In this oral history, Cal Steve walks his interviewers through the ins and outs of both bicycle courier work and alleycat racing, speaking with both authoritative knowledge and an easy sense of humor. After a childhood in Washington, D.C., Cal took up work as a bicycle courier in his early twenties. He started racing alleycats around the same time. Over the course of the interview, Cal reflects on riding a bike as a child and teenager and hanging with friends at a famous dirt bowl in Fort Totten; labor conditions for bicycle couriers and the daily grind of the work; how couriers interact with cars, city infrastructure, and other people, and how it's couriers 'against everything'; how couriers get along as—and settle their differences within—a community; how alleycats bring together and create connections among couriers, not just in D.C. but across the United States and globally; his own successes as an alleycat racer; and what defines and separates a 'courier' or 'messenger' from others who work from their bike.