Ian Miller, a Capitol Hill journalist and former bike messenger in Pittsburgh, Pa., tested this theory and found a bike ride between his home in Adam s Morgan to the Rayburn House Office Building was 17 minutes shorter than driving. The entire trek took Ian 19 and a half minutes to complete the 4.1 miles. These four hundred and eleven bicycle couriers rode over 5 million miles in downtown Washington, D.C. last year. Of course 4.1 miles is small change compared to what most couriers travel in one day. In their travels couriers must look for hazards such as traffic and pedestrians, which they consider to be more problematic for D.C. s traffic patterns than themselves.
People complain about bike messengers, Ricothings warmer in the wintertime.
Their one drawback to the city is the metal detectors. If you walk into a building and put your bag on the metal detector and the police see a bowl in there, the police will be like you re under arrest for paraphernalia, Wingmaster said. And then they are going to search, and you had better hope that you don t have any weed in there. Stories like Wingmaster s don t really help the bike messengers public appearance. The messengers say they know people think that they are drug addicts, alcoholics, arrogant, and ignorant.