Traveling Messengers

Alone is key. Courier travel lends itself to short, solo junkets like this. For one thing, how long do you want to stay on the road with the same three pairs of underwear that you left with? (However, some routes do allow you to check a single typical-size bag.) For another, courier companies offer only one ticket per day on their routes. To bring along a husband or a friend becomes a complicated exercise in either a) programming a rendezvous on the other side of the world or b) trying to match your itinerary with another full-fare ticket. Unless your 6-year-old is comfortable passing a document pouch to a mysterious stranger, this is not the way to take a family vacation.

"The first time I did it, my sisters and I traveled from California to Manila for my mother's 80th birthday," said Christina Munoz, a veteran courier I ran into in Tokyo. "Six of us did it, getting into Manila on six different days."

Munoz has completed five courier runs, one to London and four to her family home in the Philippines. This time she paid $100 for the San Francisco-to-Manila ticket, plus a $100 deposit she'll get back when she finishes the trip successfully. The secret to getting the best fare is holding back to the last minute, she said. "My sister got $50 to Manila once. She had to leave the next day."

Causey agreed. "It's the opposite of regular air fares," he said. "The longer you wait, the more they will lower the price because they need someone on that plane. But you have to be flexible. If you want a certain date, you'd better go ahead and book it, because once that one seat is gone, it's gone."

If you're willing to travel really last minute, you have a very small chance of bagging the most coveted courier jobs of all: the freebies. They don't come along often, but every now and then a company will call Causey and beg for a courier to bolt for the airport.

On Thanksgiving Day, for example, a company was desperate to put someone in a seat from New York to Manila. Causey's staff started calling down a list of couriers willing to scramble. "After two hours, we had four or five interested. One of them went and got free airfare, $400 in expense money and one night in hotel. I think they made a short vacation out of it."

TOKYO, 7:45 P.M.

It was in Narita Airport that I ran into Munoz after my hop from Hong Kong. She, too, proudly bore a big red Jupiter sticker on her chest, having just gotten in from Manila. The Tokyo Jupiter rep -- a punky Japanese boy with bleached hair -- was already waiting for both of us at customs. He gave us vouchers for our hotel. Our flights -- hers to San Francisco, mine to New York -- would take off in the morning.

Munoz had only her pouch and went right through customs. But Blond Boy had me wait while he went to fetch the Hong Kong cargo. For some reason, this time I was required to physically pass through customs along with "my" baggage. He rolled out a dolly groaning with about 25 boxes wrapped in yellow plastic, babbled with a customs officer for a few seconds and nodded to me to hand over my pouch of claim tickets. We were waved through. Two dozen boxes of something had entered Japan with my name, figuratively, all over them. I asked Blond Boy what they were. He had no idea.

"It can be anything from a single spare part for a factory that's down to literally tons of cargo," said Lutz. "I've been a courier for two tons of CDs going from London to Miami."

Lutz's oddest cargo was an emergency shipment he escorted from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, a rush so hot that a flight attendant delivered it straight to his seat minutes before takeoff. It was a partly opened box. Inside were Beta tapes of "Punky Brewster" reruns needed urgently by a Dutch television network.

"I was proud to play a role in such an important mission for American culture," Lutz said.

NEW YORK, 11:20 A.M.

After a night in one of the airport hotels that is the fate of anyone traveling home through Tokyo (quickie sushi bars, huge breakfast buffets, tiny rooms), I again lucked out with a whole row of 747 to myself for the flight to JFK. Blond Boy had given me my ticket and my courier pouch for the last leg the night before, so check-in was normal. And the flight was long.