The Friday Night Alleycat

The paper was soaked in my hand, a soggy rag. I rolled up to the side walk to take shelter from the rain. It was raining hard but hopefully it would not last. I was eager to get on the road but knew from experience that spending a few minutes planning the route can save time later on. I saw Derren and Rebecca there both clutching their wet manifests in their hand as well. At Derrens suggestion we ducked into a laundromat to plan our route. We agreed to attack the city first and then work our way around the northern points after that. It seemed logical at the time. The rain died from a dull roar to a light spatter and we pushed out into the city night. Rebecca’s bike was not built for speed and Derren and I adjusted our speed to account for it. We took the bike path into the city. It was not cold but the rain soaking my arms and legs sent shivers down my spine. The city was heaving with peds and traffic, the buzz of a Friday night. The adrenalin started to pump as we rolled down Murray toward our first location. We scribbled down the sign and rode quickly off. It was thrilling to ride amongst these people. The real thing is still better but as substitutes go the Friday night Alley cat is as good as it gets. You get the traffic, the thrill of the chase and, for a few brief moments, when you’ve warmed up to the task ahead, that Zen moment of cycle messengering, when everything else shuts down, all the noise goes away, and all there is is the cycling, the pedaling, and the traffic. The route you’ve laid out ahead of you and the endless moment as you weave your way through the city traffic.

When I was riding this city for a living it was the drug that dug me out of bed in the mornings, the high I sought with every run and as I learnt the city, over weeks and months it became increasingly harder to find. At first every job would take me somewhere new and thus every job was its own reward. After that every run brought a new way to map the city in my mind, a new way to see the city I lived in. After a while I knew the main routes through the city, I knew a few of the short cuts, a few of the little back alleys and access roads that can shave minutes off a drop. After a while it was the number of jobs I had on, the complexity of the route, the changing nature of that route, rushing east, hiking back up into west, across the tracks and back, 2,3,4 on, more, 5,6,7 on more, more, more! I can get more on, always more. I never wanted to stop, I never wanted to slow down. My goal was to be lost in that moment where every drop off is followed by a pick up or two, or three. I loved it. It wasn’t the speed of the cycling, I am not a fast rider, strong, yes, but not fast, it was the speed of knocking them out. Five minutes per job, four, three if they were locals, more jobs, more money, more riding until 5pm rolled around and you look up, blinking, into the setting sun, wondering where the day has gone.

Like I said an alley cat is a substitute. But we are in the city, three stops down and nine to go. We ride up Beaufort and pull three out quickly. It’s electric now, each point feels like a victory. Alex meets up with us, this alleycat is for him. They call him Quicksilver on account of his apparent similarity to Kevin Bacon. We churn through them but already I am doubting our route. We have William still to do and that runs parralel with Beaufort so we will have to double back on oursleves whichever way we go. We’ve been joined by one more rider and we are loving the ride. The rain comes down again, this time we barely notice. It is hard and fast and the road is slick. I watch Quicksilver bang through a red and disappear past the next check point. It is exciting and the gnawing feeling that we have attacked this all wrong does not spoil that. I think back to Adelaide and the main race there. I fucked that up by going the wrong way too. It is a common mistake. Plenty of riders do it. Riders do it at work too. For some reason I found it easier at work than at play, don’t ask me why, maybe it was the money, always a great motivator, maybe it was the nature of the drop points. Alex skid stops and doubles back as we scribble down the word on the green sticker. I hang back having trouble with my toe clip and afford myself the luxury of belting up Beaufort on the wrong side. The rain against my face and the lights of the oncoming cars energises me and I catch up with the others as we turn left and head toward Lord St. Alex loses us when we slow at a cross roads to regain our group. We ride on toward the check point, four riders, all, unusually, non couriers, although two of us are former couriers.

Courier riding is different to other styles. It is at once faster and slower. Because you are riding for relatively short hops in heavily built up and busy areas you only get up the kind of speeds you would in other cycling disciplines for a short time, if at all. In the daily grind there is as much worth in effective time management off the bike as there is in riding fast. Different people have different ways of approaching it and there are many ways to be an effective courier. I was a steady rider, once my fitness levels were up, I would ride at a reasonably fast pace that pushed me but not excessively so, conscious, as I was, that something had to be kept in reserve. I’d ride with a sense of the full days work rather than from job to job. It may have slowed me down on some stretches but on others it was an advantage. As the afternoon rolled around and the 3pm set runs came up I would always start to push myself that little bit more, partly because it was busy but also because I knew that with only two hours left I could afford to burn the additional energy.
We cross back onto William for the final stretch and that is when I realise just how badly we have screwed up the ride. Starting with the city was all well and good but it meant we rode past two of the first stops on our way in and we now have three stops left two of which are to the south and one of which is to the north. I curse. We split up and two of us head down William street toward Northbridge and two head up into North Perth. It won’t save the race but it is the only way to do it without taking fifteen minutes to double back on ourselves. We ride down William street as fast as we can and head into the busy streets of Northbridge. It is a lot of fun navigating the wet streets and dodging the drunk peds and I quickly forget how badly we have screwed up the race. We ride it out as fast as we can. The last three check points go down fairly quickly and we ride into meet everyone to friendly cheers knowing, by the size of the crowd, that we have not done well.

We came DFL. We screwed it up big time. You win some and you lose some. There are busy days and quiet days. There are days when your legs spend all day waking up and your operator is screaming at you to grab rush jobs from every corner of the city. Days when you have enough energy to pedal forever and yet all you get is city locals. Days when the bike decides to spit every mechanical problem there is at you. And every now and then, every so often, those days when everything is in sync, the work flows, the bike rolls, and the city opens itself up to you in ways that only a scant few have the privilege to really understand. It is something about how we live together, something about how the pieces of this place fit together.. The marriage of man and machine, a physical and emotional understanding of the relationship we have with our technologies. A physical relation with this urban world that affords an understanding of the city environment that many will never be lucky enough to see.

These narratives are vital to our ability to comprehend and cope with our environments. So, in much the same way as a farmer might say of a city dweller, they know nothing of this country life, of the environment, so I would say that none can truly know the city, no one can really understand the urban environment who has not scratched their living from it in one way or another. The existence of the suburban bubble and the bubble that is the office or factory leads to a sort of elimination of that interaction. It denies you your real ability to enjoy the thrill of your world. The city is a thrilling thing, just like the natural world, it is as wild and unpredictable, it is as dangerous and beautiful, and it holds within it, as true a way of life as any and for me riding for a living was a way of accessing that.