He Was Stopped For....

Lots of people claim to have been in Northern California bin the 1970's, when Keith Bontrager, Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze and other mountain bike pioneers were barreling down fire trails in Marin and Sonoma County.

I wasn't there, so I'm not going to try to settle the question of who "invented" mountain bikes or mountain biking.  But as with anything in which the earliest developments weren't--and probably couldn't have been--documented, a lot of legends and folklore have arisen.

From a couple of people who probably were there, I've heard that some folks who bought some of the early mountain bikes that were made for the purpose (as opposed to the DIY machines Bontrager, Fisher, Breeze and their peers fashioned from salvaged baloon-tired bombers) used their rigs to transport what was often called "California's biggest cash crop".  And they weren't talking about wine grapes or almonds.

Of course, that cash crop is now essentially legal in the Golden State and in other places.  That, like the end of Prohibition, has put smugglers and bootleggers out of business.  But, as in most places, there are other substances that aren't legal. And there is a demand for those substances, which means that some folks will try to make a living by transporting them.

(Disclosure:  When I was a bike messenger, I found myself making repeat trips to questionable locations with small envelopes and packages.  I didn't ask or tell.)

And, yes, some will transport them by bicycle. That, apparently, is what Terrent Dowdell was trying to do.  Now, the police claim they stopped him for not having "a reflective light" on the front of his bicycle.  I also couldn't help but to notice that Mr. Dowdell is, well, black--in Columbus, Georgia.

Whatever the constables' motivation, they found "drug related items" and arrested him for possession of marijuana and heroin "with intent to distribute."  

Asleep At The...Handlebars?

Is it possible to ride while sleeping?

I may have done just that on at least one occasion.   In particular, I recall a time I picked up a small package on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and delivered it to an office in the Wall Street area--a distance of about 8 kilometers, in traffic.  When I arrived at that office, I opened my eyes and had no idea of how I got there.  And, when I stepped out of the building, my bike was locked to a parking meter.

When you are a messenger, nobody much cares about whether you slept or about anything else you might've done on your bike, as long as the document or package is delivered in a timely fashion, as they say.

It also helps not to have outstanding arrest warrants.  That is what Angela Yates is learning as I write.

Police officers found the 43-year-old sitting on a bicycle, passed out, in a Middlesboro, Kentucky gas station.  They woke her up and found that, in addition to her arrest warrants, she had a criminal summons.

During her arrest, the police searched her property and found a syringe containing a clear substance they believe to be crystal meth.  They also found eight other syringes and other drug paraphernalia.

Yates was then taken to the Bell County Detention Center, where she was strip-searched.  A quart-size bag containing what officials believe to be marijuana, along with another liquid-filled syringe, were found in her possession.  

She faces a number of charges.

If she is using those substances, I can't help but to wonder how she even got on a bicycle!

A Beast Of Burden

For one more day, one more post, I am going to keep up the silly "theme association" I started the other day.

My post on Monday mentioned, in passing, Jean Paul Sartre.  Tuesday's post featured a photo of him on Le Petit Bi, a French folding bicycle developed just as Europe was going to war.  Yesterday, I wrote about another folding bicycle (actually a sort-of folding bike), the Donkey Bike.

So now I'm going to show a bicycle--or its rider, depending on your point of view--serving as a donkey:

From Top At World

Perhaps he is employed by a certain Presidential candidate.  If that's the case, he might not get paid.  Worse, he might need to build a wall around himself if he presses said candidate for what's due, or anything else!

When I was a messenger, I might've built such a wall, or protected myself in some other way, when I went to some of the locales I serviced--especially when I knew what was in some of those packages I carried.  Let's just say that the contents of some of those packets were, um, plant-based and others were chemical.

In other words, although we were employed by a legitimate courier service, my fellow and messengers and I became, at times, offspring of donkeys and horses, if you know what I mean.  I don't think most of us signed on for that.  I know I hadn't.

When I Was A Night Messenger (Sort Of)

As I've mentioned in other posts, I was a bicycle messenger in Manhattan for a year. 

I was so, so young then.  I can say that now:  Many more years have passed since I made my last delivery than I had spent in this world before I made it.  Sometimes I wonder, though, if I've really made any progress since then or whether I've simply found jobs and other situations in which my quirks and flaws work for me, or are simply overlooked.

Perhaps the real reason I can say now that I was so young when I did it is that, really, I couldn't do anything else at that time in my life.  Rarely could I spend more than a couple of minutes with another person, or doing nearly anything else besides riding my bike without feeling anger or sadness or both.  In the space of not much more than a year, two people who were very, very dear to me had died--one suddenly, the other mercifully--and another committed suicide.  The only sort of job I could work was one in which I had only momentary interactions with people who could have told me that I was "wasting" my life by doing what I was doing or that, really, it was all I could do, all I could ever do.  I could satisfy people only for moments, episodically, and I simply had to do a job in which I would be remunerated for doing so.

Those--even more than my physical changes--are reasons why I couldn't do that job today, although sometimes I wish I could.  I understand now how it would be too easy for me to continue with a job in which I give and receive momentary satisfactions and rewards, not think about the future and not have to think about whether or not I was at my best because, really, there was no better or worst, only getting that next package, that next document, that next slice of pizza (Yes, I delivered a couple of those!) to the whoever needed it within the next fifteen minutes--and to never, ever think about it again, or at least until someone else--or even the same person--ordered such a delivery later in the day, the following day, the following week. 

In short, there was no future.  And there was no past because, really, no one else cared about anything else, as long as he (most of our customers were men) got a timely delivery. It didn't matter that I was a creative genius who had not been recognized or that I was stupid enough to believe I was one and angry enough to feel that others less deserving (which included just about everybody else) were being recognized and rewarded in ways I wasn't.

If I would have changed anything about my job, I would have wanted to work at night.   There was something I liked about navigating the city's byways in the dark--or by streetlights, anyway, and the shadows they and the nightlights of small offices and furnished rooms cast.  Of course, had I worked at night, I probably would have been making even more of those runs to then-seedy parts of the city (or to more gilded places with their own written codes of omerta) with envelopes and small packages, all the while pretending (or telling myself) I had no idea of what was in them.

There's nothing new about that aspect of being a bicycle messenger, a job that's been around for almost as long as the bicycle itself.  Back in the days of the first Bike Boom in the US (roughly from the mid-1880s until the first years of the 20th Century), night messengers delivered telegrams for telegraph offices.  They also, not surprisingly, ran side errands, such as fetching cigarettes and delivering "notes". I put quotation marks around that word because nightclubs, brothels and other establishments that operated after, say, 10pm sent and received them. So they were "notes" in the same sense as some of those envelopes I found myself delivering to the same addresses over and over again.

Those messengers were, as often as not, pre-teen boys.   In those days, kids were put to work practically the day after they learned how to walk.  But for jobs like those of night messenger and chimney-sweeper, the boys were often recruited out of orphanages or "reform" schools.  In other words, they were the ones "nobody would miss".

Jacob Riis documented them, as well as other children, women and immigrants who worked in squalid and dangerous conditions, in How The Other Half Lives.    His eloquent writing and starkly, beautifully poignant photographs helped people to learn about the conditions in which people like the messenger boys lived and worked.  They also were instrumental in passing legislation such as the New York law--among the first of its kind--prohibiting people under the age of 21 from working as messengers after 10 pm.

A few times I made deliveries after that hour, or before the break of dawn. Somehow I don't imagine they were co-op sales agreements or copies of professionals' credentials.  I know, though, that even though I was old enough to work those hours, I was still very, very young.

Get Out Of My Way!

If you read the post I wrote yesterday, you might not believe what I'm about to say.

OK, here goes:  When I sluicing the glass and concrete canyons of Manhattan--delivering everything from the title for land on which towers would be built, pizza with anchovies and pineapple (it smelled even worse than it sounds!), an Andy Warhol print (to Judy Collins, no less!), payroll documents and little packages with their unwritten, unspoken "don't ask, don't tell" policies, if you know what I mean--cab, truck and limo drivers actually used to back or steer out of my way when they saw me coming. 

Then again, if you knew me in those days, you'd know I'm not exaggerating.  Heck, people used to cross the street when they saw me.  I was young, full of testosterone--and angry, about being full of testosterone as well as other things, real and imagined.

Being a bike messenger was probably the one job (OK, one of the two or three, perhaps) in which being young and angry--and stupid enough to believe that my anger was a sign of how smart and sensitive I was--served me well.  I was quick; I got lots of deliveries and tips and a few gifts.  And, oh yeah, a couple of dates:  I guess it has something to do with what you've heard about sex with crazy people.  (It's true.  The only problem is that, once the act is done, you have that crazy person to deal with.)  It's probably a good thing I was a bike messenger:  It's probably one of the few jobs in which I could physically channel my rage and not get myself into trouble--let alone get paid for it! 

Now, if you've been reading this blog--or if you know me--you know I'm not the badass I imagined myself to be--or, at least, tried to make people believe I was.  I know that and, honestly, I'm happy about it.  Everything in life--including bike riding--is better even if I don't have the physical strength I once did.

Still, I take pride in knowing this guy has nothing on the bike messenger I was back in the day:

From Engadget

 

Riding Through Five-Minute Monsoons

The sky is an iron-gray pall.   Every hour or so, curtains of rain fall from it for about five minutes.  Then it disappears, as if it were merely a hologram and once again the gray sky looms for another hour.

If you happen to be outside when the rain falls, you will get soaked.  Then, when the rain stops, you will ride or walk around sheathed by your wet clothes--if, of course, you didn't have rain gear.

I think now of times I made deliveries on days like this when I was a messenger.  The funny thing was that I could walk into some of the swankest buildings and stuffiest offices, soaked to my skin, and people in suits that cost more than I made in a month didn't blink an eye.  Sometimes they would even offer me a cup of coffee.  

(Once, when I made a delivery at the Pierre Hotel, someone--a manager, I presume--offered me lunch.  I took him up on it and promised that if I ever needed to stay in a hotel in New York, I would not consider any other.  I don't think he held me to it.)

I pedaled and delivered in the most soaking of downpours, against winds magnified in the concrete canyons of Wall Street and Midtown, and with needles of sleet stinging my face. And, yes, in the snow.

But I had nothing on these folks in Mumbai, India:

For that matter, I don't think the US Postal Service does, either. Nor did the US Postal Team:

Those guys were in Indonesia. Isn't it funny that the folks in the background, under an umbrella, don't seem as submerged as the guys on bikes.

When rain comes suddenly and you don't have rain gear, you can do one of three things:  You can wait it out.  You can ride it and get wet.  Or you can improvise:

Today I took a brief ride and packed my foldable rain slicker.  And, yes, I rode through two five-minute monsoons.

How Did I Ride Then?

Back when I was young, skinny and in shape--and, I must say, full of testosterone (and, according to some people, some things I can't mention on this blog)--I would sometimes push other cyclists up hills or into the wind--or simply help them get home.  I won't reveal their identities lest they or their friends happen to be reading this, in which case, you know who you are!

And I'll admit to grabbing the back of a truck or a bus and letting it pull me along.  In my defense, I'll say that I did it while riding a fixed gear, so I was still pedaling.  I will also mention that I did it only while I was working as a messenger.  Somehow the other messengers knew if you'd never done it, and that would put a gap in your street cred bigger than any pothole any of us ever dodged!

So, even though I have both pushed and been pulled while on my bike, I couldn't quite tell which was happening in this photo.  Both, perhaps?



Speaking of potholes:  OK, I'll admit there were a couple I didn't couldn't dodge.  So there were times I rode on wheels that weren't quite true or round.  But I'm not sure I ever rode on any like these:



Both of these photos come from the Guy Sports blog.

Is Snow The Only Thing Falling?

I woke up to snow fluttering down my window.  The flakes weren't turning into mounds, or even a scrim of powder on the streets, so I thought I'd go for a ride--and, maybe, catch some snowflakes on my tongue. (It's one of my guilty pleasures!)  But, as soon as I got out the door, the snow turned to sleet and the streets and sidewalks were being glazed with slush that, in spots, would slick with ice.  Even on my bikes with fenders, I wasn't going to ride in that.  

In my youth, I might've.  Actually, I more than likely would have.  Riding in conditions nobody else would was a point of pride, almost of definace.  I think now of the time in Vermont when the temperature dropped from 50 to 15F (10 to -10C) and a partly cloudy day turned to rain, sleet, then snow, the latter of which fell as I was descending a mountain.  I also remember the time I rode down a virage in the French Alps, near Arly-sur-Praz, on a fully loaded bike as rain fell and a loaded lumber truck rumbled--and, was that a skid I heard?--around one of those hairpin turns.  And, when I was a bike messenger, I had to ride in conditions worse than what I saw today.  

Am I getting lazy, soft, or just old?  I don't think the day was a waste:  I read, wrote and had lots of cuddle time with Max and Marley.  Still, I have to wonder about what's becoming of me.  Perhaps I no longer cast a shadow.  Then again, nobody does on a day like this.

Photo by Roland Tanglao

A Way I've Never Commuted

In my four decades or so of cycling to and from work, school or any other place I had to be on a regular basis, I carried stuff in a variety of ways. 

Most recently, I've used my Koki pannier and Carradice Nelson Longflap saddlebags for the purpose.  At other times, I've stuffed the panniers I used on my previous bike tour with books, manuscripts, student papers, changes of clothing and shoes, lunch or other food and a few things I won't mention.  At other times, I've used backpacks, messenger bags (I was a NYC messenger for a year.), front baskets, milk crates zip-tied (or cinched with old toe straps) on a rear rack and plastic shopping bags tied to my handlebars orframe (or dangled from my fingers),  I've carried everything from baguettes to an Andy Warhol work under my left arm as I steered with my right, and even balanced things on my handlebars or head. I've even carried pizzas in a variety of ways, including balancing i in my raised left hand (a la the Statue of Liberty) while steering with my right, or clamping the corners of the boxes between my thumb and forefinger while grasping my handlebars with the other three fingers of each hand.

But for all of the ingenious (if I do say so myself) and stupid tricks I've employed as a bicycle commuter and messenger, I have nothing on this person:

From Bike Roswell

What I Carried In The Original Messenger Bag

Sometimes I wish I'd saved the bag I used when I was pedaling the canyons of Manhattan to deliver legal documents, fabric samples, slices of pizza (!),manuscripts--and a few envelopes and packages with their own unwritten "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies attached, if you know what I mean.

That was a strange time in my life. I had a college degree. I'd lived and worked in Paris.  But I had absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do next.  Actually, I didn't want to know:  I knew that I could be turned into a writer and/or an educator, in some fashion or another, but I was too angry to want those things, or much of anything else. And I was stupid enough to think that sort of anger made me superior to-- or, at least, more sensitive or wounded than-- other people.

I told family members and my few friends (actually, by that time, one friend) that I wasn't ready to commit to a profession, or to even work in an office.  The truth was that I couldn't have done those things, to please them or anyone else.  And there simply wasn't anything else motivating me to do those things--or much of anything else, quite frankly.


A grandmother and an uncle who were very close to me had recently died.  And a friend had committed suicide. Of course, I had other demons and ghosts as well.  I didn't think anyone else could understand them; in truth, they didn't even make sense to me.  So,  I didn't want to talk, much less answer, to anyone unless I absolutely had to. 


So what else could I have been, at that time in my life, but a messenger?  


Remember that in those days--circa 1983--there was absolutely no status in being a messenger.  It wasn't a job that hipsters (or their equivalents in those days) did.  And only the really hard-core cyclists rode fixed-gear bikes; they weren't the status symbols of those who were trying to show, or make themselves or their friends believe, they weren't bourgeois.  


At that time, messenger bags weren't fashionable accessories.  


So, when I stopped messengering (Surely some English teacher told you "Gerunding nouns is wrong."  I didn't listen. It just figures that I teach English now.),  I sold my bag without thinking about it.  I'd just begun to work for American Youth Hostels, when it was located on Spring Street and the neighborhood still had some halfway interesting art and sandwich shops with names like "Rocco and His Brothers." One guy, named Judah, used to hang out there when he wasn't making his rounds on his old  Peugeot.  He had been a messenger, it seemed, since before the rest of us were born.  I used to see him on the streets when I was dodging cabs and pedestrians for my commissions.  So, at one time or another, did every other messenger in Manhattan.  


He told me that a friend of his was going follow him into the business I'd just left and therefore needed a messenger bag.  I'd used mine for about a year. Smog, slush, rain, pizza drippings, spilled drinks-- and a couple of burns from cigarettes that weren't made by companies that contributed to the campaigns of Southern politicians-- left their almost-still-viscous mosaic on the once-bright green canvas. Still, the bag was as strong as it was the day I bought it.  So, Judah's courier- novitiate friend paid me not much less than I paid for the bag.


When I bought it new, it was just like the bag in this photo--except, of course, that mine was green:

It was made--to my order--by a small company called Globe Canvas, which was located in the basement of some building in Chinatown, if I remember correctly.   The guy who, it seemed, was Globe Canvas asked which messenger service I was working for.  From my answer, he knew which size and color bag to make.  He was an older Italian gentleman and seemed like one of those forces of nature that always did, and always would be doing, whatever you saw him doing.  I hear that he died a couple of years ago.  I'm not surprised, as he was far from being a young man even then.


Anyway, these days, it seems that every other company that makes a messenger bag--or, more precisely, a bag that reflects the self-conscious aspirations to hipness of its owner as much as the style of the bag I carried for a year--says that theirs is the "original."  


I say that if any bag was the original, nobody would--or could--buy it.  Only the down-and-out, reject-of-society messenger of yore could ever have had such a thing.  And he wouldn't be bragging about it.


It was a great bag, though.  Almost nothing you can buy today is as well-made.  I'd love to have it now, even if I haven't used a messenger bag since the day I made my last delivery.