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'Joe Bike' pedals for a living
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| Wisconsin State Journal, December, 2005 I guess my career has roots in my childhood. I've always had a keen interest in bikes; I love the feeling of moving at speed under my own power.In high school, one of my classmates gave me the name "Joe Bike" because as everyone else was driving around in beater cars handed down by their parents, I was cruising around on a bike that I had pulled from the trash and rebuilt piece by piece. Later on, as a student at UW- Madison in the mid-'80s, I got into bike racing and triathlons. Back then, there wasn't a whole lot of bike-specific knowledge in the triathlon world and I've always had a bit of a mechanical background, so I started frequenting local bike shops. One thing led to another and, after I got my degree, I couldn't quite figure out what to do with it. So, I started working at one of the local bike shops as a manager. I did that for a good 12 to 13 years. But I found that as I became more involved with my job responsibilities, I had less time to get out on a bike - and that's what I really enjoy. I started riding as a messenger for Scram Couriers nearly four years ago, taking over as owner almost two years go. Scram was founded in the spring of 2000 by a woman who had been a bike courier in several large cities and noticed that the bike-friendly city of Madison was oddly without a bicycle messenger service at that time. What I do now is run Scram Couriers in Madison. Scram is a year-round bicycle messenger- courier service. I handle all of the administrative work myself, which means taking calls from clients, dispatching riders and invoicing. I also do some of the actual riding myself. When a client needs anything from a single slip of paper to several boxes taken anywhere in the city, they call us. We come and pick it up, (and) transport it on our bikes, usually much faster than a car or truck. I typically have one or two riders out riding about at any given time. We have weather-resistant bike- messenger bags that hold quite a bit. We also have a limited cargo service and a trailer we pull. One of the main reasons I do this is because I'm kind of a child of the '70s. I came of age during the whole environmental and ecology movement, everything from the advent of Earth Day to Jacques Cousteau. The distraught American Indian with trash at his feet made quite an imprint on my mind. The amount of pollution that is prevented in the course of a day by just using one bicycle instead of a car or truck will blow your mind. I feel pretty strongly about trying to make the world a better place after I'm gone, so this is my way of doing that on a daily basis. I guess another reason I do this is the rush: there's a certain sense of freedom coupled with a sense of urgency when you're on a bike trying to get yourself and the item you're carrying across town as quickly as possible. I like this job, but it's not without its downfalls. Sometimes at the end of a busy day, you're just physically and mentally exhausted. But in the end, I feel it's well worth the cost. |
