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.

A day in the life of a courier circa 2023...

The Terrace is empty now, for the briefest of moments silence reigns on this battle torn street. Only the wind runs down the canyon created by the skyscrapers. A thin grey light has started to seep in before the sunrise. Sheets of yesterdays newspaper, plastic bags, and a thin trail of heavy black smoke describe the wind with their journey east. The low smouldering burn rises from the wreck of a heavy looking Kona outside 77. A small stain on the cracked pavement just beyond the bikes charred remains shows where the rider was felled. Further down, across the Barrack street intersection two car wrecks, long since burnt out and destroyed, have been dragged into the street. Around one side of them spent shell casings, a broken 700cc wheel set for a road bike, the rear wheel has a scaffolding pole sticking out of it, the front is bent at almost a 90 degree angle. Across the street from the cars is the looming hulk of the old council building, its once proud façade now an empty shell, its shattered and glassless windows staring out bleakly into the early morning like eye sockets in a skull. Beneath this burnt out wreck of a building, below street level, hidden in the hollow emptiness of the car park behind a heavily reinforced steel door is the offices and living quarters of First Couriers, motto; ‘We put your package first … every time’. It’s 4.30am and mobile 15 reaches for his Kevlar vest. It’s the first thing he puts on and, next to his bike, it’s the single most important piece of equipment in his line of work. He lights a small kerosene lamp and slips noiselessly from his bunk and creeps out of the room. He closes the door to the dorm quietly and slips into the mess. He lights a compressed garbage block and throws it into an old wood burning stove, fills a battered old kettle with water from a large open barrel and sets it down on the stove. He pulls the thin skin coloured wire of his radio mike from the back of the Kevlar vest and attaches it to his cheek. Another small wire fits snugly inside his ear. He pulls his uniform on over the top of the vest. He doesn’t switch on yet. He drinks his coffee and warms his hands against the stove. When he is ready he moves down the hall to the bicycle room. He slings his bag over his head and onto his shoulder. He pulls his ride from the rack and checks the tyres and the drive train. Last he puts his helmet and goggles on and clips in. He rides to the door and leans forward to undo four large dead locks. He opens the door and, once on the outside, activates a trip switch to lock them all again.

Outside he switches on and flips the switch on his scrambler. As soon as he switches on the strap of his bag lights up with scrolling text from around twenty different companies and his earpiece becomes a cacophony of sound. Around twenty different voices are repeating jobs over and over again. They talk very fast and although at first it is hard to make any sense of it if you listen for a long enough you start to realise that there is order in this madness. Each voice gets to repeat their list of pick up and drop off zones before the next voice steps in, each list of jobs lasts roughly the same length of time hence the frantic pace at which these operators call them out. Across this rapid fire maze of information cut the couriers, calling their numbers preceded by a short prefix. Mobile 15 announces his presence. ‘FC15, FC15’ he says across the airwaves. There is no pause in the repetition of jobs but his number and presence on the channel is noted. ‘I’m in’ he tells me, ‘ready to work now. Without a location it’s all about what I call on. It’s tricky see because I’ve got to get the work but at the same time I don’t want to reveal too much of my position. Usually I start with a bid on some East work. They can’t tell that I’m not already East so it’s a safe call and for some reason there’s never much competition there in the mornings, especially on the dawn shift.’ We cycle down the Terrace a little way. Three of the buildings, number 20 and number 12 as well as the old Duxton hotel, have seen heavy shelling. The Duxton looks structurally unsound with a gaping hole in the north west corner and large chunks taken out of the façade. Mobile 15 turns and nods to this as we pedal past. ‘That was a conference attack. Japanese carpet fitters I think. It was pretty rough. I can’t believe they chose to stay there, they must have been nuts! I had to get two of their life cards out. It was that big outfit from over East that attacked. They were good, some of their own crew and some hired guys. Had a tank and all sorts. Those warehouse carpet guys with all the last minute sales, you must have heard of ‘em. Jeez mate they were vicious’. We move on past the Duxton and down into Adelaide Terrace. Two buildings here have seen so much action that they are no longer there, just the odd wall and pillar jutting out of the scorched earth. Outside 197-201 Adelaide Terrace the dark stain of blood and the shattered windows attest to a gun battle of some kind. The windows of level one are blown out and a desk leans out of the window at a precarious angle. I hear FC15 call for a series of jobs. He turns round to look at me and nods to his left before accelerating up Bennet Street. I stand on the pedals and push hard to keep up. We ride up and over the brow of a slight hill and down toward Royal street. He throws his bike around the wreck of an SUV and into 130 Royal. He leans against the wall in the entrance way and buzzes up. Two cameras swivel around to look at us. ‘Don’t look at them.’ FC15 tells me. I do as he says. He looks up. ‘The goggles prevent retinal scan so I’m safe. Hackers sometimes get into the security systems of these places and they can id you from a scan and then you’re screwed.’ The door slides open and we roll slowly in and dismount. The lift id’s us and FC15 shows them his bag. The information on the strap rearranges itself briefly to allow the lift to id us. We ride up into the office of an architects on level one. ‘It’s these pick ups I like. Smaller offices, not so much danger. Less likely to get hit up for a roll of plans than for some legal documents bound for some big corp, know what I mean?’ I nod dumbly. I don’t know what he means, how could I? FC15 and scores of others like him exist in a world fraught with danger at every turn. For many of us the gated communities, the armoured SUV’s and the closed networks that surround our daily lives make life in this brave new world of the free market manageable and safe but information still needs to cross corporate lines, communication still needs to run between the warring factions. So while Suncorp might take out a factory in Malaysia in a bid to hit at a competitors share price or its bottom line it may well be locked in a legal battle with that same company, or, bizarrely, may be financing its next mall development or product line. It’s a topsy turvy world we live in and FC15 is caught smack bang in the middle of it all running messages and data across town.

We walk into a large reception area and on a small table are two rolls of plans. The receptionist asks us for thumb prints. FC15 declines politely. ‘Sorry only company id. You know the rules. I’m nobody but I’m registered to First and that’s gold.’ He places the plans in an expandable tube and puts it in his bag. He scans the barcode on the line pad and leaves. The receptionist isn’t fased it’s all part of the game theey play. She has to ask for thumb prints from every single person that walks through the doors and, in this day and age, when identity is everything, everybody has to refuse. Roll out onto the street and make five other pick ups along Royal street before heading over to Fielder street for a pick up from one of those new places that look like a couple of sea containers stacked one on top of the other. It’s bomb proof and windowless and the package comes to us from a small hole at the base of the building. He registers this last one picked up and indicates his intension to cross on the walk way that runs across the freeway and railway tracks. We ride up the gentle incline of the ramp and onto the walkway before I hear it. The freeway is starting to fill with vehicles. The rush hour is coming and the noise from the road drowns out the low whump whump whump of the helicopter. FC15 hears it and turns around to me. ‘Ride, ride now.’ He says before standing up, out of his saddle and throwing the bike forward as fast as he can. I hear it then and from behind the hulk of the old power station I see it too. A gunship peels round and turns to fly low along the freeway toward us. I rush to keep up with FC15 but he is leaving me behind. I feel a sense of panic rising. I see a flash of orange and red come from the gunship and a trail of light coloured smoke speed toward us, I hear the hiss of the missile as it speeds toward us. We’re half way along the over pass now. The covered area obscures our view of the gunship. Behind me, but only just, I hear the missile crunch into the over pass and feel the spray of broken concrete on my back. My heart jumps into my mouth and my stomach twists itself around my lower intestine. I want to be sick and empty my bowels in one fluid motion, instead I cycle as hard as I can toward FC15. I clear the covered area just as another missile hits. This one destroys the metal roof and the sound of metal twisting and shattering is added to the crunch of exploding concrete. FC15 is near the point at which it becomes a down ramp. He spins the bike around underneath him to face me. I am cycling as hard as I can, I shift down into the hardest gear to try and gain more speed. The gunship passes underneath me. I feel the air whir violently around me. It circles around as I catch up to FC15. ‘Come on mate, you’re doing well. We’ve got a couple of seconds before he can get us back in his sights now.’ He shouts to me encouragingly. I try not think about those fragile seconds and stare at my front wheel as I push as hard as I can into the pedals. FC15 waits until I am nearly up with him and then uses the ramp to gain speed quickly. We shoot off the end of the ramp quickly. He loses us in the small roads before Lord street. My heart is pumping like mad. I can’t tell whether it is fear or excitement. I feel as though I haven’t slept in a month and I’ve done about a pound of Crank. The gunship gives up almost instantly. ‘Bounty hunters. They won’t spend long looking, not worth it. They’re on a free call system just like us. They’ll pick up another target soon enough. On an open area like that walkway we’re a target but down here we’re pretty safe from those guys. Snipers is what we wanna watch for here but they’re pretty rare nowadays. No money in it now.’ We make a slight detour to a drop on Money street, two packages get dropped there. It’s pretty quick, there’s a drop slot on the outside of the building and the id is registered by remote. We ride on through the battle scarred financial district of east Perth, past the crater that was the soccer stadium and into Northbridge.

to be continued....

This one is fo 18 Terry. That's some bad hat!