On January 2 my mind was blown by a tweet from the Divvy bike-share account congratulating a guy named Kerdia Roland for being the program’s number one rider of 2017, with a staggering 2,462 trips for the year. “That’s 6,275 miles of riding—enough to get you to Alaska!”
A lifelong Chicagoan who grew up in Streeterville, Roland transports everything from Big Macs to pricey French-Vietnamese cuisine from Le Colonial in the Gold Coast. While he mostly works in the Loop and River North, deliveries have taken him as far afield as Lincoln Park, Pilsen, and Hyde Park.
While Roland has had a few run-ins with drivers, he’s so far been uninjured. “I’ve fallen, but I’ve never broken and bones or bled or anything, thankfully,” he says. He’s also had excellent luck finding valuable stuff that’s been left in the street, including a pair of expensive Apple AirPods earbuds and a total of $287 in dropped cash last year.
Roland, for one, says he appreciates the west-side stations. His six-year-old daughter, Kenya Meadows, lives with her mother in North Lawndale. The docks by the Kedzie Pink Line stop come in handy when he travels to her house, and there’s another station a few blocks from her school that he uses when he picks her up.
John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago.
