About being fired

A couple of weeks ago I started to feel that there was going to be changes happening in my life soon, like a wind hitting my face telling me that rain was coming. And it wasn’t that a fortune cookie told me this either. Of course I had been planning to buy a pedicab and am hoping to get one soon, and so that was part of it. And that work was so slow made it so blatant that a change was needed.
So today, as a result of what happened last tuesday, I finally got fired from my bike messenger job. As I view it, it was so obvious that there wasn’t enough money to go around, and being me the one that won’t kiss ass, and some previous exchanges with the (idiot) boss, that did it.
So that might be the last chapter of the bike messenger experiment in austin for me. So good riddance. Time will tell.

 

Slow days of winter?..

This has been the most a-typical start of a year, here in the US the change of power, the economy in the sewer, the years of people, corporations, and government’s idea of how to spend money, how to make money, what is a good economy, whats a good plan; have left the country, the way one feel after a bicycle accident, confused, hurt, breathless, with a speeding heart rate that feels like its coming out of your chest!, and powerless also, knowing that those broken bones won’t heal tomorrow, it takes time. Sadly time is not something many people have, am lucky since my wife works and gets paid ok, not great yet if I really start hurting on my job for money (like now), we are fine.
Lots of questions in my mind, the lease is coming to an end soon and maybe a big change is the thing we need. What change is that is still out there to discover.

 

A new trailer for my bike.

At the end of last year right before it got “cold”, or what the locals feel is cold (38 degrees or so), my wife managed to break my sons bike trailer, she was trying to avoid a person in the side walk, while avoiding a very fast and congested avenue, she went in to the grass but events that were not in her hands made her flip her bike and tip the trailer, luckily they are made very well to protect the kids, so my son was just fine. Yet the clamp that connects the trailer arm to my bike is done for, making it a big piece of paper weight with wheels. So am looking for a trailer. With the economy in the US as bad as it is, the value of a gas free mode of transportation for my son is priceless. My job has been atrociously slow, I have been working less than half of my normal pace, and I always considered that pace to be too slow and not very well paid anyway. So if things don’t change soon for the best, and people start using our service, there is going to be a point where it will be impossible for me to keep my son in his day care school, making it impossible for me to work in the day. Thus making me loose my job. At that point a pedicab job will be welcomed maybe combined with a job in a bike shop. Since I could work at night and making it possible to care for my son in the day.
Am seeing this possible scenario coming at me like a freight train.
We will see.

 

Animated bike messenger

A funny animation of bike messengers in NYC. It weaves reality and animation and goes thru a few scenarios of every day life. Although I have to say that in Austin the back doors are there for you to use as much as the front doors. Only once have I had to use a freight elevator here so far.

 

2009

Last year was a very full year, lots of things happened, some of them are told here, some are not.

The experiment continues, living in Texas has not been bad, yet it has not delivered enough of my plans. So a new year to try and do the things I set myself to do. Am still not sure that we will stay here more than a couple of years, but who knows, we both have a job of sorts, and things have not been bad. For now with the temperature being so nice, its a long way to the summer, but its only around the corner and the scorching begins. My mom is worried because I don’t like to use sun blocker, I might start doing it. My face has become men of the sea like, rugged and dry. The cold did that as well in Chicago, in fact, I think the cold did that more than the sun, but I  could be wrong.

Slowly, the pace that I keep at work has steadily decreased, I sit more than I ride my bike, read books and comics instead of making money. Technology has again outpaced us, thru the speed of the internet , and the convinience of your favorite chair, it has forgotten the weight of moving things thru space, rather in cyberspace.

Texas sky

 

A day in the life…

Today I want to put a map of my day in friday 29 of August. Not a great day over all, lots of miles for the money though, but most of the work was on 2hr services, and one even 4hr service.

This is what you can count on if you try to work the scene in Austin Tx. Lots of miles with little pay out.
click on the map my ride button below to see the map of my day, there are nice little gadgets to check the altitude and the total miles. push the buttons in the map to check if you feel like.

 

Now now one can say they can’t hear me coming..

A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to go into a bike store and check why my rear Cosmic elite wheel was making horrible noises when I road it. It turned out that an internal eyelet in the rim, which holds one of the spokes had broken, rendering the nice looking wheel into a huge paper weight, meaning it is thrashed. I had to use my old racing wheelset, a pair of Spinergy Spox, to messenger instead. It was nice since they are so light, but every bump, I felt, was going to destroy them. I discovered also that the freehub is also in its last leg, having from time to time, a crack and miss of the stroke, when the pawls and springs inside the freehub fail. Luckily I have an older pair of Spox to play with and use to canibalize for parts.

I have not bought a wheel set in about 4 years, my last one being the Cosmic elite, which I loved. So I started researching the newer technologies out there, trying to find in the internet a pair of wheels that were not going to bankrupt me. I looked on Craigslist here in Austin, but could only find a pair of used durace/cpx33 wheels that looked pretty old (the 8spd cluster giving it away). I even looked into ebay, only to find how over priced used ksyriums of all kinds are. So when I found a pair of Fulcrum racing 5 at excelsports for only $318 or so, I got a pair.

Today I put on the rim tape, tires and casette on them and went to performance bike shop a few blocks away to get a new stem (my 3t forge is crackling away) and to test my new wheels. Wow, for the price they are awesome, stiff, not amazingly light but lighter than the Cosmics and super loud. Its like a huge insect buzzing away when coasting. I had read about that when I did the research, but living it in person was pretty cool. Now no one can say they could not hear me coming. I ended up buying a Ritchie WCS 4 axis stem. And of course I got 15% off and since my wife has a membership to the performance club or what ever its called, I used some of her points, which translated into $12 free dollars back. So instead of paying $99+tax it only cost me $79. Still pretty expensive, but since they offer 100% satisfaction guaranteed I can always return it and say it wasn’t of my liking. One of the reasons that keeps me coming back to Performance bike shop.

Fulcrum racing 5 front wheel

A hansome bike for sure

 

Bike messenger tax or how to waste your money on a cycling traffic ticket

Cycling traffic laws are stupid, period. Who ever made them has never been on a bike in the middle of a busy street, that much is clear. The fact that they pretend that a bicycle can follow the same rules as a car is just laughable. There are so many situations that don’t apply that it makes them stupid, to put it mildly. Case in point, riding a bike on the side walk. We all have done it, some of us to make it easier to dismount, or mount our bikes without putting ourselves in danger of getting run over in the middle of the street, other people just to stay safe, because they don’t feel safe on the street, they can’t keep up with traffic speed, they are frightened to death of cars, etc… Riding on the side walk is safe, and done at low speeds is ok. I have no problem with calling attention to people that fly down sidewalks, freaking out pedestrians and putting people in danger. Yet, its a really good way to collect revenue for cities, where fat lazy policemen-women, will put speed traps and plain stalk riders hiding behind trees or walls in order to catch them infraganti.

There are of course other laws that are stupid as well. The other day I scared the hell of a couple of gals in uniform (cops) when I came flying down the middle of a lane (cutting lanes), in a four lane avenue (6th st). They chased me and threatened with giving me a ticket for not following the car’s traffic rules. I apologized and kept going. But that didn’t fly when I got caught in a sting at 6th and Congress riding on the sidewalk. To be fair, all I was doing was getting on the street the easy way after unlocking my bike 20 feet from the corner. The cop (your average fat asshole) didn’t care, and proceeded to give me a ticket. Now I have to go to court to see if I can get a lower penalty (they want $140 for a class C misdemeanor, which should be $20-30). The guy that works at the Starbucks at that corner told me that he saw at least 30 people get a ticket that morning, I personally saw at least 3 while I waited for my ticket. Ridiculous. Of course when lunch came and after that, the pigs left and everyone continued to ride on the sidewalk. Whatever.

Bicycle ticket

bicycle ticket

Update: I ended up going to court for this and they offered me a deal where I paid the “minimum”, $101 dollars, otherwise who knows, I could have paid probably more if I went to talk to the judge and he thought that I had waisted his time and that had a monetary cost. So after $101 this whole ordeal ended.

 

Of gas prices, or how I take my son around without a car

As everyone knows by now, gas prices in the USA have gone up quite a lot. When I started driving my first own car (nissan truck) in Ohio it was 1995, if I remember correctly gas was under a dollar a gallon, and i seem to remember some places even around 89 cents a gallon. At the time, my salary as a landscaper was around $1200 dollars a month, and that gave me enough to buy gas with out thinking about it. My truck was a little nissan thing that had holes on the floor, so when it rained or the ground was wet from snow the wheels would splash water on my feet. The driver door was falling off, and the passenger door was frozen shot. My friend Owen and his girl friend used to make fun of it, yet they would always be happy to get a ride. I never thought about gas mileage and things like that. I only got rid of it when in a snow storm my windshield wipers got blown away by the wind and I had to use my hands to wipe the windshield (which prompted a police officer to stop me on Christmas eve).

Times have change and now I own a couple of VW Vanagons 83 and 87 (I loved the first rusty ridden one so much, that i had to buy a Westfalia camper, both of them have been huge headaches and money pits, but that is a different story, and I love them both), and my wife owns a VW Golf from 97, and up till a couple of years ago, we drove them almost every day to take the dogs to the park  or go to the grocery store and things like that. At one point in 2000 I drove my 83 Vanagon daily to work in the winter and car pulled my friend and bike messenger (at the time) Sarah.

Yet since gas started going up and up with no end in sight, we drove less and less, me being a bike messenger in Chicago (or a stay at home dad for a few years) I would ride my bike all the time, and my wife being a telecommuter for her job, both used the cars very little, just when we took my son with us somewhere or when one of us we were lazy to ride to the store for groceries.

Now we live in Austin Tx. and we almost don’t use the cars. Aside from the ocasional trip to Red Bud Island where my dogs can swim in the river-lake, or when we go to do big groceries at HEB, and since there is a small convinient store-grocery just a few steps from our house, we opt for walking there some times and pay a little more for products rather than drive a mile to the big grocery store.

But thats not all, right before I started to work, when we had been here for only a couple of weeks, I felt there was the need of an alternative to be able to take my son with me without having to drive the car. I searched on Craigslist for a few days and came up with a good way to do it. A bike trailer. It holds 2 kids and can carry 100 libs. It was used and only came up to $150 dollars. My son loves it and so far its been great. I can take him and still carry a bunch of groceries in it. Its a little beat up and I might have to get a new one at one point, but from the first day I knew that it was the best $150 I had spend in a while. I have no idea how much gas or money I have saved, but i know that since then I might have gone to the gas station 2 times or something like that, and probably didn’t even filled up all the way. Now its not easy, I take my son every day to his day care (he is only going to be 4 this september), and some days I don’t feel like dragging that thing behind me, it adds weight, wind resistance and it makes me feel a bit vulnerable with my son attached to my bike riding the streets, since a bunch of texans seem to hate bikers. Also my wife has to go and get him around 4pm and she sometimes has taken the car, either because she was tired or it was raining (twice), or any other reason.

Bikes and trailer

I never thought it was a special thing to do this, in my mind I was saving money and in passing not polluting. Yet some people think it is special, they even think its news worthy.
The funny thing is that this girl also thinks its normal, yet just because she is documenting it, it made the news. I hope that after her experiment is finish, she won’t go back to driving all the time. I sure won’t. By the way, am selling my oldest Vanagon, since its been a huge hole in my pocket lately and I sure don’t need two of them. Any takers?

My 83 Vanagon

 

A small group of riders

It seems there is some interest in what happens here in Austin Tx. as far as bike messengering. I have been checking the statistics of this blog and found that people are searching: “Austin bike messenger”. In Austin the biggest thing to do is legal work, file documents, search for them in the different courts, County, Federal, Supreme, Bancrupcy, Secretary of State, the City of course etc…, most everything is a round trip, and sometimes there are long waits in line to file. Very little work with architects, magazines, media, designers etc..(most of what people do in Chicago).  So a lot of the stuff being moved is legal stuff that can’t be lost and has to be filed correctly and on time etc.. very important stuff that can get you in big trouble if there are fuck ups! The problem is that there is very little work to go around even for the people working at the time. Just enough and only because I told the boss that I wanted to go far, to give me car work. Not a whole lot of long work has come about, but when it does it makes a difference in my check. But the big thing about all this is that in order to add a person in any of the current messenger/courier firms, someone of the current roster has to be fired or quit. That is pretty much the only way. I was lucky since they knew me from the time I came in 1999 and the boss remembered that I could go far and fast. And also because there was a guy in his company that was making a move to become a bar tender at a local pub. So after a few emails I pretty much had a job waiting for me. The guys that are very well known as the “bike messengers”, have been on the job at least 3 years. And they all hang at the “Little City Cafe” through out the day, the coffee house lets them have free coffee at any time it seems (I can’t have coffee so I never asked), and some of them get discounts on sandwiches, but I sure don’t get any. Sandwiches are ok but pricey. All summer has been slow for most of us, but the rates are much better than in Chicago and so with 15 tickets and most of them being round trips (ends up being about 20-23 trips all together), it pays almost decent. So maybe in the fall and winter it will get better and the change of weather will be nice as well. This week the temperature is supposed to be over 101 every day. A few weeks ago there was a hurricane by the border with México, I was hoping for a couple of days or more of rain, not only the grass on my front yard is yellow, but I could use the change, its been very hot. Sadly (for my grass) the hurricane only managed to bring here one hour of full wild wind and rain, and then a break and then a bunch of little showers that only managed to make everything muggy. It was cool to see the water coming horizontally down the hills dowtown, there were rivers and the buildings seem to make a wind tunnel that the rain would pass thru at super speed. But only for one hour, and I was sitting at the coffee house waiting for a late run to come thru. Nothing came thru and I left, and went home to eat diner.

Chilling at Little City Cafe

I “borrowed” this picture from John’s blog (the guy at the very front of the picture).