This New Year's will be the 8th anniversary of The Last Bike Ride Out of the 20th Century, and no anniversary of The Last Bike Ride Out of the 20th Century would be complete without a time-travel tale that at least attempts to be comparable to the one in which, by simply making the first of a whimsical pair of u-turns with my time-traveling iron steed, I visited 2000 subsequent in time to 2001. That Einstein-defying stunt seemed to heat the Yukon up to double digits in January.
I'm happy to report that I have one for this New Year's: Yesterday morning, I seemed to visit Sunday, 12/28, subsequent in time to Monday, 12/29!
My cellphone rang at 2:50 am, and I thought, "Hmmm, who would be calling in the middle of the night on my _cellphone_!? A) I'm not _substituting_ on this Sunday paper route anymore, and even if I was, it's Monday morning now, not Sunday morning. B) All of the handful of _other_ people who might ever call me in the middle of the night are - partly _by_ _definition_ - not the people who have my cellphone number!"
But I answered it, and what did it turn out to be, but my event reminder telling me that it's 3am "Sunday" and therefore time "4" my paper route.
This was very weird, because for the whole year and a half since I'd discovered how to use this event-reminder feature of my new cellphone, I'd been _religiously_ following that just-before-3am-Sunday timeframe as the time to _always_ be getting ready to do my weekly paperboying. So, although I was tired enough that under normal circumstances I would have gone _right_ back to sleep, I didn't.
Even when I'm on a bike or canoe trip sleeping in the woods near a railroad and the sound of an approaching train wakes me up, my brain's checking and re-checking of the "Am I on the tracks?" consideration only keeps me awake for a minute, if that. (Or two minutes maybe, in the case of my _non_-stopping-for-the-night canoeing days in 1975, when I _was_ in the path of barges that I had to sit up and paddle out of the way of.)
But in this case, it took me an _hour_ to go back to sleep, because, having traveled back in time _before_, I was considering _every_ _angle_ of, "Am I _sure_ that 12/28 is in the _past_? I remember it, and the delivery that I completed on it, very distinctly; however, am I _sure_ that there isn't some _other_ time-warp possibility of how 12/28 could perhaps happen a second time - and for Sunday carriers to be expected to show up and do a repeat 12/28 delivery - subsequent in time to 12/29?"
In conclusion, I feel vindicated now for being one of the last non-users of cellphones; I detested them and didn't knuckle under and get one until I became a paper boy. (They _are_ admittedly useful for a specific purpose such as that.) I think wierd things are _generally_ starting to happen with my cellphone, because a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to _call_ two of the numbers that were in my directory on it, plus several randomly-generated numbers, all by itself!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Thanks for all the tips!
I'm still receiving tips in the mail every day! Tip for carriers everywhere: Include your address on your Christmas Card that you give to your customers.
And yes, the Times does pass along the regular tips that are given by customers who pay through the Times. Snippets indicate that not all of the customers were sure of that; but, they need not worry: I see those tips every week of the year on the sheet that the Times gives me, including which customers the tips are from.
12/21 delivery report: I finished the delivery very late, and I can't blame the Times, because the papers had arrived at the distribution center on time; how embarrassing.
The only other time that I'd finished even nearly as late as I did this past Sunday, not counting my early-2007 newbie days, had been on last year's last Sunday before Christmas.
The last Sunday before Christmas is the most time-consuming delivery of the year to begin with, due to all the time of sticking my Christmas cards into the papers and stopping at doors to untape all the containing-of-tips ones from customers. But this time, to top it off, I'd left home at 3:20 instead of my usual 3:00.
I'd been up all night Saturday night fixing up a bike with which to improve the efficiency of certain parts of the delivery. It being the first in-the-snow delivery of the season, I figured that that's the time when it's most likely to be advantageous to have the bike along: With the bike (at least on the route segments on which it's worth the time of unloading it from the pickup truck), I can go up the often-cleared driveways - as opposed to taking my usual shortcuts across the lawns, which the snow is an impediment on - to the customers' doorsteps. It's still an ongoing process to figure out which streets this will and won't save time on.
But the Times vindicated me: I called the Times at 8 am (already a half an hour past the proper finishing time) to let them know that I still had a long ways to go (that way, they'd know what to tell any customers who call saying that they don't have their paper), and what did I get but a recording, telling customers to "bear with us" because the deliveries are late due to the weather!
And I had thought that this business prided itself in not letting weather be an excuse.
But finishing late wasn't the most embarrassing thing that I did that morning. Here's what takes the cake: At one customer's door, I took the tip envelope and forgot to leave a paper! Sleep deprivation, I guess.
And yes, the Times does pass along the regular tips that are given by customers who pay through the Times. Snippets indicate that not all of the customers were sure of that; but, they need not worry: I see those tips every week of the year on the sheet that the Times gives me, including which customers the tips are from.
12/21 delivery report: I finished the delivery very late, and I can't blame the Times, because the papers had arrived at the distribution center on time; how embarrassing.
The only other time that I'd finished even nearly as late as I did this past Sunday, not counting my early-2007 newbie days, had been on last year's last Sunday before Christmas.
The last Sunday before Christmas is the most time-consuming delivery of the year to begin with, due to all the time of sticking my Christmas cards into the papers and stopping at doors to untape all the containing-of-tips ones from customers. But this time, to top it off, I'd left home at 3:20 instead of my usual 3:00.
I'd been up all night Saturday night fixing up a bike with which to improve the efficiency of certain parts of the delivery. It being the first in-the-snow delivery of the season, I figured that that's the time when it's most likely to be advantageous to have the bike along: With the bike (at least on the route segments on which it's worth the time of unloading it from the pickup truck), I can go up the often-cleared driveways - as opposed to taking my usual shortcuts across the lawns, which the snow is an impediment on - to the customers' doorsteps. It's still an ongoing process to figure out which streets this will and won't save time on.
But the Times vindicated me: I called the Times at 8 am (already a half an hour past the proper finishing time) to let them know that I still had a long ways to go (that way, they'd know what to tell any customers who call saying that they don't have their paper), and what did I get but a recording, telling customers to "bear with us" because the deliveries are late due to the weather!
And I had thought that this business prided itself in not letting weather be an excuse.
But finishing late wasn't the most embarrassing thing that I did that morning. Here's what takes the cake: At one customer's door, I took the tip envelope and forgot to leave a paper! Sleep deprivation, I guess.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Welcome Customers to the blog, and Merry Christmas to all!
I've got the route's 2008 Christmas Card all cooked up and ready to start sticking into the papers on the 12/21 delivery. This card kills two birds with one stone by 1) wishing y'all a Merry Christmas, and 2) unleashing the url of this blog so as include the route's customers in the potential audience of it and thereby expose myself to one more avenue for comments about my service, as my thank-you for how good-tipping of a route this is.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Our friend the paper-boy CPA
Everybody likes to bash professions other than their own, and I'm no exception when anybody mentions CPAs or the dirt that they play in. I used to like to respond to that type of conversation with, "Do you want your mouth washed out with soap?" My attitude for many years about the dirt that CPAs play in was: Either the common man can figure out for _himself_ how to fill out the forms for appeasing the IRS and its cousins, or, in the cases in which such bureaucrats have failed to make the forms sufficiently simple for the common man to figure out in not too many hours per year, the particular taxpayer who's a victim of this ought to go to Siberia and seek asylum. My fuming about this festered enough for me to figure out how this could probably be done by canoeing from Little Diamede Island to Big Diamede Island.
But then around 1990, the Soviet Union went soft, and the pipe dream therefore ceased to mean anything.
And now I think I'm finally going to delete "CPA scum" from my vocabulary. What triggered my newfound respect for CPAs? Well, over the summer, I learned what one of them moonlights as, after I saw him make a presentation at one of the meetings that we've been having here in the Marcellus Shale about considerations such as how, if a landowner is more money-hungry than you or me and accepts money from a gas company (_if_ that "up front" payment ever even comes - and that's _another_ reason the Frost Farm refuses to sign a company lease: I actually get more payee-friendly fine print as a _paper_ _boy_!), then that landowner can (get the soap ready for washing my mouth out with, folks) count that allegedly-up-front payment as "advance royalty" on his or her tax return and thereby deduct 15% or whatever the number is.
But the thing that I was about to learn that this CPA moonlights as, doesn't have anything to do with that presentation that he did, nor about anything else having to do with the gasmen activity. Rather, this CPA was walking up to me at the end of such meetings to shake my hand and tell me that he sees me in Clarks Summit every Sunday morning.
I guessed that he looked a little bit familiar, but I couldn't recall what _part_ of the route I'd seen him on. So, when I got home, I waded through my paper-route customer lists looking for his last name. It was nowhere to be found; so, next, I assumed that perhaps somebody in his household with a different last name was paying for his house's subscription, and/or perhaps he was one of the few early risers out taking walks or whatever while I'm delivering in their neighborhoods. That exhausts all of the possibilities, right?
Wrong! Where did I see this CPA the next Sunday morning (which was the first Sunday morning that I was _looking_ for his face), but in the distribution center, at 4 am, preparing for his delivery! He's a paper boy!
I think he's doing it to teach his kid to be a paper boy, based on the fact that he frequently brings his kid along to help. The route is even apparently in his kid's name, even though the kid is often apparently at home sleeping while the paper-boy CPA does his route for him. But still, what "typical" CPA would want his kid to be a paper boy?
So, more power to the paper-boy CPA!
If I ever need a CPA, I'm going to go to his office during the week and _pay_ for his advice. I _won't_ do what I saw more than one carrier do at the distribution center this past Sunday: They were walking up to the paper-boy CPA and pumping him for free tax advice, including when he appeared to be trying to concentrate on preparing his piles of newspapers for his delivery! He was graciously giving the free tax advice to them and, I suspect in the process, losing his count of his newspapers. Indeed, one non-tax-related snippet that could be overheard at the distribution center that same morning was that on at least one delivery, the paper-boy CPA hadn't gotten his updates of what customers to stop and start. Well I wonder why?
I hope that by now, by sticking up for _both_ of the professions of the paper-boy CPA and hereby welcoming him to the brotherhood of paper carriers, I've earned my right to appease, in some future post, an ulterior motive that I had in doing so: Stay tuned for a _bashing_ of the "CPA" part of the paper-boy CPA's identity, whenever I get around to writing a certain post here that I've had in my head for a couple of months (although maybe not until after I do some posting about unrelated aspects that are even more on my mind, of my paper-delivery adventures).
Hey, CPAs _are_ fair game, aren't they, judging by the fact that I once saw a big contingent of _them_ making fun of their _own_ profession in a deluxe song that they sung while marching along in a parade?
But then around 1990, the Soviet Union went soft, and the pipe dream therefore ceased to mean anything.
And now I think I'm finally going to delete "CPA scum" from my vocabulary. What triggered my newfound respect for CPAs? Well, over the summer, I learned what one of them moonlights as, after I saw him make a presentation at one of the meetings that we've been having here in the Marcellus Shale about considerations such as how, if a landowner is more money-hungry than you or me and accepts money from a gas company (_if_ that "up front" payment ever even comes - and that's _another_ reason the Frost Farm refuses to sign a company lease: I actually get more payee-friendly fine print as a _paper_ _boy_!), then that landowner can (get the soap ready for washing my mouth out with, folks) count that allegedly-up-front payment as "advance royalty" on his or her tax return and thereby deduct 15% or whatever the number is.
But the thing that I was about to learn that this CPA moonlights as, doesn't have anything to do with that presentation that he did, nor about anything else having to do with the gasmen activity. Rather, this CPA was walking up to me at the end of such meetings to shake my hand and tell me that he sees me in Clarks Summit every Sunday morning.
I guessed that he looked a little bit familiar, but I couldn't recall what _part_ of the route I'd seen him on. So, when I got home, I waded through my paper-route customer lists looking for his last name. It was nowhere to be found; so, next, I assumed that perhaps somebody in his household with a different last name was paying for his house's subscription, and/or perhaps he was one of the few early risers out taking walks or whatever while I'm delivering in their neighborhoods. That exhausts all of the possibilities, right?
Wrong! Where did I see this CPA the next Sunday morning (which was the first Sunday morning that I was _looking_ for his face), but in the distribution center, at 4 am, preparing for his delivery! He's a paper boy!
I think he's doing it to teach his kid to be a paper boy, based on the fact that he frequently brings his kid along to help. The route is even apparently in his kid's name, even though the kid is often apparently at home sleeping while the paper-boy CPA does his route for him. But still, what "typical" CPA would want his kid to be a paper boy?
So, more power to the paper-boy CPA!
If I ever need a CPA, I'm going to go to his office during the week and _pay_ for his advice. I _won't_ do what I saw more than one carrier do at the distribution center this past Sunday: They were walking up to the paper-boy CPA and pumping him for free tax advice, including when he appeared to be trying to concentrate on preparing his piles of newspapers for his delivery! He was graciously giving the free tax advice to them and, I suspect in the process, losing his count of his newspapers. Indeed, one non-tax-related snippet that could be overheard at the distribution center that same morning was that on at least one delivery, the paper-boy CPA hadn't gotten his updates of what customers to stop and start. Well I wonder why?
I hope that by now, by sticking up for _both_ of the professions of the paper-boy CPA and hereby welcoming him to the brotherhood of paper carriers, I've earned my right to appease, in some future post, an ulterior motive that I had in doing so: Stay tuned for a _bashing_ of the "CPA" part of the paper-boy CPA's identity, whenever I get around to writing a certain post here that I've had in my head for a couple of months (although maybe not until after I do some posting about unrelated aspects that are even more on my mind, of my paper-delivery adventures).
Hey, CPAs _are_ fair game, aren't they, judging by the fact that I once saw a big contingent of _them_ making fun of their _own_ profession in a deluxe song that they sung while marching along in a parade?
Monday, November 3, 2008
Gun-clingers for McCain!
Well my home 'pooter broke down shortly after I started this blog, helping to force me to adhere to my goal of not spouting too voluminously therein. After the first 2 weeks of that, I finally started going into libraries once or twice a week, such as the one that I'm in now. But that's not enough internet time for properly unleashing a deluxe thing or two that I was beginning to cook up (such as a diatribe - stay tuned for whenever I do unleash it - questioning whether the brotherhood of paper carriers should include one whom, I've learned, happens to be CPA as his day job). So here's the next best thing:
This blog hereby endorses McCain/Palin!
I'd been an Obama fan for a long time, and then a Bob Barr fan. It took me until yesterday, when I whimsically attended McCain's rally in Scranton, to decide who I'm voting for. The excitement at that rally was such that you couldn't attend it and _not_ vote for him, and part of my inspiration for attending was a snippet in yesterday's Sunday Times in which some leftist was quoted as saying that the reason McCain was visiting Scranton was that he was counting on Northeastern Pennsylvanians to be bigots.
Well how come not a single bigoted remark was said in earshot of me during the whole several hours of that rally?
Rather, it's like what I said a while back to that Chicagoan opponent of mine on the cycling lists who wants to come here to spike the Frost Farm's trees: We _are_ bitter, and cling to our guns, here in small-town Pennsylvania, _and_ we know when and when not to overcome our bitterness.
I decided while at the rally yesterday, to overcome my bitterness toward Sarah Palin for lying through her teeth about the Bridge to Nowhere.
This blog hereby endorses McCain/Palin!
I'd been an Obama fan for a long time, and then a Bob Barr fan. It took me until yesterday, when I whimsically attended McCain's rally in Scranton, to decide who I'm voting for. The excitement at that rally was such that you couldn't attend it and _not_ vote for him, and part of my inspiration for attending was a snippet in yesterday's Sunday Times in which some leftist was quoted as saying that the reason McCain was visiting Scranton was that he was counting on Northeastern Pennsylvanians to be bigots.
Well how come not a single bigoted remark was said in earshot of me during the whole several hours of that rally?
Rather, it's like what I said a while back to that Chicagoan opponent of mine on the cycling lists who wants to come here to spike the Frost Farm's trees: We _are_ bitter, and cling to our guns, here in small-town Pennsylvania, _and_ we know when and when not to overcome our bitterness.
I decided while at the rally yesterday, to overcome my bitterness toward Sarah Palin for lying through her teeth about the Bridge to Nowhere.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
About the name of this blog
Although I've been doing this Scranton Sunday Times route (designated by the Times as Route 62226) since early 2007, it took me until today to get around to figuring out all of the necessary mouse potatoing involved in starting the blog.
The main reason for the delay had to do with the fact that I wanted the blog's name to be Northeastern Pennsylvania Bicycle Messengering. I didn't feel that I had a right to start it - or do anything else resembling calling myself a bicycle messenger - until after doing at least some part of the actual delivery by bike at least once.
I'm happy to report that a few weeks ago, I finally got around to doing that. I'm still waiting until I get around to fixing up a devoted-to-the-purpose bike (with the right kind of homemade newspaper pails, etc.) before I can begin to _regularly_ bring it along on Sunday mornings and use it to more _significantly_ replace my walking, running and motoring through the route. But, when I brought it along a few weeks ago and used it to do the few streets that I'd been gradually figuring out how to do by foot (the mode that I'm still generally using on those streets for the time being), I _technically_ crossed the line into having partially fulfilled my pipe dream of being a bicycle messenger.
I've said from the start that this route might not ever be more than "partially" a bicycle-messengering route. The combination of the Sunday papers being so fat, the still-cheap gas and especially, the short time window, makes it most practical to use a motor vehicle as a "mother ship", with a goal of motoring as few of the segments as possible and parking in several places throughout the route to do as many of the segments as possible by foot or by bike.
The other carriers that I've happened to see on their Sunday deliveries in Clarks Summit, apparently motor to virtually every house (which _still_ requires _running_ perhaps 3 miles, my guestimate of the total of all of a 180-house Clarks Summit carrier's - Clarks Summit being an excellent-tipping town - trips from his or her car door to each tipper's doorstep on which to place the paper). Motoring to virtually every house like that is a method that I did too for a long time at first, and I still do it on about half of the segments of the route, because figuring out how to minimize the motoring and still finish within the time window - even for a forceful spewer, such as myself, of propaganda about how cycling is often faster than motoring - takes a long time (although I'm making progress on it fairly steadily) and is not as simple as the more-carfree-than-you-or-me faction of the cycling community would have us believe.
In particular, I predict that due to my above-mentioned use of motoring, this blog will get attacked by the red-light-running, sidewalk-trespassing (like in the photo accompanying a Sunday Times article a few months ago about an outfit in Scranton that beat me to to the punch, by a few months, of introducing bicycle messengering to Northeastern Pennsylvania - but if that's what they call cycling, they can _have_ the distinction), experience-largely-limited-to-city-centers, greenybaby-archleftist faction of the cycling community.
They'll claim that I'm not a "real" bicycle messenger. They'll deem me ineligible for the messengers-only free beer at The Handlebar out in DZBLtown. One of them has even already said that he'd like to spike the Frost Farm's trees.
But the pedestal of ignorance that this never-loaded-a-honey-wagon-in-their-life faction of the cycling community is on, overlooks the fact that their beloved city-center bicycle-messengering outfits, too, depend on motoring. The deliveries that those outfits do by bike are - just as much as yours or mine - but one cog in an overall-logistics wheel that would not function without its motoring cogs.
The main reason for the delay had to do with the fact that I wanted the blog's name to be Northeastern Pennsylvania Bicycle Messengering. I didn't feel that I had a right to start it - or do anything else resembling calling myself a bicycle messenger - until after doing at least some part of the actual delivery by bike at least once.
I'm happy to report that a few weeks ago, I finally got around to doing that. I'm still waiting until I get around to fixing up a devoted-to-the-purpose bike (with the right kind of homemade newspaper pails, etc.) before I can begin to _regularly_ bring it along on Sunday mornings and use it to more _significantly_ replace my walking, running and motoring through the route. But, when I brought it along a few weeks ago and used it to do the few streets that I'd been gradually figuring out how to do by foot (the mode that I'm still generally using on those streets for the time being), I _technically_ crossed the line into having partially fulfilled my pipe dream of being a bicycle messenger.
I've said from the start that this route might not ever be more than "partially" a bicycle-messengering route. The combination of the Sunday papers being so fat, the still-cheap gas and especially, the short time window, makes it most practical to use a motor vehicle as a "mother ship", with a goal of motoring as few of the segments as possible and parking in several places throughout the route to do as many of the segments as possible by foot or by bike.
The other carriers that I've happened to see on their Sunday deliveries in Clarks Summit, apparently motor to virtually every house (which _still_ requires _running_ perhaps 3 miles, my guestimate of the total of all of a 180-house Clarks Summit carrier's - Clarks Summit being an excellent-tipping town - trips from his or her car door to each tipper's doorstep on which to place the paper). Motoring to virtually every house like that is a method that I did too for a long time at first, and I still do it on about half of the segments of the route, because figuring out how to minimize the motoring and still finish within the time window - even for a forceful spewer, such as myself, of propaganda about how cycling is often faster than motoring - takes a long time (although I'm making progress on it fairly steadily) and is not as simple as the more-carfree-than-you-or-me faction of the cycling community would have us believe.
In particular, I predict that due to my above-mentioned use of motoring, this blog will get attacked by the red-light-running, sidewalk-trespassing (like in the photo accompanying a Sunday Times article a few months ago about an outfit in Scranton that beat me to to the punch, by a few months, of introducing bicycle messengering to Northeastern Pennsylvania - but if that's what they call cycling, they can _have_ the distinction), experience-largely-limited-to-city-centers, greenybaby-archleftist faction of the cycling community.
They'll claim that I'm not a "real" bicycle messenger. They'll deem me ineligible for the messengers-only free beer at The Handlebar out in DZBLtown. One of them has even already said that he'd like to spike the Frost Farm's trees.
But the pedestal of ignorance that this never-loaded-a-honey-wagon-in-their-life faction of the cycling community is on, overlooks the fact that their beloved city-center bicycle-messengering outfits, too, depend on motoring. The deliveries that those outfits do by bike are - just as much as yours or mine - but one cog in an overall-logistics wheel that would not function without its motoring cogs.
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