For my service project, I did a job shadow with a bicycle messenger named Nick Gustafson. Nick has been a bike messenger in Portland for over two years, and has worked for other bicycle courier companies all along the west coast. He works for a company named Senvoy, which is one of the largest expedited delivery services in the northwest. They use a wide variety of methods to deliver packages to people all around the Portland and northern Washington areas. Nick’s job at Senvoy is delivering small but important parcel packages and envelopes to banks and offices around the Portland downtown area. He had me ride to a few locations for drop-offs in one quadrant of the downtown area while he made some pick-ups in another quadrant of downtown. The items that I delivered were a few bank deposits, some personal mail, and some small parcel packages. A few of the locations I went to were only a few blocks away from each other, but others were several blocks away. I repeated the process of quickly locking up my bike, finding out what floor and room to drop off the package, and moving along quickly to the next location.

 

At first, I was nervous to do work similar to what Nick was doing. As a very avid cyclist myself, being a bike messenger seemed like a distant reality. I was expecting to be carrying large heavy packages all around the city. From the information I had collected about messengering, it seems like a stressful and tough job. Being able to navigate a city, and carrying whatever it may be that someone wants delivered in a timely manner sounded like a lot to handle. But, after working with Nick at Senvoy, I was somewhat relieved that the work wasn’t as intense as I expected. The packages that Nick was delivering could easily fit into my somewhat normal sized backpack, so my preconceived notion of delivering full sized boxes was shattered. Although, Senvoy does have messengers deliver some large packages across the city, Nick is in charge of the smaller but more important packages that need to be delivered.

 

Being a bike messenger means being a part of the bike messenger subculture. Messengers have been the pioneers for urban cycling for years. They were the people who made it popular to ride a brakeless fixed gear bike on the streets, instead of on a velodrome race track. I found it exciting to experience how independent being a bike messenger is. So long as you know where the locations for the pick-ups and drop-offs are, you have the freedom to get to those destinations however you want, so long as you get there quickly. The job itself is really exciting and interesting for me because everyday there are new and different locations for deliveries, it’s like having a little adventure. When given the responsibility of delivering the packages myself, I used my knowledge of the street system and made note of the locations of various landmarks in the city to make my way to the drop-off locations. Since I knew that the streets counted up from one starting from the west side of the river, I was able to read an address that was on a numbered street and go it easily. The named streets took some remembering to figure out.  

 

Being an outsider at Senvoy made the job intimidating. It’s easy to tell when someone is a rookie. Everyone else that Nick introduced me to while on standby were very experienced messengers. They had all the gear they needed to deliver any package at anytime. It’s easy to assume that people who are more experienced will undermine you when you are new on the job.  But, the other messengers I conversed with could tell I had a serious passion for cycling, and was interested in the bike messenger culture. The fact that they noticed noticing my passion helped me feel more comfortable talking with them and asking questions that a lot of other people wouldn’t have been able to ask. Being in the midst of a bustling job that has a very large work zone was a very unique experience for me. Being a messenger means you’re all over the city at different times, you are not going to one building for however many hours your shift is, and then going home. You are constantly moving. Being able to work like that is exciting to me. I really valued being able to see the city in a way that a lot of people might now know existed. Another positive aspect to being a bike messenger is, it's a zero emission service. Having messengers deliver packages in the city of Portland can cut down on emissions, and reduce the amount of traffic on the streets.

 

Because of my service learning, I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to dabble in the notorious bike messenger culture, and to experience first hand what a messenger does on a daily basis. Since my service learning, I have been given more work opportunities with Nick and Senvoy. Nick and I connected on a more personal level after our day of work. Over the course of my cycling obsession, I’ve noticed how easy it is to connect with other cyclists in different places. Nick has introduced me to a lot of like minded cyclist, who share very similar philosophies as me. Overall, I felt like this experience was very positive for me, and I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to go further in my passion for cycling.