The end of an era, at least for me

Funny how some things can be overlooked by many, but the trained eye of The Original Big Ring misses nothing. I got this in an email from him yesterday.

Sorry ladies, I'm married.

Today will be my last day working for Mercury Messengers.

I'm sorry, I don't think I segued very gently into that topic.

After 14 years and 3 weeks of steady employment, I'll be moving on. To put that into perspective, that's 1/3 of my life, 81 times longer than my last job as a messenger, and 242 times longer than the job I had in between messenger gigs. It's safe to say that I don't think anyone has rounded the corner at 4th and College St more than I have at this point. I've gone through seven messenger bags, four bike locks, a shit ton of keys, and probably a dozen helmets. I'm old enough to have fathered some of the guys delivering for Jimmy John's (but then again, so are two of the other remaining messengers). In that time, I've only called off once, and that was the day I woke up in a pool of blood in the street with my front wheel missing. I was back at work the next day looking like a zombie who couldn't lift one arm.

photo cred: Big Worm

Before the raccoon eye effect and swelling had a chance to settle in for the week

Blame the economy? A little. There were as many as 16 messengers on the streets of Charlotte before the house of cards collapsed. Now the numbers are closer to where they were back in 1996 when I pulled my first job. Amazing. I've seen a lot of faces come and go, and Big Worm and I have talked about how we probably shoulda kept a log to keep track of them all. We didn't, so that history is lost. Niner rider Rebecca Tomaszewski (Tomma-wicki-wicki-wicki) was once amongst our ranks as well as Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever. Have a hundred riders passed through the "scene" since the era of modern messengering began in Charlotte back in 1995? Dunno. Sure seems like it.

One could say that I'm landing on my feet. Although I woulda liked to take a pleasant break in steady employment, I go back to work on Monday. While talking to my new manager, I was told that I would need to wear pants.

"I need to BUY pants?"

"You don't own pants?"

"Why would I?"

I now own pants (thank you, Goodwill). I'm pretty sure I'll have my shirt tucked in on Monday morning. I'll get over it.

Of course I'll tell you more about my new job next week.

I'm gonna do my damnedest to not be distracted by renegade trail work and beer, and make sure that I race the short track this weekend. Word on the street is that the what used to be a jump bump is now a jump once more.

This pleases me.

I look forward to rubbing elbows, trading paint, pointlessly jumping jumps, and mounting up a number plate for the first time in 2012. This should certainly stoke the fire for the what-is-called-a-race-but-is-just-a-big-party ICYCLE coming up on January 28th.