Car trouble? To the rescue, here come the bike guys

Since the first Zipcars arrived on the streets of metropolitan Boston in June of 2000, say officials with the car-sharing service, more than 40 percent of its area members have given up their personal vehicles. What many of those members don't realize is that the young company, which has expanded into eight other cities, has taken its own green advice here and in San Francisco, maintaining the cars and sometimes rescuing stranded members with so-called ''fleet cyclists."

''I actually rolled up on my bicycle to this guy in this car that was dead, and he was like, 'You're roadside?' I'm like, 'Yeah, I am today,' jumped it, and he took off," says Scott Mullen, a 33-year-old Somerville resident, as he works on a Mazda in the South End. ''Everybody loves it when you show up, or when they see you on a bicycle dealing with a Zipcar. They think it's so cool."

And not just cool, but practical: It's next to impossible to do their jobs with cars, says Mullen, for many reasons, including lack of parking in crowded urban areas (one early employee had his personal car towed from a Zipcar spot -- while he was driving a Zipcar in for service), and simple mathematics, according to fleet operations manager Kevin Quincy, who used to work at a rental car company. There, moving one car required two cars and two people, not the case when one of the five Boston-area fleet cyclists can easily throw his bike in the back of any of the 390 local Zipcars.

''Say a car needs to go to a body shop," says Quincy. ''You can drop that car off and ride to the next car on a bike, instead of having someone follow you in another car."For the most part, though, weather permitting, the cyclists service cars in parking spaces scattered solo and in small groups across Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, and Medford, charging a dead battery here, replacing a worn-out wiper blade there. All of the cyclists carry messenger bags filled with car first-aid kits: Replacement antennas, a variety of spare bulbs for taillights and the like, flat-fix supplies, and a healthy supply of electrical tape. It's a bulky load, to be sure, but that's the price they pay for the freedom to ride.

''It's a whole lot of fun, because any chance I get to be on my bike is great," says 30-year-old Clint Lunsford of Cambridge, an Arkansas native who joined the company just before last Christmas. ''I'm planning my own day, riding around the city on a bike, and then troubleshooting problems with cars, which are all things I like to do."

The down side? Lunsford's been hit by cars twice in his brief time with the company, including one incident in which he ended up on the hood of a car.

''It's a constant thing of having to watch out for somebody turning in on you, or pulling out in front of you, or just any sort of mishap that can happen with a driver not paying attention," says Lunsford, who rode away from both encounters uninjured. ''They don't consider cyclists as part of their general flow of traffic, and so you end up with a pretty hazardous work environment."

Surprisingly, Lunsford doesn't sound too perturbed by the danger, an attitude and survival tactic shared by Mullen.

''I've had a lot of words with motorists, I've had a lot of near-misses," he says. ''You're riding in the city, you really have to kind of let go and not be angry, because you'll be angry all day long."

The hazards are just part of the job, he says, and are far outweighed by the benefits of having fun and doing something he and others believe in. At the end of the day, Mullen maneuvers his battered single-speed through rush hour traffic to check in on 10 Zipcars, the largest single group in the city, lined up in a lot near Symphony Hall.

''This fits in so well with my personal transportation philosophy, which a lot of people laugh at. They say, 'You have a personal transportation philosophy? What a geek!' " Mullen laughs.

What's his philosophy? ''Cars have their place. Tim Baldwin, former MassBike director, said it best: 'It's not that cars are bad, it's that choice is good.' "