What On Earth Would You Choose to Do That For? (part1)

Reflection in Toronto City Hall, fall 2011

The truth is, I wasn’t always a bike messenger. I wasn’t always a cycling advocate, and I didn’t always care so much when I heard about a cyclist that was maimed or killed by a driver. I didn’t always know how bikes work, or how to change a flat, or even how to cross streetcar tracks properly.

Before I made my money as a messenger, I was a snack bar attendant at a movie theatre, a salesperson at a skate shop, a waitress, and a co-op co-ordinator for an illegitimate Chinese business school. Most recently, I was a data entry temp for a huge insurance company in Toronto.

Yep, I had the chance to be making $20+ per hour with benefits, but I chose the unstable life of a contract courier who plays fetch on a bike in all weather – rain, sleet, snow, hail – five days a week all year round.

I remember that spring back in 2004, after I spent what would have been my first winter as a courier working for the insurance company, gazing out at the springtime from my cubicle, and wishing I was riding. My manager hated me, and I hated him – he seemed pretty friendly to other people, but he just didn’t talk to me for months and only noticed me when I fucked up. My supervisor hated me, and I hated her – I called her “Nominy” behind her back, because that’s how she pronounced the word “normally”. The temp company told me I would be working “temporary to permanent” for a three-month contract. If they kept me for 3 months, chances are they’d hire me on, but I knew one lady that was working there as a temp for two years before they decided to hire her. The work was tedious and mind-numbing, and when I looked out the window, all I wanted to do was ride my bike. The cafeteria sold dinner food for cheaper than lunch prices and I gained 20lbs that winter. They wouldn’t let me use the employee gym either, because I was just a temp. There was a girl in another section with the same job as me, hooked up through the same temp agency, making more money than I was. I knew I’d be applying for grant money for music so I stole as much paper and office supplies as I felt I could get away with. One of those grants – that I’d delivered during my lunch break during a rainstorm – netted me $5000 and helped me write my second EP: http://redsonia.bandcamp.com

I didn’t have a TV at the time and all the office drones could talk about was the first season of American Idol. I was so not interested. I remember this one lady on the floor, she was so nice. She’d just come back from maternity leave, so legally the boss has to give her back her old job. I’d just really started to get to know her as she was being trained to change positions. She was under a lot of stress and she’d confided in me that she’d been trained to do her job the wrong way, and she was pretty sure it was on purpose. Every time she went to execute some task, the boss (that I hated, that hated me) would reprimand her, and she was getting frustrated because there was no one she could ask for help. Who could she turn to? The cubicle-heads who trained her wrong?

Eventually, the situation came to a head and she was fired. Her husband was a street salter, spring was upon us so he was supposed to be Mr. Mom for the baby’s second year in life, while she was the breadwinner. I couldn’t believe it. The American Idol bitches had this lady fired, and for what? I just couldn’t see it, and I sure as shit couldn’t abide by it.

At least on the road, I knew what I was in for. If someone wants to tell you to fuck off, that’s what they do. They don’t talk shit for endless hours, plot and scheme and get you fired when you have a new baby to take care of. I mean, some people do sit around and gossip for endless hours, but they have little bearing on your job performance. Out there, you’re on your own. Your work ethic, how you perform, where you fit in the team shines through to your boss. He’s the only one who has any say on whether you stay or go.

Things are straightforward when you’re a messenger. You keep your head down, do your job, don’t mouth off to clients. Your boss asks you to double back for something, you say “yes sir”, “ten four”, “no problem sir” and you just do it because after you put in your time, you earn your stripes, you gain the respect of your crew and you start making the money that goes along with it. Sure, you’ve got the poseurs, the ones that start out with the sexiest bike and the biggest, cleanest one-strap bag that mommy and daddy can buy, the ones that care more about how they look when they’re playing fetch than actually being any good at it. Thank heavens, those ones rarely last. Or, I guess, on the opposite end of the spectrum, they blink and 10 years have gone by and they realize that even Tim Horton’s wouldn’t hire them now so they become bitter, jaded old men. Either way, I don’t let them bother me.

See, I started my first messenger job in the spring of 2003. I didn’t have the right bike (Infinity Telluride girl’s mountain bike from Costco), I didn’t have the right clothes (that keep you comfortable in all weather), I didn’t have the right gloves, the right socks, I didn’t have cycling tights, I didn’t have any of that. All I had was $1 stretchy gloves, a long-brimmed army surplus cap and a will of steel.

I started on one of these. Costco Infinity Telluride ladies mountain bike.

The day I was fired from that job, it was 2 degrees Celsius and had started raining – hard – at noon. By 2pm, the plastic bags I’d put on my feet to keep them dry had filled up with water and burst. I was on a south-bound run around St. Clair and Christie and one of my co-workers got on the open radio and whined, “boss, can I come into the office? I’m soaking wet and freezing.” Well, that’s just great, homeboy. How about I just keep working and pick up your slack, I thought. By 3:30pm the entire crew was AWOL except for me, the lone soldier for the next hour. I finished downtown, with a 20 minute ride home, at 5pm.

All the way, I talked to myself to keep myself from I don’t know what – falling over? Collapsing? Giving up? Being defeated? I was reminding myself of what rewards I had waiting for me at home: “warm shower, warm blanket, warm boyfriend, warm puppy.” I repeated it aloud, over and over and over again.

By the time I got home that day, my feet were cold and numb and felt like bricks, my hands didn’t work and my boyfriend at the time had to help me get my jacket and wet clothes off and get into the shower. I’d never been so cold before in my life.

The next day, the forecast was the same. I called my boss and told him I couldn’t handle it for a second day in a row, seeing as I was the one holding things together the day before. So he fired me.

At the time, it was easier for me to get another temp job than to try and find a decent messenger company to ride out the winter. So there I was, sitting in the insurance company cubicle, looking at my bike parked below, hearing the office bitches in the next cubicle talk shit about other ladies on the floor for the umpteenth hour in a row for the umpteenth day in a row. I was absentmindedly watching the birds on the windowsill when I made my decision right then and there: “fuck this shit.”

That day, I decided that I would suffer  - Buddha himself said that life was suffering for everyone, so it’s unavoidable in the end of things, isn’t it? I decided I would work hard at the toughest easy job in the world and I would suffer at it as an offering to the most high. I would do my best and earn an honest living and every time I caught brick-foot, I’d just give that to God and keep moving. From that day forth, I would make that decision, eyes wide open, and I would own it. I would be strong, proud, and I would not accept anyone's pity. Don't feel sorry for me when it rains or snows. I actually enjoy it, so please, don't tell me "I don't envy your job today," because I don't envy your job ANY day. I’d do auditions, I’d do shows, I’d rap, I’d record my first EP, book as much time off with the boss as I wanted, I’d get good at this messenger thing and I’d plug away at this rap thing and sometime, someway, somewhere in the middle it’d all come together. Right?

My longest relationship, 7 winters, is with Kirin the Kraptastic Kuwahara - Bike Love.