100,000 miles, four years, two amazing cities, one relentless adrenaline and caffeine-fuelled adventure full of thrills, pills, hills, and bellyache.
Terrified by the prospect of being stuck in the same job for life, and faced with the need for an income while back at uni studying for a change of careers, Ryan made a break from the ‘real world’ and set out to do something he loved. After an exhilarating cycle journey around San Francisco, he turned his attention to the one thing in life which had always brought him unbridled joy and adventure.
But what began as a convenient way of earning a living, and a way to escape exams and essays, ended by showing a new way of life, with many unintended and unbelievable consequences. Unshackled from the traditional employer, able to make his own way in the newly emerging gig economy by working for Deliveroo, Ryan has come up against the obvious drawbacks and the undeniable benefits of riding your bike for a living, and seen the changing face of a huge and growing sector of the modern economy, from its early growth stage to the crucial role it played in the middle of a global pandemic.
100,000 miles, four years, two amazing cities, one relentless adrenaline and caffeine-fuelled adventure full of thrills, pills, hills, and bellyache.
Terrified by the prospect of being stuck in the same job for life, and faced with the need for an income while back at uni studying for a change of careers, Ryan made a break from the ‘real world’ and set out to do something he loved. After an exhilarating cycle journey around San Francisco, he turned his attention to the one thing in life which had always brought him unbridled joy and adventure.
But what began as a convenient way of earning a living, and a way to escape exams and essays, ended by showing a new way of life, with many unintended and unbelievable consequences. Unshackled from the traditional employer, able to make his own way in the newly emerging gig economy by working for Deliveroo, Ryan has come up against the obvious drawbacks and the undeniable benefits of riding your bike for a living, and seen the changing face of a huge and growing sector of the modern economy, from its early growth stage to the crucial role it played in the middle of a global pandemic.
‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.’ Pablo Picasso
That feeling you first exhibit as a child, after a few years roaming around the vicinity of your humble dwelling, learning the language, skills, habits and general ways of life that will hopefully stand you in good stead going into your crucial development years. Before the hard work and stress of school exams, before girlfriends (or lack of) and the inevitable morphing we all go through into some kind of strange-looking and -sounding individual in our adolescent years. Before that, before all the heartbreak and ball ache of becoming a teenager, there were the golden years of boyhood, between infancy and puberty, in which you could do whatever you bloody well pleased. It was a great time, the world was yours to explore and enjoy.
Once the stabilisers came off and you were brave enough to venture out on the shiny, new bike that your parents had saved up all year to get you for Christmas, then a whole new world opened up. A parallel universe, one which was ten times bigger and better, thanks to the newly acquired superpower of being able to leave your cul-de-sac for the first time without needing to retrace your steps or fearing the backlash of not being back before the streetlights came on.
It is a great time for most kids. Knocking around with your friends, kicking a football around the park, and generally finding out what the world, or at least your own neighbourhood, was really like. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince provided the soundtrack to those endless 90s summers of fun when the world was so much less complicated and the only thing getting in the way of adventure and mischief were the late August nights drawing in. Your only worry was how late you could stay out playing before one of your parents emerged, aggressively shouting orders for the fifth and final time to tell you had to get back in the house, to be fed and put to bed, before you passed out asleep outside and the Candymancame to pick you up for not listening to your parents. You were free, happy, content, creative and full of wanderlust, with endless ideas for what to do with all that magical free time just waiting to be filled with whatever your boundless imagination conjured up; consumed with how to squeeze the most out of every long sunny day in the endless carefree summer holiday.
As the child’s world expanded, new frontiers opened up. You could finally make it all the way to the shops to buy a can of something fizzy and quench your thirst before the long journey back. You could explore places of interest you had previously only viewed from the car window, passing by on the way back from a shopping trip to the city. There were so many opportunities closed off to young people until they got hold of a bike, arguably the best bit of kit they were ever likely to own. It was this most simple of machines that would get you to other friends’ houses, estates, towns, villages, beaches, shops, parks or any other place of interest that would previously have been impossible to reach under your own steam.
There it was, standing awkwardly on the sofa one Christmas, inside fluorescent red and green wrapping paper that didn’t even begin to disguise what it was. You were already elated at the prospect even before you started ripping it off. And if you think I am overplaying the significance of a bike to kids of any era before the internet exploded, then you are obviously a kid who can’t remember a time before the internet. This was the tool for accessing the rest of your world – the bits that really mattered – in the pre-tech age.
I am referring to the early 1990s, which for people of a certain age is not so long ago but for a younger generation is a kind of prehistory. Crucially, it’s an analogue time, before the digital realm exploded and the world as we had known it became superseded by the World Wide Web. Of course, nowadays it’s more widely called the internet, but either way this profound, disruptive invention would go on to change everything in our simple, everyday lives.
As a slightly odd-looking thirteen-year-old boy undergoing the physical disruptions of puberty – someone who had only just discovered Napster and was still watching Britney Spears videos on MTV (don’t tell anyone I told you) – I found something liberating about being able to dial up this internet malarkey. Find any song in the world and wait for it to download within the next half hour, fingers crossed. (For anyone under thirty, that is not a typo – it really did take that long.) Only 20 years ago, given how long it took, downloading (not streaming) a song would be seen as an evening or weekend privilege when you were using a pay-as-you-go internet service provider to access the web, and when your siblings were just as eager to have their daily fix of early internet usage on the family home computer.
On a mobile phone in these prehistoric days you could call your mates, or text them with just enough characters to tell them you were alive or grounded, and you could even have a talk-of-the-town novelty ringtone based on the theme from Titanic, the Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet blockbuster from that era. These were much simpler times, like I say. Everyone wanted a desktop computer for the internet, and a mobile phone to let their mates know in under 130 characters that they wanted in on the 35cl bottle of vodka for Friday night. Still, these two very separate and expensive bits of technology were not yet at the stage of usability that would see them become accessible to almost anyone anywhere on the planet.
Fast-forward two decades, and changes in the use of mobile phones and the internet have been absolutely mind-blowing, and are now completely taken for granted. These tools have comprehensively changed the way we live our lives, interact with others, and access goods and services in a way that was utterly inconceivable only twenty years ago – a time when you waited until 6pm (when calls were cheaper) to call friends and family on the landline or order takeaways from your local Indian, Chinese or chippie.
These fast-food joints had cornered the market in takeaway business among hungry punters in towns or cities across the country until very recently, when technology delivery platforms emerged on people’s mobile phones as simple-to-use digital-payment apps. In those days (both the bad-old days and the good-old days), landline phones would be dialled, orders would be placed (and always lost in translation) and, with any luck, in the next hour or so your food would turn up and you would pay the delivery driver, emerging from his beaten-up old car, with some cold hard cash.
Some of this cash would be ready to hand straight over to the driver. The remainder would have to be rescued from the bowels of the sofa, like a rare diamond dug out from a pitch-black mine, every cushion, wooden slat and fibre of fabric removed, the empty frame scoured for anything remotely metallic or shiny until eventually, if you were lucky, you found the 56p by which you were short of the right money, and the takeaway driver finally agreed to hand over the food. Then restoring the sofa to its original solid state so that it was fit to sit on could take just as much time and severely delay the enjoyment of your meal. It was all such a drag, but we didn’t know anything else, so no one ever thought to complain.
If the sofa search was unsuccessful, it was time to raid every cupboard, jar, bedroom drawer, wallet, purse or siblings’ piggy bank that you could lay your hands on or break open in time. This required lightning-fast initiative and barbarian-style hunting skills before the delivery driver eventually grew tired of waiting and decided whether or not to accept whatever you could rustle up as payment for your now-lukewarm takeaway meal. There were emergency procedures, such as going next door to borrow some money (always the youngest and most naive member of the household would be sent into battle for this most undignified task) or simply admitting defeat to the delivery driver and sulking, begging for a ‘stupid prick’ discount. This was the nuclear option in every sense. Not only was he not going to receive full payment for the food you had rung up and ordered three hours earlier, he wasn’t even going to be recompensed for the time he had spent listening to everyone in your household deconstruct and reconstruct every movable piece of furniture in the house.
Looking at the routine humiliations the job involved, as a kid I never harboured ambitions to pursue that line of work. After all, I willingly took part in the mental destruction of delivery drivers on a regular basis, by which I mean every last Friday of the month, at a time when having a takeaway was still seen as something of a treat. This was normally when parents had just been paid or, very occasionally, when someone in the household had come home with a good school report. So the last Friday of the month was the most likely time for such a banquet.
Simpler times indeed. Maybe it wasn’t so much fun at the time, given the process I’ve described of ordering takeaways back in the 1990s, but there was always some comfort to be taken in knowing that every delivery driver hated their job and hated waiting while you looked for the money, only to be paid slightly less than the amount that was owed. An amount which the restaurant staff had clearly stated at the end of the call, and you had verbally agreed, when you’d called up excitedly not really paying attention to such tedious specifics to place the order. Not for the first time, you had naively reassured the person on the end of the line that payment would be swift, in full and not covered in the accumulated gubbins that lurked in the bowels of your sofa. Finally, after excavating the foundations beneath your feet in search of the extra money needed to meet payment, you admitted defeat to the now-impenetrable statue-like figure standing in your doorway with his bum bag full of pennies and twopence pieces as payment. Well, they shouldn’t let kids ring up for takeaways, should they? This was before the days of risk assessments and health and safety (probably).
Food delivery is just one small and insignificant sector that the internet transformed once reliable online payment systems had developed to make such transactions simple and instantaneous. Before they did, I would never even have considered the prehistoric world of hanging around in sweaty chip shops, waiting to pick up a pizza and kebab to be dropped off to the family from hell (again), who never had enough change. Working every weekend. Never having a social life. No wonder these delivery drivers became robots in disguise. Blank expressions met you every time you tried to prise your food from their grasp. As a child, I could quite never understand why they were so unenthusiastic. So it’s hardly surprising that I had never considered going down that road in adult life. In any case, I was probably still blacklisted from every fast-food place in town by the time I was old enough to start applying for jobs. I did eventually pass my driving test and was ready to stand on my own two feet, but by then I was much more interested in new sportswear and trainers than rubber kebabs or greasy pizzas.
There were certain skills that I acquired as a ten-year-old which needed to be unlearned, as I found they didn’t cut it in the world of work. Crying for attention, kicking and beating siblings for attention, leaving home for good, again for attention. Basically, competing for the love and attention of your parents and friends, brothers and sisters. There were also habits that would prove more difficult to shake off as you grew into an adult version of yourself needing to handle the big, bad scary world. Picking your nose, farting, kicking and beating siblings (now more for stress relief and enjoyment than for your parents’ attention), and still competing for some kind of love and attention from the people around you to shore up your sanity. Sanity which is now being further eroded with each passing year as each new strand of grey messes up your once-pristine and easily tended head of hair.
Generally, I had successfully managed to integrate myself into adulthood without too many dramas. This had come at some cost to the many dreams and aspirations I had once had as a child growing up. Playing football, becoming a pilot or simply building Lego for a living (is that a thing?). Living at my parents’ house and playing computer games for the rest of my life (which is most definitely a thing and is currently trending around the world bigtime). Or simply just finding some hidden treasure somewhere and living it up in a mansion for the rest of my days.
Not one of these scenarios ever played out in the real world. You can point a finger at parents for never finding that treasure you had told them about, rather than acknowledge that they chose to work hard and put food on the table instead. Or that they never won the lottery despite having as good a chance as anyone else in the country, with them teasing you with what you would be entitled to if they ever did win. But this is the real world, and I’ve never been much of a finger pointer anyways. You make your own damn luck in this world, and I was damned if I was ever to become one of those horrid, bitter, demented neighbours that everyone had growing up, the ones who never return your ball once it enters their back garden. Or worse still, one of those even more bitter fast-food delivery drivers.
Yet there was one key skill that I had successfully managed to fully integrate into my long and arduous journey to becoming a semi-functioning semi-adult, semi still wanting to hold onto a childhood version of myself. The need to escape from reality. If only for an hour a day or a weekend break. A week in Benidorm if you’re on a budget. Or a few weeks in the Algarve for those who can afford it. A gap year in Southeast Asia if your parents are loaded. Or a private island somewhere secluded if you’re in the top 0.01 percent. For the rest of us, the time you have to escape from reality generally becomes more constrained as adulthood consumes us all and forces us into more selfless choices such as having children, mortgages, cars or insurance policies – and thus having to earn the money to fund all those choices. The list of routine obligations is long and for the average person seems to get longer with every year that goes by.
It therefore becomes vital that this small window of time you allow yourself to escape and unwind is treated as sacred amid the many changes that beset the life of an average Joe (or Jo) like you or me. It can be found in reading a book, going for a walk in the park, a day out at the beach, or diving into the pub beer garden for a few swift pints after work or on a weekend. Any activity that basically helps you switch off for a few hours and shed the many burdens of adult life.
I was at such a critical juncture myself, as I had just left behind a job I had done for the past decade or so, had sold my house and car, and had used some of the money to go travelling around California while I decided what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Well, not so much the rest of my life, but the next year of my life, while I was back at university doing a postgraduate degree in something that would hopefully stand me in better stead for something I really hoped I would want to do in the future.
As the Cali hipsters cruised past me along Venice Beach Boardwalk on their chopper bikes, all tanned and smiling, basking in the warm sunshine, I sat leaning back into semi-philosophical daze on the edges of a skate park thinking back to being a paperboy. Being out on your bike, battling the elements, doing an underpaid yet still meaningful job. There is something primal about riding a bike that satisfies your inner child, wherever that child may lurk. There are fewer and fewer examples in modern life where such basic excitement can be had. We prioritise careers, money, other people, sedentary lifestyles and social media or Netflix binges to fill our ever-decreasing amount of free time in the complex and tech-controlled world we have given permission to flourish all around us.
Most cyclists cherish the sense of freedom and childlike passion you feel when riding a bike. Whether it is going for a spin around your local woods, for a day out in the mountains, or simply for an hour before or after work to de-stress or rehumanise yourself before pretending to become an adult again. I’ve always used cycling as my main outlet for unwinding, relaxing, thinking clearly, focusing, or simply shaking off any sense of anxiety at times when things aren’t going quite so smoothly. All the health benefits you accrue are also helpful, but just as importantly is being able to eat the food that otherwise I would have to think twice about is a huge bonus too. The reward for a hard day out on the bike is always the consumption of a hearty meal to replenish energy levels and leaving you feeling all the better for it.
It’s strange, but these feelings never quite leave you when you mount your bike and head for adventure, wherever that may be. That feeling of leaving it all behind: your life, your wife (or significant other), your troubles – all the anxious thoughts and feelings that sometimes seem to bubble up all at once. It may be work, bills, exams or even Donald Trump for that matter (though not so much since the Twitter ban and the Orange One leaving office). Anything that keeps you awake at night, those stresses so annoyingly hard to shake off when you find yourself caught up in the very real rat race of contemporary adult life.
As I got older, the escape route the bike offered me became more important as I travelled that unforgiving road, with its many complexities, hardships and lessons to be learned – the ones you have still to learn as well as those you will never seemingly learn – when it dawned on me that being an adult may be something I will never quite get the hang of. It was my bicycle that enabled me to reconfigure and readjust to these emerging realities of not being ten years old and out with my mates any longer. OK, so there were a lot of people in my life that also kept me together, too, the stability and eccentricities of each one helping me adjust in much the same way we were all adjusting to this crazy world playing out around us all.
As I processed these life-changing thoughts and feelings that I was slowly becoming overwhelmed by, catching some early evening rays of sunshine on Venice Beach promenade as I sat watching the world go by, I knew it was time to get myself a cool-looking Cali bike for a few days to help me make sense of all the jumbled-up clutter that was starting to cloud my supposedly carefree trip of a lifetime before I headed back to the far less sunny climate of the British Isles. Looking back, it was the first thing I thought of doing when I had finally started to properly relax and unwind. It must have been my brain’s way of telling me that this was what I needed in order to defragment all these life-altering possibilities swirling around my subconscious like a potent flaming cocktail.
A few days passed and I had made my way up to San Francisco. Much like a sex-starved individual’s first time in the red-light district of Amsterdam, I found myself ogling the sleek attractions I could see in the many windows of bike-hire shops around the city when I had first arrived. Determined to find the perfect companion to offer me similar stimulation for half the price of a female escort (I assume), I came across a beautiful old racer with all the charm and character that typified the place I was now looking to explore over the following week.
Besides which, Bruna and Andrea, a couple of Brazilian girls who me and Liam, the friend I was travelling with, had met on a bar crawl on the first night in San Fran, had wanted to join us for the excursion we had haphazardly planned after doing one too many shots. We had drunkenly shared our initial enthusiasm for wanting to see the whole city by bicycle, and with rather sore heads and hangover stories to share, that fresh overcast summer morning after a strong coffee and bagel we were ready to mount the bikes we had hired and take in the many sights of this amazing place. In my head, selfishly, I already knew deep down I didn’t want to be dictated to by a couple of Samba girls looking to get a few tourist photographs and selfies along the route, already stopping after ten minutes to adjust their make-up and hair, and continue the small talk from the night before. I craved the open road, a large chunk of being alone and a dash of speed to get me going (from the bike, of course).
This had always been a problem for me in the past as I introduced girlfriends, family members or anyone else in my ambit to days out cycling. I do thoroughly enjoy the social aspect of cycling, more so with mountain biking, when you meet up at the end of a hard run or section of trail and trade war stories, looking for missing bits of skin that were torn away when you fell off on that particularly challenging rocky section. However, I have always found road cycling is best enjoyed alone, just you against you. Anyone I’ve been out with in the past would verify this tendency I have, as single-minded dogged determination comes to the fore and flicks a switch inside me that makes me tune out of the real world and into the other side of me that demands special introspective attention. It can be annoying for anyone I’m riding with, hoping for a ‘nice day out’ on our bikes.
I was finally ready and primed to put some soul-searching, spirit-raising, properly introverted hard miles on the body clock after the past few weeks in Southern California spent lying on a beach reading books and getting better acquainted with strangers from around the world. Once along the harbour, and after another quick sports drink, I was screaming to be let loose from company. Like a German tourist armed with a barrage of towels desperate to be the first to nab a poolside lounger, I was single-mindedly driven in my mission and needed no assistance from anyone else. As the girls yet again stopped along the harbour, reached for the cameras and handed them over to Liam to create a summer collection to be proud of, I politely stated I would be setting off alone for a few hours; already fifty yards ahead of the others and growing more impatient by the second, I said I would see them all later for some food somewhere on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
My despondent looking roommate glanced over, a camera in each hand, with the faint contours on his face as I selfishly pulled away suggesting pure unmistakable horror. The hire bike beneath me was quickly coming to life, responding with grace to every subtle movement I made as I shifted my hips to the front of the bike to push off and leave. He eventually realised I was in fact being deadly serious, and was assigning him the role of team photographer for the rest of the day, without any male companionship for the scenic route. Presuming I would stay with the party and take my fair share of photographs, he now realised he would have twice the amount of work to carry out, and would likely have to cycle at a snail’s pace for the rest of the day to satisfy the leisurely expectations the girls had of a ‘nice day out’. Once again, Liam, I apologise for what transpired.
I glanced back grinning and turned back to the front of the bike contentedly, feeling as if I had finished work super early on a sunny Friday afternoon, with the promise of potential options unfolding before me and the overwhelming emotion of having bought myself some time, and freedom, in the process. I quickly settled into the rhythm of the ride much like a jockey does after sprinting out of the starting gate on a prized thoroughbred. He was welcome to any rewards from a day spent recording cherishable memories for two lovely senhoritas from São Paulo; I had more pressing priorities.
There’s a symbiotic relationship between man and machine when you ease into the feeling of riding a racing bike at high speed. Subtle, almost invisible movements and moments that make you fully appreciate the bicycle you are simultaneously both using and an integral part of, and also what you need to do to ride the tiger when you let it go. Some days you simply don’t feel it, but on some you do, and today was such a day. I settled into the quickening rhythm of the ride as I zipped along the traffic-free coastal bridleway towards the Golden Gate Bridge, whose epic span was slowly emerging in the distance. Surrounded by such majestic scenery, in conditions that were cool and cloudy, my thoughts and feelings starting to reorder themselves into pieces I could analyse later on.
I could feel in my bones that this would be a memorable ride. Rounding the last bend of the coastal route, just before crossing onto the Golden Gate Bridge towards Sausalito to the north, I took in the vast expanse ahead of me, searching for the sense of adventure having arrived, the point of release for all the energy and anxiety which had been building up since Venice Beach, but had really been bubbling away since I had quit my job and sold my house. Digging deep on particularly tough rides has always been a way for me to process whatever is happening in my life, good or bad, big or small. Setting my face against the often painful challenge of a tough ride is something I have used to help bring a clearer and more concise perspective to my life. Any problem, no matter how big or seemingly insurmountable, has far less significance and meaning after a day of blood, sweat and gears.
It’s as if the brain fully awakens only under this kind of controlled duress in a way that simply isn’t possible when we’re procrastinating or sitting around doing nothing. This may be down to norepinephrine, a powerful neurotransmitter (the same chemical compounds that are targeted by anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications) that our body pumps out. This allows us to process information on a subconscious level and gives us that blissful feeling of suspended time. Serotonin (the happy hormone) rises and remains elevated during the day, and helps sustain that post-ride afterglow many cyclists (and runners) seek. We also experience a spike in dopamine, which also makes us feel good, hones our focus and speeds up muscle reaction times.
So science seems to back up the wonderful restorative functions I have always felt that cycling has on the brain, both structurally and functionally. Cycling acts as a kind of neural fertilizer, pumping oxygen and nutrients into this metabolically rapacious organ, creating rich capillary beds in our brain’s grey matter and increasing the brain’s capacity to grow, function and repair itself. Not only this, but as we pedal, we increase healthy blood flow to the entire body and brain, which actually builds a bigger, more connected brain. Cycling fires up extra nerve cells, intensifying the creation of a protein called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) that stimulates the formation of new brain cells. This can double or even triple the production of neurons, which helps stimulate regions of the brain such as the hippocampus – which plays a critical role in memory formation and spatial navigation. 1
A recent study has shown that the hippocampus of participants grew by two percent and their problem-solving skills improved by 15 to 20 percent after six months of cycling daily, while their ability to focus and their attention span were also greatly enhanced. Better still, all of these perks counteract the loss of brain function usually associated with aging, with cyclists’ brains appearing two years younger on average than their non-exercising peers. 2 Another recent study found that a group of older amateur cyclists’ thymuses (the organ that produces disease-combating immune cells called T-cells) were found to be generating as many of these T-cells as the other, much younger adults, who didn’t exercise on a regular basis.3 So cycling seems to be a natural elixir, a key to the fountain of youth, if you still need convincing. If cycling were available in pill form, the whole world would be addicted to its verifiable effects.
Not only grey matter, but cycling also helps the white matter, boosting our motor skills. White matter acts like the brain’s subway system – a conduit transmitting information between different parts of the body and the cerebral cortex – keeping our system running smoothly and boosting our brain functions in the process. 4 A lot of research now suggests that the brain is far more malleable than originally thought, and the evidence is growing that pedalling on a regular basis increases the integrity of white matter in the brain. The more white matter you have, the faster you can make important decisions, as your brain is better connected. 5 So cycling is clearly the complete package, with something for the mind, the body and the soul.
That’s certainly how it felt as I traversed the final few metres of this iconic bridge, scouring the area for signs of a challenge to help awaken my senses and flip my current mood from that of an idle tourist - who couldn’t work out where he was going - to that of a turbocharged sage ready to find a neat way around any and every obstacle life might throw in my path. Not only is cycling the only activity I’ve found that effectively deals with such issues so head-on, it also makes you realise, after a long day of punishing climbs and the pain that comes with that kind of effort, that these issues really aren’t all that significant and can always be overcome without having to move any mountains or part any oceans. Distractions, busy thoughts and nagging worries simply evaporated when I immersed myself in this kind of adventure.
Cycling quite simply breaks life down into manageable, bitesize chunks, like the contours of a rugged mountain or a steep incline that needs to be dealt with on a turn-by-turn basis. Reach that next landmark and push through to the one after that. Reach that fork in the road, catch your breath and go again. Only stop if you really need to. Otherwise put your head down and grind it out, brick by brick, mile after mile, just like the journey of life. Out on a tough ride you are asked all the same questions that you are from life. How you answer those questions depends on what comes from deep inside.
The wind was howling from every direction as I approached the end of this elegant bridge, taking in the panoramic view of a glistening Pacific Ocean, with the occasional milky-white glint of boat or bird as I searched the horizon. To the northwest I could see an imposing and fairly derelict series of rugged coastal peaks and knew right then that I had found my challenge for the day. I stopped and smiled wryly to myself before looking for subtle clues as to how I should approach the rather ominous initial climb.
An older American couple were approaching, out for a stroll with their antique-style walking sticks. ‘You’re headed up Hawk Hill there. You’ll need plenty of water, but there are points that you can stop at along the way,’ they told me, their instructions delivered with boundless enthusiasm.
‘I’ll not be stopping today!’ I burst out, feeding off their energy, feeling just about ready to tackle this rather daunting but inspiring challenge.
They spent a further five minutes trying to decipher my Geordie accent, and being completely overcome that I was indeed from the same part of the planet as the Queen and James Bond. Then they marched onwards, suitably refreshed but still rather unconvinced of my English heritage. For a brief moment before setting off up the spiralled climb towards Hawk Hill, I wondered whether I should try to smooth out and elongate my regional dialect to communicate more effectively with Americans, who in the main were having a very hard time understanding what I was trying to say, and why I was speaking at such a frantic pace (cycling also has this ability to somewhat quicken our sentences). But I decided to leave that for another day. I was a Geordie on a bicycle in the US of A. People would have to take me as they found me.
Their frowning expressions were a mark of their utter confusion at what I was saying and where I was from, and they treated the exchange like a game of verbal tennis, until they had exhausted every possible country I might have hailed from until it dawned on them with an incessant disbelief that was visible on their faces that I really did come from England. Admittedly, my part of the world is much closer in most ways to Scotland than it is to London, but it was still merry old England, though, alas, I didn’t know the Queen or James Bond personally, whichever James Bond they meant. This was simply unfathomable to most Americans I met.
I started climbing with a purpose, a steely determination I had not felt since arriving in California more than six weeks earlier. Out of the saddle, head down, with sweat droplets running down the inside of the handlebars, allowing me to tune in to the natural environment around me while letting my body do all the hard work. I looked up intermittently only to confirm the presence of other road users going past me, mainly cars and motorhomes, but a few other keen cyclists out too.
Reaching each individual vantage point on the short but steep inclines, as I rounded a near-blind corner and was met with yet another undulating section of uphill coastal tarmac trail, I was starting to see the wisdom of the older couple’s advice to stop and take in a view and a drink of water. But my determination to keep going wasn’t because I wanted to show off any kind of bravado. I had simply set myself a goal and wanted to get it done. It was purely for the personal satisfaction of setting out to achieve something and achieving it. And I instinctively knew I would get it done this day.
I passed many keen cyclists on the way up those beautifully sculpted peaks around the Golden Gate and looking east, down to the glittering ocean. I have always found solace in the mutual respect cyclists have for one another as we pass each other by, a feeling that lasts only for those few fleeting seconds but is always significant and worthy nonetheless. Complete strangers otherwise in life but united in those transient moments by a combined admiration for the labour of the other. You feel the eyes of others at the side of the road and along the walking trails as you struggle with your own personal journey up the mountain, lifted by a communal sense of everyone pulling together in the same direction. Cycling often personifies that struggle through life, embodies it and embraces it all at once.
I reached for the last few mouthfuls of water left in my bottle, which was tucked away on the bicycle frame. My battle had been hard-fought and was very nearly won. I could see the summit ahead and a mass of people who had gathered there after completing their own personal journey, however small or large it may have been. My legs were weary, my breathing was very laboured, and I was more than a little dehydrated but felt exhilarated all the same. I could have stayed at that same spot all day in a state of utter peace and contentment.
The panoramic viewpoint over the whole of the San Francisco Bay area was the most beautiful I had ever seen. I couldn’t call it breathtaking, as the steep ascent up had near-emptied my lungs by then, but it was still a humbling and magnificent prospect. I lay down motionless on a grassy spot a little way over from the main cluster of tourists, propped up only by my elbows, slowing my body and breathing down to the level required after a short, sharp trip up an elevation of several hundred metres. Another cyclist completing the same journey pulled up nearby to do the same as me.
‘Hey, man, good job you did going past me back there. You looked in the zone!’ he said with the uninhibited enthusiasm that seemingly every American can muster.
I felt a twang of British modesty was needed to cool the overpraise. Americans use positive metaphors to start a conversation, and not at all sarcastically. The British thrive on being insulted and get to know others more intimately through the language of sarcasm and insults of the crudest nature. In most US states, as a typically stiff-upper-lipped British subject, I can often feel a clash of social codes when adjusting to the more open and inviting American way of conversing. From a summer working abroad as a lifeguard in South Carolina at the age of 22, having shared a large living complex with most nationalities from around the world, I found the Russian way of conversing and initiating social contact to be most in sync with what I had experienced growing up in the Northeast of England. Copious amounts of vodka, well-intentioned insults and slurs of one another’s country, deep-rooted sarcasm and straight-faced heated debates added to the rich vein of Anglo-Russian relations I tapped into that memorable summer of 2008. Crumbling empires, mental scarring from world wars, and poor weather are possibly all to blame for this shared siege mentality, I figure.
‘Sorry I didn’t stop to talk, I just didn’t want to lose my momentum coming up,’ I said very slowly, trying my best to speak the Queen’s English so that I didn’t have to repeat myself and have yet another interlocutor ask themselves, ‘Where’s this nomadic idiot from?’
The cyclist told me that it was his day off from working in the city, that he came up this way for the challenge and the less-polluted air. I searched for the signs of any liquids he might be carrying, either on his bike or in various jacket pockets, but he appeared to be as ignorant as I was when it came to knowing the level of hydration and carbs needed for a punishing day out on the bike, though maybe not so punishing without the hangover.
‘You have the perfect balance of city, country and beaches out here,’ I offered, scanning the area for potential ice-cream vans or coffee cabins, but with little success. He proceeded to tell me how he went everywhere by bike, and worked as a cycle courier in the city for one of the large delivery firms. Well, when he said that, my jaw nearly dropped to the floor and smashed.
‘Someone pays you to ride your bike around here all day and pays you at the end of it?’ I said, half in awe, half in bewildered jealousy.
‘Yeah, man, been doing it eighteen months now, it’s pretty cool.’
There was a momentary air of silence as I tried to comprehend how magical his life must be. I looked towards him, eyes wide, mouth wider, suddenly as desperate as a gold prospector with a manically beeping metal detector to find out exactly how he could get away with having this kind of job.
‘What’s the catch, there must be a catch,’ I pleaded.
He let out a calm and slightly self-satisfied laugh. ‘Hills and pollution,’ was the answer he gave.
It seemed like a very fair trade-off to me. You’ve got to die of something, after all.
“Are there any places to eat around here?” I asked. I was totally famished and starting to cramp up, holding onto my legs and pulling on my hamstrings, as I lay down on a nice lookout spot as the hangover started to take effect. My muscles were screaming out for any kind of liquid that would help to delay the inevitable reaction to a Jack Daniels-inspired drinking session from the pub crawl the night before.
“Nah, dude, try heading down to Sausalito, you’ll get something there.”
I tried releasing the pain shooting through my hamstrings, desperately searching for signs of somewhere to replenish my depleted stores of energy and a throbbing liver. He turned to leave, telling me he had a buddy in Scotland, and that we should cycle together whenever he happened to be going past my place, up in the Highlands.
‘But I’m from England, mate?’ I countered, but he was undeterred.
‘You Brits crack me up. And remember this, if you can’t do what you love, love what you do!’
He scuttled off, unwrapping the contents of a delightful-looking homemade flapjack and stuffing it into his mouth. Then he began the descent, the flapjack looking like a lion with a juicy rump steak in his gob. Lucky bastard, I thought to myself, completely exhausted and dehydrated as my stomach started to rumble aggressively as the effects from the past hour of near-constant climbing in 25-degree heat started to make themselves felt.
In fairness, it was already obvious as I sat alone at the summit how profound the experience of this bike ride would become. A true lighthouse moment, a beacon of light shining across the bay but bigger than the place or the moment in which I had felt it. Looking down along the coastline and the pearly blue sea below me, I saw a vision of the future, as the pieces of an elaborate jigsaw, previously unseen, had slowly fallen into place that cool and breezy San Francisco summer afternoon. It was the bicycle that had brought me here, to this special place, this fateful moment; it was the bicycle which now showed me where the last and most vital piece of the jigsaw would fit.
Later that day I met up for lunch with Liam and the São Paulo girls at a lovely small-town seafood restaurant in Downtown Sausalito, about an hour by bike from the Golden Gate Bridge. It took us all around two hours to get there, as I slowed my pace to stay alongside the others and enjoyed the scenic route that took us through some small and beautifully quirky waterfront towns along the way. I didn’t mind in the slightest, my head had cleared after a hard slog up Hawk Hill. I was ready to enjoy the rest of my afternoon as my anxieties and worries had now been washed away. The wine flowed freely as the sun began to set, and the conversation turned to my apparently unchivalrous conduct, leaving my companions behind without any real explanation.
‘You missed some really good photo opportunities today next to the bridge,’ said Bruna, sat with me, wondering if she had upset me in some way back at the harbour, and clearly disappointed that I had not wanted to spend the whole day taking photos of her for the photo collage she would eventually make of the trip.
‘It’s OK, I got what I was looking for today.’ I smiled contentedly, thinking that what I had got today was something that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I leaned back in the comfortable padded seat, sunglasses hiding my weary and dehydrated eyes as the cool white wine started to take effect and the sun gave off the last warm rays of the day. I could finally start to properly relax and unwind. I was completely at ease with myself. I had the answer I’d been looking for. The clouds had cleared at last.
The American dream came to an end, and we met with Bruna and Andrea at the airport to say our goodbyes and bid them well with the rest of their lives, with a promise that one day we would reminisce about some unforgettable nights, planning for future get-togethers once everyone had finished their studies. The true magic of travelling. Nights you’ll never remember, with people you’ll never forget, and will probably never see again.
Later when me and Liam were leaving to board our flight, Bruna asked me, ‘What is it you had to go and get that day when you left me on our bike ride in San Francisco?’ I gave her one final hug, grab her by the shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
‘My future.’
She smiled and lifts her final bottle of Budweiser for the trip, to show how much she appreciated my response, and maybe understanding a little more of how I functioned as a human being.
‘And you’re completely shit on a bike, too!’ I threw in for good measure, like a great British verbal grenade, instantly changing the atmosphere. She turned back to Andrea, her smile slowly turning into a slight frown that informed me that I had yet again spoilt another one of those moments. I walked off gallantly, passport in hand, ready to board my flight back home, eager to reunite with my two-wheeled companions.
Never leave them wanting more. Honesty is always the best policy. They never came to visit us, those girls.
Now before you have visions of me being some super-slim, Lycra-sporting nutter who spends more time on Strava at night than Pornhub, that simply isn’t the case. I love cycling, for all those aforementioned reasons and many, many more. But I’m not in it for the marginal gains on hills or to be the best cyclist this side of the Atlantic. I have always seen cycling as a purely amateur, sometimes social hobby, that keeps me fit and happy as life carries on around me. A very simple form of freedom that comes from a craving to be out in the natural world, experiencing new frontiers and meeting fellow like-minded enthusiasts, and as such a definite contrast to the banal and much safer, smaller world to which modern life so often condemns us and which can be so difficult to escape. This was the case even before coronavirus confined us all to our homes for a year.
Before starting the gig, I would have described myself as a fairly fit amateur cyclist, able to climb most mountains or bypasses thrown at me, barring a few impossible, near-vertical ones I’ve come up against in the time I’ve spent out and about. Here I’m thinking of the 25–30-percent-incline climbs in or around the Lake District, such as Hardknott Pass and Wrynose Pass, which are difficult enough for the best of cyclists and among the hardest in the UK. But just for the record, I was certainly no 8-percent-body-fat whippet with an appetite for hundred-mile races and endurance events in my free time. I ran a few half and full marathons in my early twenties, but running – at 6 foot 3 and 15 or 16 stone – was never going to be my thing. Sore nipples, creaking hips, knees and ankles were partly to blame too. Also, having women half my height and twice my age, strapped up like the Terminator with multiple gels and sports drinks, striding past me with little perceived effort at a marathon in Kielder Forest a decade ago convinced me to return my attention back to cycling. Once I’d made enough money working at the leisure centre to buy as many bikes as I could physically store in my house, and a car to take them away in, the rest soon followed.
During this time, I’d always been a steady and stubborn 16–20 percent body fat. I used a gym occasionally, took part in a few fitness classes most weeks and was usually able to finish them without being sick or tapping out early. I worked alternate shifts at the same leisure centre where I also worked out, and was always fighting to sleep more than I did; changing shift patterns affect your body clock, effectively switching you between different time zones so that you are always out of kilter with your surroundings. Exercise had to be squeezed in around this tight schedule, whether before the late shifts or after the morning shifts, to enable me to do my job with some degree of enthusiasm and effort.
I could normally get around fifteen hours of decent exercise a week while still being able to function as a young adult and perform my initial lifeguard job without falling asleep (in the pool highchair) or falling in as I marched sheepishly around the same four slippery corners of the pool, trying to stay awake on the early mornings or the late nights. Once promoted to duty manager, this level of exercise dropped off as I took on more responsibility and struggled to find the enthusiasm to look after myself to the same level as before.
So starting a master’s degree back at university full time, while also taking full advantage of my ability to cycle to make a living, was going to upend this rather conservative, traditional life I’d fallen into. But I would make it work, as this was a golden opportunity to do something that would make me healthier, happier and, with a little bit of luck (if I made it through the next academic year of my life), slightly more educated – and provide me with enough money to make it through to graduation.
It was on this most remarkable yet simple human invention, the bicycle, that I was hoping to make a living for the next twelve months of my life. I was about to embark on an ambitious project to flip the script and delve into the murky world of fast-food delivery. Something I had categorically written off as a child as being neither a viable source of income nor a credible profession. Surely, as long as I was on my bicycle, I would be able to avoid falling into the same trap as many of the middle-aged, morbidly rotund delivery drivers I remembered so vividly from childhood. I reasoned that there was no possible way I would turn into one of those ancient relics if I was plying the same trade on a bicycle. The cycling would keep me happy. Keep me fit. Keep me sane. All those qualities that eluded delivery drivers in the age before the internet because of children just like me. There was a lot at stake.
You’ve Got the Gig! chronicles the span of Ryan Murphy’s tenure as a cycling courier for Deliveroo in England. His origin story begins with a chance encounter of a man riding his bike up a hill in San Francisco (an inevitable meet-cute). In sharing their love language of cycling, Murphy learns that his fellow uphill partner gets paid to bike for a living as a food courier. Upon returning to England and beginning his master’s degree, Murphy takes this chance encounter to heart and finds a part-time job as a cycling courier for a new start-up called Deliveroo.
Much like the uphill climb, Murphy paints a detailed and suspenseful portrait of life as a Deliveroo courier from its early founding days up to the pandemic. Broken up into sections titled “The Good,” “The Bad,” and “The Ugly,” Murphy shows us that the good experiences working as a cyclist in the gig economy ultimately triumph over the bad. The good: the physical health benefits of cycling in the great outdoors, the choose-your-own schedule, the lower blood pressure levels that come with having no boss to tower over you all the time.
Like any other dream job, the good aspects of the gig begin to lose their luster over time, revealing more of the rough underbelly of the beast that is working as a contractor in the gig economy. We begin to see the machinations of the gig hustle when Murphy takes some time away from the job and he loses the privileges of his coveted high-ranking status. Other incidents in the book remind Murphy (and the reader) of the critical downfalls of pursuing what you love without the safety net that a stable desk job might offer: health insurance (especially in the US), paid time off, worker’s comp, job security, sick days, holidays (work? on Christmas Day? no thanks). Murphy also portrays the evolution of the rules of the gig over the years as the company struggles to balance a system of supply and demand, cutting delivery fees and stifling living wages, and wringing their contracted staff dry to beat the competition.
What pulls Murphy through all this is the true passion of being on the bike—that childlike joy of freedom and being in closer touch with nature that you don’t quite get when you’re sitting in a car in heavy traffic or at a cramped cubicle desk and you need to stretch your legs.
I read hungrily through his depictions of cycling in all seasons and in two different English climates, thinking to myself, “there’s gotta be something horrible that happens next.” Murphy certainly knows how to keep readers on the edge of their saddles demanding more. You’ve Got the Gig! is a go-to guide for cyclists who have always wondered what life would be like if they turned their hobby into a hustle, and doesn’t hold back on sharing the perks of the gig alongside the crashes and burns of working fifty hours a week in the saddle.