My job at Whole Foods Market allowed me to transfer to a store here in Chicago. Fortunately, I hated my job here, and heard a calling to be a bike messenger. I thought it would be great to do something I loved and get paid for it. Being a messenger has been the best job I’ve ever had. My first alleycat was a Tour da Chicago race that went up and down thered line el. Believe it or not, I was keeping up with the leaders, with a cinder block in my bag for extra cash. I finished somwhere in the middle of nearly a hundred riders. A few weeks later, my roommate UV took me to the Stuporbowl, a freezing alleycat in Minneapolis. My racing partner Tony lead me around to checkpoints all over the city. I took first place out of towner. It’s a drive to just keep going faster and faster. We do it the same way on the streets of Chicago. My mountain bike skills helped out cutting through cars in the loop and built up some legs strong enough to try amateur racing at XXXracing, a team my bud Marcus began years ago, with the core of the team being bicycle messengers of Chicago. Since then, I’ve spent a couple of years racing various disciplines and learning about my body.
There’s a line in one of my favorite movies, the Blues Brother. They’re driving crazy in the streets of Chicago, when one of the brothers looks at the other and says, “We’re on a mission from God, we’re getting the band back together.” Well, we’re not on a mission from God or anything, but we do want to get back to the core of cycling with the same heartbeat. That’s our drive for the birth of the Cuttin’ Crew racing team.