I remember talking to my friend Benee about cycling, about what it represented to us. It was late at night, after a race and we were drunk, of course, on the cheap beer that we we always drink after a race. I said that for me it represented freedom, that it was the feeling of freedom for me. He told me that he had taken his bike down to watch the sky show on the Esplanade and he had cycled past the rows and rows of cars and he had ridden right up to the foreshore and watched the whole sky show, in all its wonderful glory and then, after the show, had ridden home, past all the people trudging slowly back their cars. And I had known what he meant. I’d gone down there in a car that night, I’d parked a long way away, because I’d had to, because that is how it has to work with the cars, and it was hot and we’d walked for half an hour through the afternoon heat to the Esplanade and the girls had complained because it was hot and the walk was long and then, on the way back I had carried my youngest daughter asleep in my arms. My eldest daughter had been tired too, I had wanted to carry her too, but of course I couldn’t, not over that distance. So I knew what he meant because I’d done the other thing and it is freedom, to ride in, past the parking frenzy, past the esky haulers, the drunk teenagers and their sozzled dramas, past the police and the paramedics and right into the heart of the crowd, right into the middle of where you want to be. It is freedom to turn around, after the last firework has blazed its spectacular path across your retina and jump on your bike and ride through the massed humanity in all its post celebratory glory and ride out through all that while we are trapped in the traffic and the confusion.
That is freedom.
And yes freedom, like that, is a form of individualism. You are not one of the herd, you are free to move when others are trapped, in this case specifically trapped, by their adherence to a cultural norm. But it is more also. The bicycle, with its peculiar reliance on human motivation brings far more than that, it extends your potential, it utilises what you are, physically to move you (and others) from A to B. That is a freedom too. It is a machine, like a car or a computer, a fridge or a factory. But it is a machine that exists on a very human scale and interacts with us on a very human level too. You place your faith and energy in its two wheels and it propels you forward to where you want to go. Of course the tyres may tear or the brakes may wear but essentially this machine will take you where you want to go quickly and efficiently. People used to cross the Nullabor using pedal power, they still do occasionally. Yes it is slow compared with the awesome speed of the motor car, and of course it is physically much harder work for its rider, but therein lies the secret. We are animals, physical shapes cut from the same cloth as all the other animals on this planet, what makes us different is not that we are not the same shape, but what we choose to do with it. And the bicycle is, for me, one of the purest lessons in what to do with who and what we are. It is a machine, a part of how we have changed both ourselves and this planet beyond all recognition, but it is the good part of that. It utilises our energy to propel us forward, to take us where we want to go. It is easy to cycle next to someone who is walking and converse, it is easy to stop and chat, to pause to check somebody is okay, to see if another person is in need of help, and yet it also allows us to move between places far quicker and with far less effort than we would without it. It requires infrastructure in much the same way a car does, roads facilitate ease of use and of course the parts are created using industrial methods. But it is not the same. It is not the same because of the scale of the endeavor, because of the scale of the obsession and because we are open to the world (and therefore more a part of it) rather than hidden away from it. It is easy to stop, to look around, to smell the air, to feel the sun on your back, to cool yourself in the wind. Freedom then becomes freedom not just of movement, or even of being an individual as opposed to part of some mass of humanity or other, it becomes freedom to relate to the world on human terms whilst still retaining some of the best and most positive aspects of industrialisation. And the best and most positive aspects of industrialisation are, of course, the best aspects of who and where we are right now.
So I cycle to work and it’s a fair ride and some days I take the train or the bus or some combination of bike and train, sometimes just to mix it up a little, sometimes because my bikes fucked, or I am, and sometimes I don’t ride because I just plain don’t want to. But when I do ride I love it, when I do ride it is like swimming in the ocean for me. It gives me perspective and allows me to move and think at the same time, which is where the best thinking gets done in my head. I am engaged in the journey physically and that is vital, it is as important as engaging with the world emotionally. If you can engage in a thing you gain an understanding that an intellectual analysis simply cannot give. It is hard, perhaps impossible to describe, but cycling is one of the things I use to help remind myself how important and how easy it is to do that, to interact with the world and to give yourself over to it. So why talk about this? Why talk about this feeling I have? Because I have a bad feeling the current trend seems to be an attempt to disengage as much as possible. Why go out there, amongst all those other people, when you can hide in your little bubble, play your Nintendo, drive your 4WD and plug your MP3 into all the moments in between. And before you say it I love all those things, I love all those things and more. I love the cars and the computers, the mobiles and the malls, I like eating burgers from fast food joints whilst yelling into my mobile phone whilst driving on the free way at 150. It is fun to drive yourself into that bubble, it is spectacular and consuming in the same way that it demands you to consume. I don’t think we need to strip it back to some kind of pre-industrial hell hole. I just think that we need to accept ourselves for what we really are, physical beings, who need physical interaction with world on every level. We need to make that work for us, we need to make sure that we interact with our environment on that basic level as well as others. In the industrialised west it can sometimes be easy to forget how good that can make us feel and that is what cycling reminds me, everyday. Oh and I reckon you feel like you’re going faster if you are on a bike at 50km than if you’re in a car at 150km.
This one is for Benee. Brisbane is lucky to have you my friend.
Showing posts with label bicycle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycle. Show all posts
Friday, January 4, 2008
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
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!
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!
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