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On the job with Scram! bike couriers
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By Jason Joyce
The Daily Page, June 7, 2006
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/node/1646
On a beautiful early-summer day, the bike messengers who ride for
Scram! Couriers might just have the best job in the city. Piloting
their bikes along city streets while the rest of us chumps sit at our
desks watching them ride by, the Scrammers are well aware of their
privileged position in the day-to-day commerce of downtown Madison.
"It's kind of like a hobby you get paid for," says Peter Brinson, a
Scram! veteran.
Brinson and fellow messengers Jonny Hunter, Leif Martinson, April
Williamson and Scram! owner Rick Cathcart recently joined The Daily
Page on a downtown sidewalk to discuss their glamorous gig, competitive
messengering and the earth-friendly reasons to use Scram! instead of
car-based services.
The Daily Page: How hard do you guys work on a typical day?
Cathcart: We typically get between 20 and 40 jobs a day. This is
turning out to be our slow season, maybe because it's so nice and
people who would normally use us are opting to get out and take it
themselves. Some of our clients have told us that we've actually
influenced them to start riding a bike to work.
Do you have a hard time keeping riders during the winter?
Cathcart: Back in the '80s was the heyday of the bike messenger scene.
There were a couple of startups in town and keeping up service through
the winter was always kind of an issue. There's a lot of enthusiasm for
riding on a day like today. But when it's 20 below or there's golf ball
sized hail...
Hunter: In the winter, there's no one walking. You don't have to worry
about running into people and you can get a lot more work. It's only
really bad if it's 35 and raining. Or negative five.
Martinson: Plus you can put on all your gear and you look like a ninja.
Madison keeps winning awards for being a great city for bike commuters
and recreational riders. Is that true for messengers?
Brinson: We say Madison is where bike messengers go to retire. There
are bike paths everywhere, there are a lot of days like this where it's
perfect outside and drivers are, for the most part, pretty respectful
of bikers. They see them, they usually know how to behave around them.
I think it's pretty safe, personally.
Williamson: I don't think I'd do this in a bigger city like New York or
Chicago. I'd feel too weak or scared.
That observation doesn't seem to fit in with the stereotype of bike
messengers as these hell-bent-for-leather renegades who never obey
traffic laws.
Hunter: We obey all traffic laws.
[laughter]
Brinson: Seriously, you obey traffic laws not because you're some kind
of pussy who's not cool enough to run a red light. But because if you
run a red light, you increase your chances of getting hit or injured.
Safety comes first. I've done some things on shifts where I've looked
back and been like, damn, I really shouldn't have done that. If I had
been there a half a second later, I would have been toast. And I never
want to feel like that.
With fixed-gear bikes being seen all over, messenger bags and even
rolled-up pants fashionable right now, it seems like the bike messenger
thing is kind of a fad. Are you aware of that?
Williamson: I look less like a bike messenger than half the kids in
Madison and I actually am one.
Cathcart: The fixed-gear craze has evolved from using them in condensed
metropolitan areas like New York or Chicago where you have your
financial district or your legal district which are very compact and
flat. There, having a fixed-gear bike is a big plus because they're
very simple, there's no maintenance, there are very few components to
break down or wear out. And it's a little bit lighter bike. Madison's
different. It's pretty spread out and you have a few hills and it
doesn't lend itself to fixed gears nearly as well as a flat grid.
Do any of you race? I'd think you'd have an inherent advantage with all
the miles you log in a week.
Hunter: There are messenger races that get put on, and that's the main
form of competitive biking for most of us.
You mean there are special events just for bike messengers? What goes
on there?
Brinson: There are tons of different types of races. There are arm
wrestling tournaments. Art shows and music. Critical mass rides.
Hunter: It's like a big urban bike festival. Scram! puts on a race each
year.
Cathcart: Unofficially, Scram! puts on a race.
Brinson: If someone takes the initiative and puts it on, it happens.
But it's very informal.
Cathcart: It's not really a spectator race. Calling it a scavenger hunt
is more accurate. You get a clue sheet and everybody kind of goes off
on their own. So you don't have this group of riders madly racing down
the street.
Martinson: One of the advantages is that you can make your own route.
You win by having the best route.
What kinds of packages do you deliver?
Hunter: You name it. Fresh pretzels from the Essen Haus. I pulled five
computer CPU's in the trailer a little while ago.
Brinson: I still maintain that the best all time package was the day I
delivered an email. I got paid to go and check my email account, print
out this email and deliver it out somewhere west of the beltline to
this road that wasn't on my map. The whole thing was very fishy.
What message do you use to compete with the car and truck delivery
companies?
Brinson: A lot of clients are very excited about not having to rely on
a car to get their packages where they need to go. Some people are
surprised that Madison has a bike messenger service and that we get out
as far as we do.
Cathcart: There are a lot of progressive-minded firms in town and we do
business with a fair number of them. But the flip side is that it's the
Midwest and the business world is inherently conservative. The idea of
sending a $10k set of drawings on a bike in winter is a little
different. But we've never, in all the hundreds of thousands of jobs
that we've done over the last five years, had one incident where
anything got wrecked.
Hunter: I think part of the reason all of us do it is because we care
about petroleum issues. I really believe in not using cars. Part of why
I ride for Scram! is that bit of exhaust I save every day through
delivering packages adds up quite a bit. And that's something I really
care about. I also care about my city and fewer cars and fewer cabs
trying to run over bikers is a big issue for me.
Cathcart: I also feel pretty strongly about using bikes instead of
other pollution-creating vehicles, whether it's a car or a scooter,
which is my pet peeve right now. The pollution scooters kick out is
horrendous, many, many cars-worth. And people don't realize that. We're
people-powered, we don't make any pollution.
Brinson: And there's not much we can't pull.
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