After the last several kilometers into Budapest, being greeted by a very stereotypically Eastern European landscape - tons of boxy apartment buildings and run-down this that and everything else, plowed through by highways filled with seemingly completely insane drivers - the island of Obudai-sziget was a welcome sight indeed. As we rolled through its seemingly isolated greenery, we came upon the hq and camping ground of the CMWC, and wow, were we impressed... A whole selection of bungalows, a little snack hut, plenty of camping space, and to top it all off, a swimming pool! All of this was ours until we had to clear out to make way for the Pepsi-festival immediately after the CMWC.
As we were to discover over the next day or so, this was quite possibly (if not definitely) the best camping setup we'd ever seen at a CMWC - the facilities were great, and to top it all off, the food provided was insane. For the first time ever, there was more breakfast food than we could eat, and beyond that, for the 2 main nights, there was traditional Hungarian food for everyone, prepared over open fires at the campground. It was almost like a little city of our own, away from the bustle of downtown Budapest.
Friday, our first day of actual events, brought us to the city park Varosliget for a series of silly events - a 2-stage race on pedal boats and pedal cars. Most of us took the time earlier that morning to head over to the Nepstadion to check out the venue for the actual racing events. Man did we get a surprise. I'd been told that it was huge, that there was a velodrome, but I still wasn't expecting this... The Nepstadion is the old Hungarian Olympic facility. It's absolutely gigantic - the type of facility you could never get for a CMWC anywhere else in the world. The velodrome itself is the largest and oldest velodrome in the world, built sometime in the 1890s, and measuring a good bit over 400m. As you ride around it, you can see the old, steep seats from the first part of its career.
That night brought the first night of parties, which made use of some of the facilities already set up for the Pepsi event. Concerts, DJ-parties, and a great trials demo by some local Hungarians made it a great night for everyone. For me, it was nice that everything was all so close together, cause I still had my broken pedal to deal with, having found out that getting a replacement while in Budapest was basically an impossibility - Time has no distributor there, so getting a new set of ATACs just wasn't going to happen. So my riding was a bit limited, as I didn't want to mess up my knee before the races and the rest of my trip, cause the lack of bearings was providing the pedal body with about 3cm of side-to-side float...
Saturday brought our first round of racing, and our introduction to something that would plague the event for the rest of our time there - delays of several hours. Interestingly enough - despite the fact that at every other CMWC I've been to, someone inevitably complains to me about the lateness of the events, even if things are running behind by a mere hour - not one person complained about the stunningly huge delays in Budapest. But then, no CMWC to date has had a velodrome that the start/finish area is in, and that can be ridden by the spectators at their will, and with music blasting the whole time, plenty of shade to sit in, and food being sold cheaply right there. Basically, the event and venue themselves were so awesome that even with the huge delays, people just didn't complain!
I was looking forward to the race, though - having done so well in Rotterdam at the ECMC, I was hoping for a good race here in Budapest, perhaps even getting to the finals for the first time in a European-held CMWC. But alas, that was not to be. Despite all my enthusiasm, and a good start in my qualifying time trial, about 2 chekcpoints into my manifest, i heard a loud pop from my rear wheel, and stopped, thinking I'd broken a spoke, which would've been fixable. Unfortunately for me, however, that wasn't the case - I'd torn 2 spokes out of the drive side flange of my rear hub. My race was over, because there was no point in mashing this hub around to qualify, despite knowing that I could make it rideable and raceable - I had another month in Europe, and this wheel needed to hold together until I could get somewhere I could find a replacement Sturmey-Archer hub. So I rolled back to the velodrome, feeling pretty dejected, but hey - that's bike racing.
I couldn't be too disappointed, though, even if the race format was perfectly to my liking - it did mean I got to sit in the shade, trading t-shirts and collecting information for messengers.org. Bitter as it was for the first hour or so, I settled into having fun regardless pretty quickly.
That evening brought yet another all-night party, and our second round of homemade goulash at the camp. I think I was generally pretty tired, cause I think I pretty much hung out all night in the snack bar area, drinking with friends rather than running around partying.
Along came Sunday, though, and the finals. With that, of course, came more delays, even more severe than before, but again, no one seemed to really care. I headed over to the flea market near the Nepstadion with Grith, Boris and Olli, and cashed in on crazy Hungarian deals on vintage knick-knacks. I think the finals started somewhere around 4-5 hours late, anew record. It was quite possibly the best laid-out finals course ever - tons of checkpoints, spread over a huge area, with lots of decision-making points, and some real, street-like addressing. It was due to be a fast and furious, and rather complex, race - and that it was. I spent a good bit of the time wandering the course with Olli and Buffalo Bill, cheering on just about everyone, and having a blast, simultaneously wishing we were racing, but not envying the people who were!
In the end, though, my friends Roger from Zurich and Pia from Copenhagen pulled through and won the respective men's and women's titles. From that point on, it was pretty much constant partying, up until the highlight of the event for me, receiving the Markus Cook Award for service to the messenger community - having known Markus here in SF, albeit never nearly as well as I would've liked, it had kind of a special meaning for me - I could win the CMWC itself, and the Cook award would still be my highest accomplishment...
But it was somewhat early to bed for me, compared to everyone else, as we had to clear out of the camping area early the next morning, and I'd arranged a free ride to Copenhagen with the Danes, as I was now near totally broke, and Copenhagen was close to Amsterdam, where I was due to fly out of. It was the biggest single change to my planned itinerary yet, as the original idea was to follow the Danube back to its source in Germany, and then follow the Rhine to Holland and Amsterdam. Instead, I would be hopping on a big tour bus with 50 Danes, all wound up because Copenhagen was going to host CMWC 2002, and because Pia had won the CMWC women's title... It was going to be an interesting ride indeed...
On to Copenhagen
