by Gary Koenig, Denver Cycling Examiner

If you’re like me, you’ve invested more than a few idle minutes thinking about being a professional cyclist. What could be better than getting paid to ride all day long? Daydreams are fun, but sober reflection on the shrinking nature of the pro pelotons, both worldwide and domestic, would lead most of us to conclude that cycling for a living is not realistically in our future.

So what if I told you that I could get you a paying cycling job tomorrow? That you would enjoy the consummate cosmopolitan benefits just as other top cycling pros do. And to top it off, even though you’ll be riding 6-8 hours per day, you’ll never have to tackle a hill and headwinds will be as rare as a 12 ounce Ruth’s Chris ribeye. Furthermore, you’ll never have to answer to a surly directeur sportif who doesn’t even speak your language, never have to sacrifice your legs for an ungrateful prima donna team leader and never suffer the ignominy of watching an Italian gregario who has been latched onto your wheel for untold kilometers suddenly bolt by you to win a Grand Tour stage that so rightfully belonged to you.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not talking about a racing gig, but rather the next best thing – raking in the big bucks as a pedicab driver! On a recent trip to New York City I learned all about pedaling tourists around from Kemal, a young Turkish student who has been plying this trade for close to a year. To cut to the chase, in New York, a pedicab driver can make $200 or more per day working a full 8-hour shift. Steady income is not guaranteed, however, as weather, time of year, day of week, event calendars, police forbearance, level of competition and a host of other contingencies make the average day somewhat of a crapshoot. At 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night when our show got out, there were dozens of available pedicabs prowling the theater district, so competition appears to be fierce.

In the very best case, a hard-working, hard-selling, extremely fortunate pedicabber might be able to net $400 per day. There is no legislated or regulated rate structure for these things, but the standard rule of thumb is $1 per city block. The night my wife and I took a pedicab, we got toted 15 blocks, from the theater district to Grand Central Station, for $20 (plus tip). It was an exciting ride, because Manhattan traffic is pretty Darwinian, and Kemal took enough chances with our lives to get our hearts racing. Pedicabs are not required to be licensed in New York City at the moment, but that rule has been on and off a number of times as the city and pedicab owners bicker over the right amount of regulation. Even though licensing is not currently required, city police officers can find plenty of other regulations to use as excuses for citing pedicab drivers whenever the whim strikes them. Kemal complained bitterly about a few $150 tickets he had received lately and one afternoon near Time Square we saw two pedicabs being written up simultaneously by the same officer.

The cab we were in had a 21-speed drive, rear disk and front V-brakes along with taillights and LED turn signals. Despite the 21-gears at his disposal, Kemal never shifted once, preferring to stand on the pedals from a stop and slowly lug his way up to a more comfortable cadence level as he got the big rig moving. He was not a very big guy, so it was impressive that he was able to get his 600 pound payload rolling at a decent speed (I’d guess we traveled at around 5 mph). Just for clarification, my wife and I are not 300 pound behemoths, but the weight of the rider, the cab itself (well over 100 pounds) and passengers definitely adds up.

Kemal is not a racer, and was not even a bicycling aficionado when he started his run as a pedicab driver. He was (and is) a smoker (he’s Turkish so it’s almost a cultural requirement) but he is very proud of the fact that he has lost close to 10 pounds and is in great physical shape by virtue of his daily pedaling. He told us that most of the cab drivers were really not that interested in cycling as a sport, but that a few were pretty serious bicyclists although he was unaware of any who were notable racers.

There are a couple of local connections to this story. Pedicabs have become more and more common on Denver streets, especially around the theater center and the 16th Street Mall. Even more impressive, most of the pedicabs serving New York and Denver are made right here in Broomfield, Colorado by a company called Main Street Pedicabs. Considering their size and weight, they appear to be bargains at pricing well below the cost of a mid-level carbon racing bike.

On balance, it’s possible that being a pedicab driver is not quite as glamorous or lucrative as racing for a Pro Tour team. Still, the chance to spend your days outside doing something you love is worth at least a few minutes of daydreaming the next time your day job makes you want to take up voodoo.