September 9, 2010

It doesn’t “cancel out”

By

The same way a person who can barely strum the first five chords to “Stairway to Heaven” dreams of rock ‘n’ roll stardom, I dream of being a professional bike messenger.

The rush of racing from point A to B in the thick of traffic, close calls that are just a little too close, food and rent basically riding (pun intended) on the strength of your legs, bending… fine, breaking traffic laws whenever you can to get the package delivered on time – the whole scene sounds incredibly thrilling.

But the other day I saw a video on YouTube involving a bike messenger that soured my dream a bit.

The messenger, riding upstream on a one-way street, plows into a pedestrian crossing the street outside of a crosswalk. After the messenger and pedestrian each pick themselves up off the pavement and verify each is OK, the pedestrian informs the messenger that he’s going the wrong way. The messenger immediately comes back with, “Yeah, well you weren’t in a crosswalk.” The pedestrian agrees and walks away. The messenger then addresses the small crowd of onlookers that hitting the pedestrian “cancels out” because he wasn’t in a crosswalk. Yet, you can clearly see in the video that the pedestrian checked for cars before he started to cross.

No, bike messenger, it doesn’t cancel out. Be a man, apologize to the pedestrian, and be on your way.

The same way a person who can barely strum the first five chords to “Stairway to Heaven” dreams of rock ‘n’ roll stardom, I dream of being a professional bike messenger.

The rush of racing from point A to B in the thick of traffic, close calls that are just a little too close, food and rent basically riding (pun intended) on the strength of your legs, bending… fine, breaking traffic laws whenever you can to get the package delivered on time – the whole scene sounds incredibly thrilling.

But the other day I saw a…

Christopher Wood
Christopher Wood is editor and publisher of BizWest, a regional business journal covering Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer and Weld counties. Wood co-founded the Northern Colorado Business Report in 1995 and served as publisher of the Boulder County Business Report until the two publications were merged to form BizWest in 2014. From 1990 to 1995, Wood served as reporter and managing editor of the Denver Business Journal. He is a Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. He has won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
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