Every year hundreds of bike couriers from around the globe descend on a different city for the Cycle Messenger World Championships, with races, arts events and parties celebrating one of the toughest, most enjoyable jobs around. This year the 19th annual worlds take place in Warsaw on July 27-31 (www.warsawcarkillers.org); next year Chicago does the honors (www.chicagocmwc.com).

Augie Montes, an eleven-year veteran of the delivery biz who spearheaded the 2008 North American Cycle Courier Championships [NACCC] in Chicago, told us about the recent championships in Tokyo and Panajachel, Guatemala, and filled us in on the Windy City’s plans for hosting the worlds in 2012.

What’s the purpose of the messenger championships?

It’s a chance for folks from all over the world who do the same job to meet each other, hang out and celebrate the fact that it’s a fun job and a unique job due to the culture that’s built up around it.

What countries have you gone to for messenger championships?

I’ve been to a bunch of the NACCCs but the only time I got to leave the country for a world championship was Tokyo in 2009. I always work too much [as an owner-rider at Four Star, a small courier collective] to make it to the other ones.

What was it like being in Japan, hanging out with messengers from all over the world?

That was great. Between the culture shock and messengers just being the way that messengers are – you plop us down in the middle of a situation and everyone just kind of goes nuts and figures out what to do – it was a blast.

The crazy part was, Tokyo being such a huge city, I was kind of shocked by how often I would be riding around by myself and run into groups of people from other countries who just happened to be riding around as well. And then there’d just be packs of us, roaming the streets and checking things out until the next party, race or event. It was everybody just trying to have fun and see as much stuff as possibly and getting to know each other as well as they possibly could. It was really, really positive.

Did you hear anything about how things were in Guatemala last year?

I would have loved to have made it but there was a pretty good crew of people who went out there from Chicago. I heard plenty of stories, including ones about the mudslides that happened right beforehand. It was bad: roads were washed out, towns were disabled, people died.

Despite that happening, the worlds still went pretty damn well, which was kind of incredible. First and foremost it was the people of Panajachel and the people of Guatemala being able to adapt to their situation. And then messengers being kind of knuckleheads, being like, OK, this is what you’re handing us? Let’s see what we can do here.

So Chicago won the bid to host the world championships in 2012. What’s in the works for that?