#21
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bike messenging
exterminate all rational thought wrote:
thanks Robert, very good stuff. but this news about the required running of lights is too bad. you see i want to try to do something different one or two days per week to get away from what i do now which is basically watch people die (harborview). and im tired of seeing CHI S/P bike vs (pole, car, ped, sidewalk etc.) the reason it hasnt been me is because i keep myself seen and safe. again thanks for the help. keep safe! -alan Alan, I appreciate your safety-first mentality, which, you may be surprised to learn, is something you and I share. I too have seen plenty of people, friends, lying in hospital beds, seriously injured, maimed for life, and I have no desire to go that way myself. Keep in mind that when an experienced rider is injured in a car-bike collision it is statistically likely that the rider was riding lawfully and was not 'at fault' in the collision. Most of these wrecks involve a driver who fails to notice a cyclist, while, in turn, the cyclist fails to notice this failure to notice. So you see it is really the cyclist's awareness, not his adherance to traffic law, that is the critical factor determining whether or not he gets crunched. I believe it can be shown that rolling through red lights is statistically safer than rolling through green lights for experienced adult riders. This is because adult riders tend to approach red light running with a heightened sense of awareness, whereas they tend to approach greens in a state akin to REM sleep. And the hazards associated with green light intersections--right hooks, cars turning in front of you or into you from the right and left, light runners, jaywalkers, failures to notice the cyclist from all sides, the fun never ends--demand a heightened sense of awareness also. Bike messengers run reds on a constant basis, yet if you made some sort of tally you would find that they are injured more often under green lights than red ones. Myself, I've busted about a half million red lights, literally, and never been touched. My only serious car-bike collision came when I was riding in a completely legal and proper 'vehicular' fashion. You wouldn't have to ride packages for very long to realize that red lights can be had as safely as greens (or, green lights are just as dangerous as reds) and that 'keep myself seen' is a horribly limited strategy for safe cycling. Ultimately, there is only so far that 'keep myself seen' can get you, then you're on your own. If there is anything that being a bike messenger will teach, it's that motorist vision and capacity to notice cyclists is fundamentally unreliable, and that it's ultimately up to the rider, plain and simple, to find a way to deal with this reality and thus stay out of the ER. You have to ride in such a way that dependence on motorist vision is absolutely minimized. Don't put your eggs in that basket. Following traffic laws and striving for visibility to others may be good and joyful things, but they really have very little to do with staying out of the ER. So I say get that messenger job. Run those lights. Be careful, no matter what color they are. Have fun. Robert |
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#22
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bike messenging
Geezer Boy wrote:
This is all fascinating. May I be so rude as to ask what these better jobs pay Just enough to move into a nice neighborhood, make the neighbors nervous, and depress the property values. many hours per week work? Varies. I do four days, about 35 hours. Wednesdays, Mondays, or Fridays are the best days to take off, in that order. R |
#23
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bike messenging
greggery peccary wrote:
hey i'm thinking about applying to work as a messenger. i know there are some of youse who do this and could use your worldly advice. are these jobs hard to get? i am thinking it could be fun because i love riding downtown and im pretty good at it. im not a racer but in good shape. i do follow the traffic laws (unlike most messengers ive seen). are there some services in the seattle area that are better than others? years ago i was a super shuttle driver in la and didnt like the dispatch favotitism there. can i avoid this? -alan ok, I'm not a messenger, but this ****ed me off and probably would really infuriate one: http://www.nike.com/nikelab/time_travels/index.jhtml Robert, What's your take on this? \\paul -- Useless Note: I really can't stand Nike. As a musician, I watched them rip off a Minor Threat (one of the most influential punk bands) album cover buy changing the red/black image to blue/black, changing "minor" to "major" (the name of the skateboard tour was "Major Threat), and the kicker: putting Nike swooshes on Ian Macaye's shoes. Nike's labor practices and they indulgent consumeristic nature surround their products is something that Minor Threat and especially Ian's later band, Fugazi, really spoke out against. Needless to say fans of the bands (skateboarders, funny enough) spoke out loud enough against the poster than Nike pulled it. Paul M. Hobson Georgia Institute of Technology ..:change the words to numbers if you want to reply to me:. |
#24
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bike messenging
Paul Hobson wrote:
Robert, What's your take on this? I was not infruriated. Mildly annoyed maybe. I do hope the guy in there, if he is a real messenger, got some real cash to be exploited and embarrassed like that. I don't think we've seen the peak of corporate America's appropriation of messengers and messenger images. They are always about 15 years behind. I think/hope we will start seeing more elaborate footage of pro messengers' smooth riding in traffic which was hinted at in the Lucas Brunelle alleycat videos. It warms my heart to see old pros doing their thing--can't fake that. Robert |
#25
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bike messenging
Greggery, most of what the experienced messengers have written seems
true to me. I worked for Quik Trak in Manhattan (quik-trak.com) for the summer of 1997 and can honestly say it was the most fun job I have ever had. It was the summer after my sophmore year, my dad had just moved to the city for work, and I had nothing to do. I flew up, and within a week I had a job. Here are my thoughts: I got a job pretty quickly for a number of reasons. I showed up in bike garb -- they said later that they could tell I was a cyclist. Also, many of the people whom Quik Trak employed at the time seemed to me to be the transient type -- so they always had openings. Don't get me wrong, QT definitely had some hot shot riders like the ones who have been posting to this thread, but there were only a few of those. What they saw in me I guess was a responsible, well-educated guy who was going to show up on time and do the best he could. They did know that I was new to the city, but that was OK. Of course, that meant that I didn't make much money for a while. Also, I should say that I wouldn't have been able to make it if I had been covering all the bills. Being able to crash at my dad's helped, obviously. At that time, Quik Trak paid on a 50 percent commission. Back then their base charge was $7.50 per package, so the rider's take would have been $3.25 for that delivery. But the real money came in when it was out of your home zone, or if it was a "double" or "triple rush," or if it was a night rate package after 5 pm. I remember some deliveries costing the client as much as $50, so my take was $25 just for that one item. Being new, I definitely didn't get the best jobs. My dispatcher was kind and courteous to me, but I know he had riders on his roster he was loyal to. That's OK, over the course of about 6 weeks I know I had proved myself to be reliable, and that helped. I probably averaged only $70 per day during those first weeks, but later on I was able to clear $100. My biggest day was around $170 and about 33 packages -- I was exhausted. Some fun memories we riding up Riverside Drive to Harlem; delivering ice cream to the set of Regis and Kathy Lee; learning to hold on to trucks; learning a good trackstand; delivering to the World Trade Center. Of course, there were really bad days, too. The first week I wanted to quit. I could have killed myself a couple of times. Once my chain broke when I was, foolishly, riding between two buses. I was hit by taxis three times, one time taco-ing my front wheel, but never getting injured somehow. I learned a LOT about in-traffic riding. Now that I am a struggling singer who teaches college, I often remember my messenger days with great pleasure. You should definitely give it a try. There's nothing to lose, right? Best wishes, Oliver |
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