Last night as I dropped off a rider at One Eyed Jacks, a young guy who was standing outside with a beer in his hand motioned for me to stop.
"Wanna ride?" I asked.
"No thanks," he said. "I just want to see if you can make it once around this block in 4 minutes or less. If you can do it, I'll give you five bucks."
I suspected some kind of trick. Almost all the streets in the French Quarter are one way, and he gestured in a direction that was the wrong way. I wasn't about to risk a ticket, or worse, a wreck, for five dollars. When I pointed this out, he said, "No problem! I didn't mean that you have to go the wrong way."
I thought it over and decided I didn't have much to lose. This was not an area where someone might easily set up an ambush. In terms of the challenge he had laid out, I was pretty sure I could make the block in less than four minutes. If I failed -- or if I succeeded and the guy refused to pay, which I figured was the stronger possibility -- I wouldn't have lost anything more than a couple of minutes time.
I set out at a good clip -- a bit more than a leisurely pace and considerably less than an all out sprint. As I turned the corner I got a call on the company cell phone. (The Lynch brothers who run our company are out of town for a few days, so a couple of us "veterans" are taking turns as shift managers, which means among other things, carrying the phone around so that we can send out dispatches on the fly. The whole pedicab business is so new that with barely a month's experience under my belt, I'm among the veterans.) Still pedaling, I fished the radio out of my pocket and answered it: "Bike Taxi, Mark speaking."
"We need someone to come get us at Ursulines and Decatur," the caller said.
"Ok, I'll send someone right away," I promised.
I got on the radio and requested the nearest bike to make the pickup. A colleague responded quickly that he was on his way. I hadn't stopped cycling, but all of this had certainly cost me time. Still I was pretty sure that I would make it back before the deadline.
When I rounded the fourth corner to pull up in front of One Eyed Jacks, the guy was still standing there beer in hand. He looked down at his stop watch. "Wow!" he exclaimed. "You made it in two and a half minutes. I didn't think you could do it." He handed me a five dollar bill, shook my hand and asked if I would mind posing for a photo with him. "I want a picture with the guy who kicked my ass," he said.
I've been thinking about this incident and trying to figure out if there's any way to turn this into a permanent gig. Imagine if I could drive an empty pedicab around and make $5 every two and a half minutes! I've always been poor at math, but assuming I'm pushing the right buttons on the calculator, that comes out to $120 an hour. Lydia, my 15 year old daughter, wants to go to Cornell when she finishes high school in a couple years. At that rate, I might actually be able to send her!
I don't know... No doubt, pedaling an empty rickshaw around the block is a lot less work than hauling drunk riders from Bourbon Street to their hotel. But it's also a lot less entertaining.
When I posted the dude's photo on Facebook and boasted that I had made an easy $5 off him, an old college friend reminded me of another easy money method, which I had witnessed during trips to the Quarter many years ago. Here's how it works:
Entrepreneur (typically 10 or 12 years old) walks up to unsuspecting tourist and says, "Betcha five dollars I can tell you where you got those shoes at."
Gullible tourist replies: "You're on!"
Young entrepreneur: "You got 'em on your feet on Bourbon St."
I don't know if they still do that. I haven't seen it happening since I've been on the job, but I've got to admit, that's an even easier way to make five dollars than pedaling an empty pedicab around the block. And entertaining too! Maybe I should try my hand at it.
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