Spoke 7: Alpha 106, copied, over.
Rodrigo Tardito's clear cut tale of working as a bicycle courier in 1980s London
This is the first post of Guest Writers Season 2. Scroll to the bottom for the complete Season 1 list.
In the summer of 1985 I graduated from the London College of Printing (LCP) with a BA in Art and Design. I greatly enjoyed the course, especially the complementary studies subjects where we did such stimulating topics as “The History of American Popular Music”, “Film Studies” and “Modern Cultural Studies” plus a good selection of English and world literature (including “100 años de soledad” in English!) Little did I know then, how useful all this learning would become, in my future career as a secondary school teacher. The practical design courses were equally compelling, however most had a heavy commercial focus. LCP graduates were quickly snapped up by the top London Ad agencies, some of which, like Saatchi and Saatchi, had become more like government ministries than private businesses. In Thatcher’s Britain, you had to make it and make it big. Some of my classmates started talking about real estate investments while living in a council flat! I quickly realised that this upward mobility was not for me, however I was terribly embarrassed to acknowledge this publicly.
For a while I felt my restlessness stemmed from having been exiled from Pinochet’s Chile as a teen, but eventually I succumbed to peer pressure, joined the rat race and started working as a slide designer for a production company specialising in the launch of such products as motor cars and timeshare apartments in the Caribbean. One winter morning, I sat down at my desk facing a six inch pile of acetate sheets which had to be set with Letraset (the tedious transfer lettering common before computer aided design.) I could not face the task. I put it away, acted like I was doing other things, and that following Friday, understandably I was sacked. I still remember riding my Peugeot (Reynolds) 501 home in the rain along the Chelsea Embankment and asking myself “what do you truly enjoy doing?” The answer was obvious: it was cycling. On the other hand, I can't describe the anguish I felt as I clearly felt I hadn't gone to college for 4 years just to end up riding my bike!
I signed on the dole a few days later but still, I was under pressure from Imogen (my wife of three months) about my future career plans. Imogen, a former Roedeanian, had also gone to LCP but studied film. She joined a film production company straight from graduation and she loved the job and its perks. We even got to party with Gary Oldman at the private view of “Sid and Nancy” in a cinema in Leicester Square. Destinies are weird things and unbeknownst to us, we had started drifting apart as soon as we came back from our honeymoon. I was happy with my Peugeot while she bought a Honda 250 plus full leathers, a few weeks into her role as production assistant.
Most Sundays we used to go to a pub in the Oval and then to a curry house in Stockwell. One Sunday I came across Declan in the pub, a very talented printmaker from LCP and self declared college dropout from day one. The weird thing was that Declan got a First with an amazing final show of his expressionist linocuts. My conversation with Declan that Sunday was about to change my life. He confided that he hated the London art gallery scene and was actually bike messaging to get by. I showed immediate interest and he gave me the number of Dynamo, a bike courier company that gave you a 400 quid bonus if you completed a full month’s work. The next day I cycled over to Dynamo’s dingy offices in Clerkenwell, got given a radio, a bright yellow vinyl bag and a secret service sounding two way radio code: Alpha 106.
My training lasted about five minutes and it basically consisted of what buttons to press on the radio. You had to call back saying: “Alpha 106 vacant, W1 or E2 . . . etc.” after each drop. Pickups were announced depending on the rider’s location. The weekly wage was tallied according to the number of deliveries you made during the week as well as the distances covered. On a good week you could make 150 pounds, with that juicy 400 bonus at the end of the month. Eventually I realised that other factors played a role in a bike messenger’s success, namely being able to change a punctured inner tube on the job, and being able to read the A to Z in the rain, the analogue Google maps of the times. Funnily enough, most riders weren’t good at either, making bike messaging for most, a frustrating job with an incredible high turnover. Nonetheless, in the pre Internet era, bike messaging was a very lucrative business as riders could cross central London quite often quicker than a motorbike.
Respect from the elite riders was gained through permanence, knowledge of bike mechanics and London’s geography. If you rode anything other than 700cs, you had little chance of commanding respect. Ralph (Alpha 101) was the rider we all aspired to become. He was a sound engineer who also raced at Herne Hill on Sundays. He worked on a track fixed wheel hand-made in Belgium with no brakes, and consistently made over 200 pounds a week. Leo (Alpha 108) was another top rider. He had read history at Reading and his ride was a spiffing light blue made-to-measure Condor Cycle. A tough cookie, at 18 he had cycled to Egypt overland alone. We became great friends and lectured novice riders on mechanics, the optimum routes, and the best times to have breaks. After a while Leo and I realised we were working almost exclusively for fashion photographers. One Friday night at the end-of-the-week drink-up, our boss told us the reason: we were the most presentable of all the riders he had!
Our clients ranged from food stylists (sometimes generous with their wares), architects, publishers, lawyers (hated their heavy loads) and all kinds of photographers at a time before email and the interconnected world we have today. The most awkward thing I had to carry once were eight sacks of overnight mail bound for the US. In the middle of Tottenham Court Road, I simply loaded up my bike on the van that drove me and the bags up to Heathrow, locked it up at the airport and went for a long weekend in New York in my lycras! Luckily Imogen’s parents were living on the Upper East Side at the time and were pleased to receive me on my business trip.
Being a bike messenger was tough work and during the winter the relentless rains made it even more of a challenge. I remember one January when it rained every single day of the month. I would get home drenched, have some food and go to bed, only to put on wet clothes the following day and repeat the cycle. That month I certainly earned my bonus! In the summer, keeping hydrated was a major concern as you could not risk getting a drink in case you missed a pick up. I even peed on the saddle a couple of times, rolling up one leg up to my crotch, just like the big tour riders. Personally I was having the time of my life and it often felt like a true vocation. Outwardly however, I had to give the impression I was doing it for a laugh, and only temporarily. It was complicated, leaving home in the early morning chill, I used to feel guilty about having so much fun.
Leo became so good that one day he was promoted to dispatcher. He was ruthless, and the quicker you delivered, the more work he gave you. That was the name of the game, the more drops you did in a day, the more you earned at the end of the week. I remember one day I was shooting down Farringdon Road when a trendy advertising executive opened his SUV door into my path. Even though I had the habit of excessively tightening my toe clips, I took off from the bike and flew several feet in the air. The Peugeot’s front wheel was left looking like a figure of eight, so I went back to base shaking, to excuse myself for the day. Leo was having none of it saying: “Here, take mine, you have a WC2 drop you pussy!” and he gave me his front wheel. Days later I billed the advertising executive for the most expensive Mavic rims I could find as well as new 3Ts handlebars.
After about a year at Dynamo, I decided to go back to college and study computer graphics. Leo got a job as a town planner for Croydon Council and our incursion into bike messaging came to an end. The thrill of shooting around London traffic persisted though and when I split up from Imogen and went to live in Mallorca in 1990, he would visit me and we would race each other like true kamikazes down the Avenidas in Palma. In my computer graphics course at St. Martin’s I had met people who eventually got me into teaching, first in London, then in Spain, and finally in Peru. Leo’s love affair with the bike came to a more dramatic end. In 2002, he was hit by a lorry on the Vauxhall Bridge Road, with the inquest establishing he was killed before his head hit the pavement. This tragedy highlights the dangers of mixing bike and motorised traffic on public roads. Even though most cyclists wear helmets today, thousands still die in accidents around the world every year. After Leo left, I spent almost ten years off the saddle. Eventually I started cycling to work and at 61, I still sometimes get the urge of racing motorised traffic through the pandemonium of Lima’s streets.
By Rodrigo Tardito
Instagram: thekeeneyelash
His IB TOK students call him Mr. T although few of them have ever heard of B. A. Baracus. He braved fatherhood for the first time at age 56 and lives in the surfing hub of Huanchaco in northern Peru with his partner Lessly and son Gael. Has tried surfing on numerous occasions however his six foot five lanky frame refuses to learn. He greatly misses Indian food and has become a competent criollo and chifa cocinero over the years. His concern about the future of human civilization constantly torments him, still, he is capable of relaxing, watching the sunset over the Pacific, chilcano in hand.
Complete list of Guest writers Season 1
A series of richly detailed two-wheel tales concerning love, identity, health, history and joy.
Spoke 1: The stuff we’re made of by Zael Ligertwood
Spoke 2: Ultraviolet Summer by Jack McKeever
Spoke 3: Back to life, back to reality by Alison Blofeld
Spoke 4: Revisiting the Past, Finding the Present, Looking Towards the Future by Glen Goodnough
Spoke 5: Retracing my great-grandfather's final flight on two wheels by James Forsey
Spoke 6: Understanding and loving your cycle by Maud Jansen
A call for writers
If you’d like to guest write on 10,000km Arriba, you’d be most welcome.
You can write about any bike experience, whether a short or long trip, a chronic cycling addiction, or simply a moment on two wheels that you deeply cherish.
Let me know in the comments.