A Hollow Victory

5 July - Started off the day with getting rid of yesterday's SHTs, the morning was going swimmingly until I dropped my blackberry normally, they're reasonably robust but my little toy was gone after that. The drop coincided with a short network error that made it very difficult to convince Rick (dispatcher) that the actual device was toast. For a few hour I played it 80s style - getting a bunch of trips over the radio and then getting them off before getting another small load. Not nearly as efficient as usingthe blackberry system though - if the process is working right hardly ever need to speak to the dispatcher, he knows what I have to pick up, what I have to drop, the last place I was and he can assign trips that I can work into my route - when its just radio it means to get the same result i've got to constantly be talking to him which isn’t really feasible when he's dispatching to twenty or so bikers and drivers. So, after about 1 he got me on the ECOs again - just sending me all over downtown picking up overnight deliveries - normally, this is done at the end of the day because nobody wants to be loading up with stuff that has to be carried around until te end of the day - by 4pm I had over about 60 trips on me - mostly envelopes but a couple of boxes and rolls (i don't think a messenger really looks like a messenger unless he has an architect's roll sticking out the back of his bag) - I felt like a f**king postman. Despite only getting paid for half the value of a trip for picking it up I completely smashed my cash record for the day - and soundly beat Jason's record as well - however, unfortunately I don't think I can count it because it was not the work of a real messenger. A messenger picks AND drops - today I just dropped. And then I picked. If it's not point to point its just not same. Goddamn that spoke and wheel model!