Bike Snob - Anonymous [26]
Of course, as I ask this I realize exactly where the Great Obvious Bicycle Metaphor was. Firstly, just like bikes don’t steer themselves, they also don’t lock themselves. You’ve got to lock them with strong locks to things that can’t be moved. And even the strongest lock will not keep a bicycle attached to the leg of a mailbox when you haven’t noticed that the bolts securing the mailbox to the sidewalk have been removed. So basically, I had simply locked my beloved bicycle to a booby trap.
Secondly, yes, I absolutely loved working as a bike messenger. The rhythms of messengering agreed with me like no job ever has, as did the fact that any responsibility lasted only as long as you had a package inside your bag. Once that manifest is signed, your work is done. There’s no follow-up and no stress to take home. It was as if I could leave my future to percolate in some other dimension while I spent all my time riding my bike. Basically, I’d wake up, and once I was ready to work I’d call my dispatcher, who would send me to my first pickup. I’d then spend the day riding my bike all over the city. It was an especially enjoyable sort of riding, because while it was totally unpredictable, it wasn’t aimless. Once you’ve got a good relationship with a dispatcher and you’ve proved yourself swift and reliable, a kind of music develops between you. He keeps you in a certain part of the city, and you keep picking up packages until your bag is full or there are no jobs left. Not only has he chosen these pickups because they’re localized, but he’s also picked them because they’re destined for buildings that are along a route that will lead you to another trove of jobs. For example, maybe you’ll spend a half hour picking up six envelopes around Grand Central Station. Then, once you’ve picked the neighborhood clean, you get to fly down Fifth Avenue, dropping them all off along the way until you wind up empty in SoHo where you start all over again.
Sure, it wasn’t always fun. Sometimes, the packages I had to pick up were unwieldy. I didn’t always mind this, since you got paid more for oversized jobs. However, the client was also supposed to tell the company the package was oversized when they called it in, since if you’ve already got a bunch of stuff on you it can be very inconvenient. I once arrived at an office and was presented with a fur coat, which someone was apparently having me bring to some storage facility for his wife. I made a show of carrying it out of the building carefully, and once on the sidewalk I stuffed it into my bag with the sole of my mountain bike shoe. Other times, the packages were just bizarre. At one building in the Financial District I picked up a package that contained a hot meal. I’m not sure why someone was messengering a hot meal—to a radio station DJ at that—but it was actually pretty cold out so the warmth of the package was kind of nice. Then there were the modeling and advertising portfolios, which I’d bring to agencies and photo shoots. These could sometimes be quite large, and there are few things more unpleasant than being stuck in a winter storm at 6:00 P.M. while desperately trying to unload the last of your portfolios so you can finally go home, pull the plastic bags off your feet, and take a hot shower.
But for all the bad stuff I always got to do and see unexpected things. After a while, I certainly felt like I’d been in every building in the city. I could also hear an address and know exactly where a particular building was located. As I said earlier, cyclists have supernatural powers, and mine were becoming quite honed. I was fit and I was completely at ease on the bike. Weaving through city traffic at high speed was actually as soothing as, well, weaving. Best of all, I only had to set foot in the messenger company’s offices to drop off my manifest or to collect my paycheck. Otherwise, my dispatcher was simply a pleasant voice on the phone, and my days