Last week was the 2016 North American Cycle Courier Championship. It was the first time the event was held in NYC. With the help of the 33rd police precint, several streets were closed down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn so that a race course could be made and no cars were permitted to enter the premises. NACCC is an event for bike messengers all over the world to come together and celebrate their work. Its also a competition to see who is the best courier. The race course had 12 checkpoints, and each checkpoint was occupied by a sponsor of the event. at the start of the race you are handed a manifest with a list of checkpoints you must pick up packages from and then deliver to. You can complete them in any order but you must follow the rules of the course. First of all you can only travel with traffic and going against it will result in disqualification. At each checkpoint you must lock your bike or event staff will steal your bike and hide it. Also at each checkpoint the sponsers will act as clients so if you offend them in anyway you will also be disqualified, so its important that you are polite to everyone. The top 25% of messengers to complete the manifest the fastest adavance to the finals to compete for the NACCC champion. There are other side events where messengers compete to see who can bunny hop the highest, drift the longest, popping a wheelie, and who can do the best tricks on a bicycle in general. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to raise awareness about the services that delivery people provide to the world.
