I’ll begin with an introduction for anyone besides my mother who might be reading these installments (Hi Mom – sorry your birthday present was still alive and bit you!). My name is Laramie Flick. I’m 31 years old and have been riding a bicycle taxi in New York City for four years.
Recently, I decided to spend six weeks riding a pedicab in Edinburgh, Scotland. It wasn’t a hard decision. New York is slow for pedicabbing in August. I will be paid in pounds not dollars, which are quickly becoming more useful for lining the bottom of a birdcage than for actually buying anything. Lastly, working in Edinburgh is about as close as I am going to get to a paid vacation with medical benefits. I was more interested in insuring my camera than my bones and vital organs but for a little over $100 in traveller’s insurance, I got both.
I’ve been in Edinburgh for about a week now and I’m not exactly laying on a beach in Mexico, drunk and sunburned. It’s all quite difficult. To begin with, many people here think they are speaking English. In fact, they’re speaking a hybrid of English and "vroom-vroomese" – that language where little children roll their r’s when they’re pushing a toy car around. Get that little kid drunk on pills and gin and I’m often not sure if I’m being asked for a ride or being insulted by the people on the street.
Worse, the hills here are ridiculous. I’m pedaling a 200 lb bike loaded with as much as 600 lbs of dead but cursing, cheering, and wriggling weight. I’m going up hills such as Candlemaker Row and The Royal Mile, which many people can’t ride a regular 30lb bike up. Some are steeper than a 45-degree angle.
Am I superhuman? No. I’ve got three wheels and good gears. On these hills, if you stop for a second on a regular bike to rest, you fall over and everyone laughs at you. On a pedicab you just go into the lowest gear and go up the hill at about 3 mile per hour. It’s like going up steps with a backpack on. Not fun, but not impossible.
The funny thing is that I’m less tired after three consecutive days here than in New York. The difference I guess is that in New York, the average ride is about one mile and the passenger is usually late for something.
In Edinburgh, the passenger is drunk and too disoriented to walk about 100 yards up a hill. They’ll pay me as much as £20 ($40) to do it for them even if they would have gotten their twice as fast walking.
At least it’s beautiful here and there are no yellow cabs or swaggering but dangerously bored NYPD officers who joined the force thinking they were going to get some NYPD-blue-action and instead ended up posing for pictures with Texan tourists. But that’s another segment.