booking it

Just ending week three of Job #3 (for the moment): phonebook delivery. They go out every year at this time. This is my third season doing it, and the second in Albuquerque. It's not easy work, but it's lots of fun, for the somewhat compulsive, driven personality. You load a few hundred heavy bundles, bound in super-resistant plastic, into your vehicle. Bag up three books together, and carry them to the doorstep of every house, on every street, in a given neighborhood. I've been doing about 200 houses per day. I crash super-early every night, full of muscleaches, and wake still stiff and tired, with some idea of how it is to be 80. But it's honest labor, for sure. And it's saving my sanity: simultaneous soul and body detox. Miles of walking outdoors, sometimes jogging, balanced with several hours a day of weight-lifting (I figured, the first year, that half a block's worth of books in their bags weighs 50 pounds). And it meets those all-important criteria for the gypsy vocation: variety, motion, room to think, new faces every day.

I learned this year that there's more to the gypsy circuit than I knew: the company has a few dozen free-footed people who sign on year-round, and follow the outfit nationwide. Most of them live in RV's, or camp trailers. They rent space in a park, or find someplace to park in each city. I was into the idea until I learned it doesn't pay any better than the local work: independent contractor rates, which means you're paid per route, not per hour. Which means your wage depends precisely on the extent to which you are willing to haul ass. Which of course, I do, and I calculate it just at living-wage, most of the time. But there are no travel expenses provided for the gypsies. And that wouldn't make the migration worth it, unless you just really had a reason to get outta town already. Or you really had nothing better to do. But it's a fine picture, for that: Albuquerque in January, Tucson in February, Phoenix in April, Seattle in June... Albuquerque and Portland, apparently, are booked at the same time. Further confirming my suspicion of that portal connecting the two.

This week I got a route that covers 4th Street from Osuna to Los Ranchos, and all of its barely-paved side roads. Deep North Valley. I forgot how it's more like rural Texas up there, almost, than New Mexico. Feed stores and boot stores and meat dealers and trailer parks. Old homes turned into antique/junk shops. An equine hospital whose sign reads, "Now accepting horses and mules". I've found a fascinating way to travel without spending any money, for sure...don't know if this is exactly where I wanted to GO... Guess workers can't always be choosers though. If you had to be in Texas, this is a nice time of year for it.