after 10pm) then cheer and shout and watch your back for more reckless drivers!

1 Alleycat: not on a closed course held race in a city, organized by bikemessengers. Usually with several checkpoints and not caring about traffic rules. As far as known, the first alleycats known as such took place in toronto, Canada.

picture of the week 47

the picture of this week is especially for raph and dom from velocité which seem to be avid readers of my blog :-)

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it shows a bunch of messengers at the veloblitz on saturday evening. the veloblitz was one of the first messengers that started in switzerland (among the first ones was the velokurier bern) and they had the fifteenth anniversary this weekend. from left to right you can see raphael feiss from velocite, stefan p. fröhlich from flash, randall from flash ans some other messenger. i truly apologize for the bad picture, but the batteries in my camera were so empty that was literally the only picture i took that evening.

the whole evening was really nice, after some terrific food (by lilys) the gals from the blitz prepared a funny alleycat. we from bern fibbed a bit (the alleycat was designed to be made on your own, you had to throw dices to get your next pickup/dropoff, but we wanted to stay together), but we had to, ’cause splint was filming the whole with his fancy helmet-cam. if i get some time (and his camera, firewirecable and all the other important stuff) i might make a nice movie out of his material which sometimes you might get to see here.

you should have seen us (urs, stefan, splint and me) on the trainride back to bern. four sweaty messengers staring into a 2″-screen of a mini-dv-cam and shouting “oh yes, that turn was so good” and “that was soo close!” and “i almost hit that car” while all the other passengers tried to sleep or read or minding their own business.

messengers caught on film [update]

the first few glimpes i’ve seen since the download started1 make it look like THE uber-messenger-movie, but i definitely need to go to bed now, i’ll download the whole movie tomorrow and let you know.
but be warned, the movie of a rider filming an alleycat through manhattan with his helmet-camera is a hefty 50 mb big!

update: after viewing the whole film today i got to mention that we’re all wussies here in bern.

[via memepool]

1: right-click on the .download-file, show package contents, and you’ll find a nice, but unfinished .mov inside the file

michels abschied

aus aktuellem grund mal wieder in deutsch: wenn du michel bernard vom velokurier bern kennst, dann komm diesen freitag doch auch an seine abschluss-sause. nach 11 jahren wird er auf ende juli den velokurier bern verlassen. ihm zu ehren werden wir ein alleycat durch bern machen, hoffentlich kommen kuriere und nichtkuriere von überall.

alleycat

picture of the week

yesterday, urs, simu and me went to winterthur, because the guys from staffel x made an alleycat.
this is what it looks like if you cram three guys with their bikes and baggage in a twingo:

oh, and by the way, i’ve won that alleycat. pity for me that i didn’t go to the last alleycat in basel, because there i could have won a bikeframe, this time the winner got a cap (not even from the staffel x, but from veloexpress) and a beer (and i don’t like beer, so i could change that to a bottle of coke) :-(

tomazobi

tomazobi will be the hit soon :-)
one of these guys went to school with my sister and all three of ’em have the potential to be the new troubadours of bern (like mani matter and others)
especially their song lulu is just about the best song i ever heard (at least in swiss-german :-)
you need to check out their website, it’s a marvelous example of funny webdesign and crude little ideas (how about their stage-plan for small and big stages?)

btw: my sister is the one on the right :-) the bloke is björn hering, the “used-to-be” host of joya rennt, COO of faro tv and my potential brother-in-law.