It’s Friday night — just hours before one of the biggest games of the 2003 Cyclone football season. Students and alumni crowd the streets of Campustown, walking to and from parties and gatherings, celebrating the upcoming Iowa vs. Iowa State game.

Shouts ring out from the packed sidewalks in front of the bars.

“What’s up, bike man?”

Jim Gregory, 38, skillfully zig-zags his way through the masses, stopping to say hello and ringing his bell as he passes.

“I get a lot of that,” Gregory says.

Gregory is the owner of the trishaw (short for tricycle rickshaw), the latest phenomenon to sweep through Ames. Similar to a pedicab, which is typically a single-gear bicycle with seats for passengers in the back, Gregory’s trishaw features aggressive mountain-bike components and a bench on the front. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, Gregory can be seen biking around Campustown between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., giving rides to pedestrians who need a lift.

Gregory picks up Luke Gran, freshman in biology, at a party and carries him around Campustown for a few minutes, just for the fun of it.

Gran sits down on the red seat in the front of Gregory’s bike. Gregory’s trishaw has a gold top to shield his passengers from the elements and a foot rest that can be raised and lowered to aid riders in entering and exiting his vehicle.

“Where are the airbags?” Gran asks.

Throughout his trip, Gran asks questions which Gregory readily answers, even though he’s biking uphill. Gregory says he is more than happy to carry students from place to place or even just to drop them back off right where they started, like he did for Gran.

Another student, Brooke Birchmier, flags Gregory down to tell him she recommends him to all of her friends.

“It’s so fun; it brings new culture to Ames,” says Birchmier, freshman in apparel merchandising, design and production.

Gregory says he’s had many international students, especially those from Vietnam, call his trishaw other names.

“Trishaw’s really more of a local cultural name,” Gregory says, “but it’s all basically the same thing, which is a human-powered taxi cab.”

Gregory, who came to Iowa State in 1987, says he has always had a love for bicycles. It wasn’t until he was pursuing his second graduate degree at Iowa State that he decided to take his love of bikes to the next level.

While attending a conference in St. Louis, Mo., Gregory remembered seeing a bike messenger and thinking it looked like a lot of fun. He began planning his own business based off of that first sighting.

Gregory and his wife created a local bicycle delivery company, Bikes at Work. They deliver groceries, take people to the mall, drop off newspapers and run other errands for their customers.

“We pretty much do anything people ask for,” Gregory says.

Through his company, Gregory made contacts with many other bike delivery companies across the country, many of whom drove pedicabs.

After speaking with pedicab drivers, Gregory began to wonder if something like that might catch on in Ames.

“I didn’t like that style of design, though, so I built my own,” he says.

Gregory began working at football games, church conferences and even the Republican National Convention Straw Poll in 1999. But there didn’t really seem to be a great need for an additional form of transport at these events, and it really wasn’t very lucrative.

Then he struck gold. Though he has lived in Ames for many years, Gregory says he never knew just how busy Campustown was on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. He says he realized he had found an audience that would provide him with plenty of business.

He’s been pedaling between Beach Avenue and Franklin Avenue since mid-May and shows no signs of slowing down.

“What I’ve found is that you need three things: a large group of people walking a long distance with money to spend,” he says. “If you’ve got that, you’ll generally succeed.”

Amber Marez, sophomore in apparel merchandising, design and production, stops to say hello to Gregory, who remembers giving her a ride previously.

Marez says Gregory and his services have come in handy for her.

“It is the best ride to the bars,” she says.

As she heads on her way to the next stop of the evening, Marez stops and turns around.

“He does this out of the goodness of his heart,” she says.