As it turned out in non-fiction, my "Explosion in 2010" was that during the 7-day period ending today, 1/1/10, my total of newspapers delivered during any 7-day period - which previously, since early 2007, had been only 180 or thereabouts (which is what I do on Sundays in Clarks Summit) - "exploded" to 372!
Early yesterday morning I delivered the New Year's Eve edition, and then early this morning I delivered the New Year's Day edition, of the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin, to 96 of its subscribers in Chenango Bridge, N.Y.!
That's right: A Scranton Sunday Times carrier, proudly displaying the Scranton-newspaper logo on his carrier bag while walking/running around Binghamton-area neighborhoods delivering Binghamton weekday newspapers!
(To help anybody who's just surfed in to grasp the geographical silliness of this: Binghamton and Chenango Bridge are 40 miles north of where I live, and Clarks Summit on the other hand, where I deliver the Scranton Sunday Times, is only 17 miles south of where I live.)
180 Sunday papers on 12/27/09, + 96 admittedly-much-smaller weekday papers on 12/31/09, + 96 more on 1/1/10, makes 372 (or thereabouts) during the 7-day (or actually only 6-day) period ending 1/1/10. Explosion in 2010!
The whole idea for such a full-of-unknowns (that's what I enjoyed about it the most: it was like an encore of my early-2007 kick-off of the Clarks Summit route in that I was unfamiliar with the houses, not to mention the format that a different newspaper does its update sheets in, and took until way late to finish on both days) delivery adventure as this had come very suddenly, late on Wednesday 12/30:
Until then, I'd been lamenting about how I hadn't gotten around to preparing to conduct The Last Bike Ride Out of the Oughts and that time had also gotten more or less too short to prepare to properly conduct any (e.g. even one based on some cooked-up-at-the-last-minute solar-time zone boundary) Bike Ride Out of the Oughts. So, my mood had gradually become simply: Any "Explosion in 2010" -type adventure to kick the new decade off with, will do.
And that was when a fellow member of the Southern Tier Bicycle Club (whom, like all STBC members, I admittedly only very rarely see) saved the day: Late on Wednesday I happened to take one of my rare peeks at STBC's yahoo group, and what did I see but an announcement there that a substitute was needed on a club member's paper route on Thursday 12/31 and Friday 1/1.
I was already very behind on my sleep to begin with; so, lamentably, I motored up there, both days. The thing that most particularly makes me feel like I was "cheating" in that connection is that the carrier that I was substituting for usually bikes the route. The route's layout is such that even a newbie such as myself was able to park my motor vehicle in only about 3 places while, otherwise entirely (at least on the second day when I'd had more time to plan), delivering to 95 of the 96 customers by foot.
It was an intriguingly efficient route in that respect. Apparently in the Binghamton area (or maybe - but then what do I know, having never been a paper boy anywhere else except Clarks Summit, Pa. - many areas regardless of what newspaper's turf you're in that are more urban/"cyclist/pedestrian friendly" than Clarks Summit is), the bundles of papers arrive on the carrier's home porch at 4:30 am. This enables the carrier to establish a route that his/her residence is geographically centered in, thereby making the route very walkable/cyclable, as opposed to requiring all of the carriers to cruise to a distribution center to obtain their bundles of papers.
I hope to substitute on that route again sometime. I guess not too often either; I mainly just needed an adventure for New Year's. When I cycle to Binghamton the distance is no problem at all because time spent cycling is always time well spent regardless of the destination - it's the journey! But when I'm motoring to Binghamton, I need to have a load of my 5 cent bottles from the Forest City Recycling Center to cash in on in Binghamton (like I did yesterday and today - albeit smaller-than-usual loads) to help justify the motoring miles.
Happy New Year!
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3 comments:
Good Job Tom! Even though I usually bike the route, except on Sundays when I do take the car because the papers are much larger, I am super duper impressed that you only parked in places!
Mona
I was trying to say "only parked in THREE places" AMAZING!
It took me until the second day to get to the point of delivering all 96 papers from only 3 parking spots.
Upon finishing on the much-less-efficient first day, I scribbled down approximately how many subscribers there were on each street, went home with that info and divided the route into three loops, with the number of papers for each loop being small enough to carry by foot. I also - as a result of the experience of trying to fumble with the rubber bands and bags while walking - divided each of these three planned loads between rolled-before-I-start (or bagged, as it turned out due to the wx) ones in a carrier bag near my left hand, and unrolled ones in a carrier bag near my right hand.
New Year's Day delivery report: From the first parking spot, namely in front of your house, I did the first two loads. The first and smallest load did Newman and Clark. The second load did Wightman, Claridon, River, Palmer, Jewell & the apartments. From the second parking spot, namely at the corner of Cherry & Oak, I did the third load, which did Cherry, Highland and Oak. And from the third parking spot, namely in front of the Frontier office, I delivered that one paper (because that's on the way cruising between the route's two sides of the tracks, plus I decided to save it for last because a likely-to-be-closed-on-the-holiday business is less likely than residences are to notice that the paper is late).
On the first day, I took from 4:35 to about 7:50, and on the second day, I took "only" from 4:45 to 7:30 (Compared to your one hour). Holidays are a good time for you to get a newbie such as myself, because I noticed on one of the sheets that on holidays the deadline is 7:00 instead of 6:00.
On my Sunday route for the Scranton paper, the papers usually arrive by 4:00 and the delivery deadline is 7:30. As a newbie in 2007 on that route, I took until 9:05 the first time (with the funniest note on one of the doors saying, "Sunday paper - Grrrrrr - Thank you!", and that was even after I'd carefully mapped it out in daylight beforehand, which I didn't do with your Binghamton route.
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