Today's Stats:

Weather: Not a Clizzy in the Skizzy

Temperature: Like a scrotum (97*)

1st Run Taken: 9:05am

Last Run Dropped: 5:50pm

Total Runs Completed: 43

Whew! What a day! I pretty much felt like shit the entire day, and still managed to do a lot of work. I suspect that I was pretty wiped out from the previous two days. My exhaustion coupled with the nearly 100* heat was nearly overwhelming at one point. During the middle of the day, I was delivering paychecks uptown and felt near faint. Turns out I was just dehydrated and my glycogen level was way low. After a few quarts of water and an ice-cold Coca~Cola, I was back in business. Still tired, but more conscious, none the less.

When working as a messenger, dealing with the elements is as much a part of the job as delivering the packages. The weather is as much an unknown variable as the traffic, pedestrians, or elevators. Sure, you can check the weather and make some sort of prediction and plan accordingly, but you don't ever really know, until you get out there in it. Usually, I do okay with the heat and humidity. Being from Mississippi, it's not hard to reawaken my debilitating heat tolerance gene, and suffer through it. However, today it caught me off guard, and nearly put me down.

Later on in the day, while enjoying a moment of respite from the overbearing heat in a fancy air-cooled elevator, I happened upon some sage wisdom from a more experienced member of the courier work force. He wasn't a messenger, but a seasoned U.S. Postal Service employee. He was having a conversation with a woman, also in the elevator, who was asking him how he dealt with the heat and being outside all day. He said, " you know, I've been doing this for almost 30 years, and above all, you just have to roll with the punches." Seems like pretty generic advice, but it was the conviction in his voice when he said it, that made it sound more of a personal mantra, that he truly practiced. I started to think about him being out there for 30 years. 30 years is longer than I have been around. He has been dealing with a lot of shit for 30 years. That's 30 years of rainy days, hot-ass days, mislabeled packages, people with bad moods, shitty attitudes, going the wrong way, working late, working sick, working tired, working because you have to, and having straight up "pawn shop" days. But that's also 30 years of beautiful days, perfect routes, nice people, fast elevators, having interesting encounters, sharing laughs, seeing beautiful girls, having good days, looking up every once in a while and taking it all in, and loving every single thing about New York and the fact that you get to be a part of it.

After my interesting encounter in the elevator, I started to feel a little better. Sure I was hot and tired, but sometimes you just have to suck it up. For the rest of the day, I took it pretty easy and put on some Waylon Jennings. Whenever I listen to him on the road, I feel like a cowboy, you know, kinda haggard and tough. It also makes me ride pretty mellow. I ended up downtown at the end of the day, and avoided the upper east night work. Lucky me, I got off at 6.

Today was a good day.