Manly Pedi

Now Bobay owns Mile High Pedicabs. When he puts out advertisements for new drivers, he plays up the fitness aspect: “Make money while you’re getting in shape.” Now he’s the boss, with a desk job. “I’m getting puffy,” he told me.

“We evolved to need a certain amount of exercise, and we’re not getting it, obviously,” says Steve Meyer, founder of Broomfield’s Main Street Pedicabs. As one of the world’s pedicab gurus, he believes they aren’t just good exercise, they’re part of a “revolution in mobility in cities,” full of fewer cars and more people power. (Or, perhaps, a pedi-cure… No?)

Lose weight, change the world? On three recent nights, I joined the revolution.

Is it easy? No. I don’t really ride bikes; when I do, I tend to fall over. So I was happy that the pedicabs, having three wheels, don’t need to be balanced. Still, they’re big and clumsy, and I rammed light poles and knocked a trash can into the street. I breathed hard, especially while breathlessly apologizing to pedestrians whose foot I’d accidentally run over.

The pedicabs sometimes block or slow traffic, and some motorists hate you with a ferocity usually reserved for serial killers. They’ll spew noxious black clouds of diesel smoke at you or crowd you or throw plastic cups at your head—which never happens on the stationary bike at the gym.

Is it good exercise? Very. The bikes weigh between 150 and 180 pounds; on hills, it feels like dragging a whale through mud. The effort required to cycle three, 200-pound men uphill to their hotel shaved two pounds off my belly and three years off my life.

The cardio was nice. But to really keep the heart rate up, you can’t follow regular traffic laws. You have to ignore red lights, speed in front of oncoming traffic and play chicken with taxis and light rail trains. This will help get your heart into a strong, healthy condition, and the paramedics will admire it when they scrape it off the front of a city bus.

Can you make money? It depends. One night I made, essentially, zero dollars. But when it was a weekend and the Rockies were playing, I earned an average of $22 an hour. Also, one drunk guy tipped me a pair of brand new Optic Nerve sunglasses. And one drunk lawyer, who had no money, paid me with the promise of future legal services, gratis. Presumably for when I run someone over. Or sue him for lack of payment.

Most people wanted rides from the bar to Coors Field, from Coors to the bar, and from the bar to their home. Women in high heels are reliable customers. Tourists like it. So do couples on first dates.

For a passenger, the pedicab offers many advantages over the conventional taxicab: not only is it slower, it is also more expensive. At $2 a block, a ride across downtown costs at least $20. If you want a ride to the Highlands or DU, it’s probably cheaper just to buy yourself a new car.

So, yes, as a pedicab driver, you can get exercise and be outside and hang around the bars and make a little money, and the only downsides are a little danger and a little errant vomit.