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.
September 16, 2008 at 10:55 am
34 miles isn’t that much really…
Here in B’ham (England) it’s quiet though so I average between 25-40
September 16, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Nice, its true that 34 miles its not much, yet with the hills and at full speed it can be hard, and don’t forget the 100+ degrees (39centigrades more or less), when I was in Chicago I did 40-55 mile days but its flat as a pancake
September 17, 2008 at 2:54 am
True, my city is pretty hilly too, but not hot. Some messengers in the capital city do 60-80 miles a day, but the capital city is flat. I rode there a couple of times and still felt fresh after riding about 6 miles at fairly fast pace. I suppose mileage isn’t the number 1 factor of how hard someone works…
September 17, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Wow 80 miles at work is pretty amazing, I wish we were that busy, over here the trade of bike messenger is a dying one, with the internet and all the other systems of communication now, we are species in danger of extinction, at least in the USA, gone are the days that people did more than 40 runs in an average day, at least in Chicago. Not only that, the fact that since 9-11 a run that used to take a couple of minutes to pick up and be dropped in a building in a big city(not including the process of riding across from point a to b) is gone, all buildings in Chicago are high security enforced, which means, dropping your bag on the floor at a dock that smells, presenting an id, signing a log, using a dock elevator (which can take from 2 to 20 min) and other things like using messenger centers, which are places at the bottom of a building usually with doors to the outside, where a messenger can pick or drop a parcel, this makes it some times easy in the case of a drop, but in the case of a pick up it can be hell, since some times the package won’t be there and can take any amount of time and some times never come down. At least here in Austin things are so small that this kind of things are unknown and the old ways are still available, going in and out is possible within 2 mins and talking to the secretaries and reception persons is still possible, in fact at some point, since its so small here, most people will know who you are and what you do. Today I met a guy at the local bike shop (Lance Armstrong’s bike shop BTW) that have seen me in his building, I in the other hand have never. Small town indeed.
Now that fall is approaching and the weather is changing, am hoping for more work and am so happy to enjoy the cool mornings.
September 18, 2008 at 2:33 am
Sadly it’s dying here too. I am the only bike messenger in my city! There doesn’t seem to be much demand here – I only get about 12 runs a day on average! It sucks! There’s also a ‘bike messenger’ who works for a printing company, collecting and delivering stuff for them – so I suppose that makes it two, kind of. I reckon 80 miles on the flatness london wouldn’t be that hard unless it was really windy. Here in Birmin’am it seems like 1 in 3 streets is a hill!
September 18, 2008 at 7:37 am
Here its about 2 in 3 is a hill
there is a few that for a block it goes at 15-16% luckily you can avoid them for the most part. There are parts where there is a stop sign at the top of a hill then a stop sign at the bottom and again you go up. Its like a roller coaster.