Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Columbus Day
The hair salon was closed on Monday, because the hair show continued for a second day. The stylists stayed for cutting classes, and I had the day off--without pay! I got out of bed late, but it could have been later. After I'd been downstairs for a while, I heard a beeping coming from my room. "I'll be right back," I said to J. and D.. "I've got to go turn my alarm off."
"Did you really set your alarm for one PM?" said D. "Who are you?"
Who, indeed. Here's what I did for the rest of the day:
I rode around Baltimore in the back of a minvan while J. and D., who are bike messenegers drove packages to their destinations.
Who's lazy?
Everyone.
To be fair:
It was Columbus Day, and most of the offices in town were closed, so only a few packages went out that afternoon. However, the messengers get a higher percentage of the cost of the packages they deliver if they report for five days of work a week, so they couldn't just go home.
They are usually very industrious people, who face danger and insults with good humor, or at least with better insults and danger of a more menacing and personal nature.
Earlier in the day, J. told me, one of the more established messengers had ridden by and seen J. and D. loading D.'s bike into the van. "Are you guys going home?" he asked.
"No." J. answered. The other messenger just shook his head and rode away.
Between packages, we drove around and stared at people. The messengers abused, as they always do, their two-way radios.
When one walked into a building, the other would click over and start speaking, so that his friend's radio would crackle out, "Attention, attention! This messenger protected by the HIV virus. That's right, step away from him, you in the green shirt. You're doing the right thing. " or other lighthearted or obscene sayings. They do this all day long, even when they aren't in sight of one another, because there's always a chance that the other will be inside a courthouse or quiet office.
They tried to get me to take a couple of packages into the buildings for them. "Come on, just say you're new."
"Yeah, imagine: you can say you've worked as a bike messenger. Think of all the punk points."
I pointed out that I don't have any punk points. "Stupid tattoos count," they told me.
posted by Frenz | 10/13/2004 10:40:00 PM
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