Thanks Roman!!! @sawbonesmesslife @sawbonesfilm
CMWC 2019 in Jakarta for the 4th Worlds for me.
People ask which one was the best, they all are awesome and different from each other.
It took me 23 hours to get from Marseille to Soekarno-Hatta airport.
Grabbed the taxi and went straight to the hotel. If you’re a tourist, your potential money bag got taxi drivers , so I was checking my gps and asking the driver to stop the meter every time he was making the wrong turns on purpose.
1 hour in tragic jam and we arrived.
Put my bike together and was gutted to ride next morning.
9 am and I’m heading to Westbike office, while hitting the morning rush hour.
It was awesome and crazy at the same time. Cars, busses, taxis, bikes, scooters, and pedestrians all mixed together in organized chaos.
But, I’ve never felt so safe on the bike as in Jakarta. People respect each other, they pay attention, they don’t try to compensate for the size of their dick with the size of the car.
Locals were looking at me with a smile, saying hi, every time I was grabbing the scooter drivers were asking if they should speed up. Amazing. I felt like I rediscovered urban cycling again.
This year we didn’t have so many participants outside Asia and I feel like they missed a lot.
There were around 260 people registered with probably not more than 25% from Europe and America.
Still was excited to see all familiar faces and ride with you again guys.
It would take long time to describe every day, so I’ll just write few words about Alleycat and the main race.
The Alleycat started at 5, the most rush hour of the day.
I think there were around 50 people.
Manifests were given before the race so you had time to prepare your rout. I was riding in a team with Andy and Spars from Bicicouriers.
Fast start, we decided not to go the closest checkpoint and make a small loop to avoid lots of people.
Everything is great, traffic is super tight and I got stuck… stuck between the scooters the way I couldn’t even walk. I got off the bike and wanted to run on the pavement, but you literally couldn’t move.
Just stayed there while watching 2 helmets riding away on the pavement.
I had to finish the race alone. Have done all the checkpoints, but don’t think I came even top 10 this year.
Andy and Spars killed it this year and won the race!
Main race qualification.
Some people liked the course, someone hated it. I really enjoyed riding it.
For qualification, you had to finish 2 manifests ASAP.
Top 60 people qualified to the final, luckily I was one of them.
First day there was lots of confusion at the checkpoints so before the final, we had a big briefing with all the questions asked and answered.
Started at usual, 1 hour later as planned, but it’s normal for courier events
3 manifests with 2 extra “vip” manifests that had time limits.
The person that earned most of the money(didn’t fuck up any jobs) and was faster should win the race.
Time limit was 3 hours.
I was really in a good mood this day, head was thinking straight and legs were spinning as planned.
Finished all 3+2 manifests pretty fast as I thought, and rushed to the dispatch for the finish. Crossing the last bridge, getting in my hip pouch for the manifest… wait, what???
Manifest is gone :))
What a rookie, I’ve lost it with all my jobs done on the way from the last checkpoint to the finish.
Making 2 extra circles around the course, trying to find it and finally see it in the grass.
It fell off my hip pouch when I was jumping on the bike after the “walk only” zone.
The result – 7th place in the open category.
The championship was over and everybody was waiting for the results.
All the winners were announced and there was some misunderstanding with open and *bma finals.
Some people were raising questions about the results, so Fred, Joseph(thank you guys) and I decided to help local guys to sort it out.
Apparently yes, there were few mistakes that affected the results.
VIP manifests’ time frames, stamps in wrong places and missed checkpoints. So after around 2 hours of recalculating the results, new winners were announced with apologies from the organizers.
The CMWC2019 crew made a huge amount of work and threw an amazing event.
Thanks to everybody who participated and Jakarta crew for making it happen!
And congratulations to CMWC2021 Yokohama Crew for their win!
