My elbows hurt, my wrists hurt, my head hurts, my stomach hurts, my jaw hurts, my eyesight is going, my bikes are breaking down, I smoke too much, I drink too much coffee, I haven't flossed in months, my laundry is growing out of control, the boyfriend bitches that he never sees me, I have 10 saved messages on my voice mail, my agenda is at least 40 items long all the time, there's no food in my refrigerator, I don't have money to pay my bills... what the hell do I do this shit for? And why am I doing it all over again?

The ride on the shuttle from Oakland to SF is way too short, Wiggy and I finish a mason jar full of coffee. We are both a bit surly when we part company at 2nd Street. Now my day begins to move at fast forward. It's July 1996, San Francisco, California.

Calls to make. Fit it in between this fucking .50 cent roll from Rapid and a pick-up on the North Side. Get sent up another damn hill thinking, "Oh, this is good for me really, I'll be in great shape when the Championships come around, if I don't die of a heart attack first." On the other side in Cow Hollow, Sam Whiting and his fickle-ass finally pages me from the Chronicle. "Yeah, I got your information. We passed it around. It's charming how you guys are putting this shindig together. Your press releases are cute too, not very professional, kind of a departure from the Norm." I sigh thinking, "Jesus, Christ." "Oh," Sam continues, "you seemed to have spelled your own name wrong." I roll my eyes back into my head and think to myself about that asshole who wrote the copy and fucked up my name. I laugh, "Oh, yeah, someone else wrote that part." I frown as a bus rolls up to the bus stop and loudly farts out some exhaust while Sam is still blathering. "I'm sorry Sam, I didn't hear you." "Where are you?" he asks. I stare at the little old lady getting on the bus. "I'm at my office, sorry about the noise." Sam didn't know that I was a messenger, but in that second he came to realize that everyone on the committee was a messenger, instead of the paid organizers he had imagined. Sam thought we were cute enough to ask for an exclusive.

Another Thursday. Shit, I was never in the mood for those fucking meetings. Just like an appointment with the dentist, but a little more painful. Man, I never knew I could come to hate people while loving them so intensely at the same time.

Work blessedly over, I head to my second job, the CMWC, on a piece of Market Street where anyone can score pretty much anything illicit. This fuck harasses me outside the donut shop. Donuts were becoming a necessary part of my diet. I just couldn't seem to get enough Boston Creme. In meetings I would imagine that Boston Creme oozing right out of the pastry while Bonz threatened to hill Casey right over my head. I would get lost in the fantasy of swimming around in vats of Boston Creme as Cate screamed at Elizabeth until they both descended into shaking sobs. Those donuts were the key to my sanity. When the meetings got really hot, a few messengers would gently pick their way over the carpet of people to squeeze through the window and sit on the roof and do a bowl.

Towards the end, miraculously, we didn't fight so much. We were all far too busy shitting our pants. We'd be in the meeting , 30 people spilling into a bathroom sized room. Both of the phones would be occupied and the fax machine would go off unexpectedly.

There were times, first thing in the morning, when I'd roll up to the CMWC office at 8am to find the door unlocked and Casey curled up sleeping on the keyboard. Abdul never slept. He just sort of walked around like C-3P0, spouting off information mechanically. I felt bad asking him to fax the late night releases. He took it very seriously and would be there all night. "Baby, go home and get some rest," he'd tell me. "What about you, man?" Abdul just shook his head, "I'm old, I don't need as much sleep as you."

About two weeks before the apocalypse, our miserable rotting corpses were unbelievably revived. Joel came in dancing, "I saw a pack of Europeans, they're coming, they're coming!" "I saw them too!" Then Bok Choy would start doing his German courier imitation. He'd cock his head, "Yah, yah, ve are the guhmens and ve vill be riding across the country with concrete in our tires to train for the championships, yah."

We got a fax from some European team. They told us that they would out drink us and they wanted to know where they could find hookers. They weren't so bad really. We just didn't want them to win anymore. We had all kinds of plans. Chad was going to lure them to the Tenderloin and tell them it would be alright to park their bikes there, and when they came out-- "Aw, poor guys, where are their bikes?!?" We had seen the silly frame locks and knew no bike would stay put with one of those jobs on it in SF. The Danes even called to ask if they needed to bring their locks at all.

Well, they all finally got to town. The Wall looked like a beekeeper's arm, with bees on it. I volunteered my mom for the 4am course set up. I figured that would be the only time we'd be able to talk all weekend. When Mom showed up at the CMWC office, Elizabeth, knowing what an irreverent daughter I was, immediately asked, "Are you Rebecca's Mom?" Mom nodded and Elizabeth threw herself on her with a huge hug. "Thanks for coming Mom, your daughter has volunteered you to do an awful job."

There were a bunch of organizers during the weekend. When you're from out of town and you don't know the difference, anyone from the host city gets praise. There were a bunch of SF people who came to me bowled over, "Everyone keeps thanking me and I didn't do anything!" They did though. They were there at the Wall all of those nine months leading up to the race, listening to us, giving us insightful, sometimes frustrating feedback. Most of SF's messengers actually did have something to do with the CMWC '96. Small or large, they all made their mark in some crucial way.

Then I was sitting in Barcelona at the CMWC '97 Championships, watching AZ and Markus make their proposals to the world community of messengers. Zurich or DC?

When I said hi to Bega his first question was, "when are you coming back?" It was at that moment that I got an acute case of Organisititis.

I had made my plans to go from NYC to Boston. I was half hoping I'd be forgotten and I wouldn't relapse into Organisititis. Organisititis is a complex virus that tends to fester in overachievers. Spazz's get it too. What happens is this organization forms, and it sounds exactly like your cup of tea. Symptoms that crop up include the sudden urge to make agendas, talking about the organization in your sleep, the telltale marks of people's phone numbers on your hand, and the tick that develops when your head snaps around every time you hear someone talking about the CMWC. Well, I had gotten over my first bout in '96, and I knew that being exposed would cause a relapse.

My first effort for the cause seemed to be remembering something that our waffling title sponsor seemed to forget. Then I settled into my self-inflicted tasks. I was really enjoying myself. Organizing in DC compared to SF is as different as dogs are from pinball machines. Every messenger city has different bastards to deal with. Where in SF we got a lot of headaches from the Wall and Jackson Park (messenger hangouts) DC's messengers have to deal with the politically self-absorbed nature of the local population. Too corrupt, greedy, and conniving to give messengers a chance to prove they could put on an international event, much less much notice. Laura put it well: "To a lot of people we're like animals in the zoo, that's about how interested in us people seem to be."

But just like in SF, it's hard to sit through meetings with all the inevitable bickering that occurs when you have no money, huge ideas, and as many opinions as there are people. The arguments get heated I think because everyone cares so much about putting on a great championship. In SF I hung on because I was scared to death that we would fail. In DC I hang on because I know the end result is worth all the pain.

I've come to terms with my dependency on Tums and Pepto Bismol. I know I'll need to sleep for about a month straight when the shit is all done. Luckily, there are rewards along the way.
I was on the phone with Abdul about a week ago. He asked, "How are things going out there, you got to keep your family informed here in SF>" I filled him in. "You know when you get here Abdul, your ass is mine?" I asked him rhetorically. "Sure, baby, I'm coming a week early, I know the M.O." he added. "You know everyone here is really excited about going to DC?" Uh huh.

"We're going to shut SF down, bring the whole damn city. After all, there won't be anything better to do on Labor Day."