Getting paid to ride

We tend to romanticize getting paid to do something, despite the fact that “amateur” comes from the Latin root “amare”, “to love”.

Bicycling is no different, with movies such as Quicksilver, with Kevin Bacon starring as a stockbroker-turned- bike messenger. (Or my personal favorite, Major Bedhead the unicycle courier from the Canadian children’s TV show “The Big Comfy Couch“.)

I guess I was a professional bicyclist a long time ago, without thinking about it. When I was 12 I began delivering newspapers by bike. Like mail carriers, “neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night stayed [me] from the swift completion of [my] appointed rounds”.

There was one day when it was too icy to ride my bike and I skated my “appointed rounds” and there were a few days when it was colder than -20 degrees, which entitled me to a ride in a car according to house rules. Otherwise, I rode 364 days per year (no newspaper on Christmas in those days).  When it was a little less cold, my eyelashes would freeze and clink when I blinked. The lenses of my glasses would fog, then freeze, and I’d have to take off a mitten to scrape the ice off with a fingernail. For those who doubt it was really that cold, I offer this:

On the other hand, there were beautiful summer days when it was not yet hot, though you knew it would get that way. The lake was like glass and I dreamed of what it would be like to be skiing as the sun rose. (I suspect those who lived on the lake would not have appreciated it in the same way.)

At 5 AM, the only people out on the streets were the newspaper carriers and the milkman. Milk was delivered to our house every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Bread was delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The “Omar Man” had a handy carrying rack for bread. It was cleverly designed with an upper rack for breads and a lower rack that cantilevered out with pastries. It was right at eye level for little kids so we could beg mom for pastries, which we could never afford. He never gave up.

I did my best thinking when I was out early in the morning on my bike. I wished for a portable tape recorder and a microphone mounted on my handlebars so I could record my thoughts as I rode. Alas, my best thoughts are lost to the world. I would probably be a famous inventor now, retired and living on my royalties, had I been able to record those ideas – or at least that’s what my 12 year old self thought.

I spent some time as a bicycle traveling salesman. When I was in Cub Scouts we had an annual candy sale to raise money. My dad encouraged me to venture farther from home to hit territories other kids wouldn’t get to. When I was 9 he dropped me and my bike at an apartment complex 6 miles from home and told me to hit all 216 apartments, then ride home. I found my way home (without a trail of bread crumbs) and won a prize for the most sales.

Now I am an amateur – unless you readers want to pay me for this ride.