He typically works a three-hour shift.
“On a weekend I would deliver between eight to 15 orders,” he said. “Some hardcore guys go out for all day and deliver 10 to 25 orders a day.”
He can make $40 to $120 in a shift, but the real value isn’t the money.
“At some point throughout your shift you kind of let go of emotional and mental stress,” he said. “You’re breathing, you’re outside, you’re working your body, and it gives you kind of peace-of-mind, a Zen moment.”
It’s certainly less stressful than cleaning windows in tall buildings.
“I hang off the side of a building on a rope and in a harness,” he said. “I’m originally from Toronto, so I worked on all the highrises (there) — Scotia Tower, the Royal Bank building.”
He didn’t move west to clean windows, though — he hopes to get into wild-land firefighting.
“It was in the mountains, in B.C., something amazing to do,” he said.
But when he arrived in B.C. last August “it started raining” and there wasn’t a lot of work in the bush. So he went back to windows — and bike delivery.
Long-term, he has another plan. Back east “in the winters I would work in the Bahamas and the Caribbean on yachts and sailboats, and I would come back to Canada in the summer.”
Now his goal “is to get my own sailboat, and do charters in the winter in the Caribbean.”



![VANCOUVER, BC - March 30, 2020 - Tom Pawlak is delivering meals by bike for Foodora during the COVID-19 crisis in Vancouver, BC, March 30, 2020. (Arlen Redekop / PNG staff photo) (story by John Mackie) [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://postmediavancouversun2.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/png0330n-bike-delivery.jpg?w=640?quality=5&strip=all&w=100)
