Photo by Roxy Erickson

1st: Mercenaries (Chicago/Brooklyn)
2nd: The Militia (Madison)
3rd: Hero Squad 2 (MKE)

More detailed write-up to follow, and probably a lot more photos too.

• Games will last twelve minutes, or until one team has 5 points, whichever comes first.  From the semi-finals onwards, games go to 5 points regardless of time
  
• Foot down
• Players must not touch the ground, or “foot-down”. Each time a player goes
  foot-down, that player is out of play and may not play the ball until touch the sideline at center court. Then they may return to play.
• No kicking the ball, but you may block the ball with any part of your body. Kicking the ball (adding momentum to ball with foot) counts as footdown. Blocking the ball with foot does not.
  

"We're going to DC, we're going to DC!" Those were the words sung by Nan, high up on Ben's shoulders, at 9pm on Friday night. The catering gig was finished, and we were about to get in the volvo 240 with 300,000 miles on it, loaded down with a full trunk and five bikes on a bike rack made for three.

As General Manager, Nan was allowed to choose our team name. I wanted something to represent my disdain for DC and my foreigner status, so i proposed The Burning of Washington. But Nan wouldn't have any of it, and when presented with the option of naming us after her favourite train engine, Gordon, she jumped. So we became "Gordon is the Biggest and the Fastest and the Strongest..."

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Day 1

Things went really well (fast interstate sailing, beautiful sunrise) until we got to West Virginia. Then in the space of 20 minutes, our would-be-head coach and friend from NYC called to cancel, and the muffler fell off. Nan was instantly promoted from GM to head coach, which basically meant hanging out with the local kids on the swing set, and eating lots of candy.

So awesome to see fresh faces, new blood, and an all women's team that kicks ass. Some random things:

1) Tournaments: Saturday October 27 in Milwaukee, and uh, "save the date": June 16-18 2008 at the cycle messenger world championships in toronto, and Labor Day weekend 2008 at the NACCC in Chicago.

2) Bikes: we need some 275mm spokes to fix up some wheels. anyone got quick access to em? It's nice that we all share bikes, but five people have each put in about $150 towards wheels and generously lend their crap out when they're not on the court--one person for an entire year while he's training in high altitude. Jonny has put in countless hours of labour. others have put in a lot of time fixing flats and broken spokes or building their own bikes. please help with $ or labour where you can.