The clock was creeping toward midnight when the vomit rained from above.

Weekly delivery coordinator Cecilia Traver was aiming to reload a particularly lonely red box in Monterey when she noticed someone sitting on a second-story windowsill.

“As I walked by, he watched me,” she says, refusing to disclose where it happened out of respect for the neighborhood. “I looked up, he looked down, and he threw up on me.”

Traver rises very early to re-stock the most popular red boxes and white racks every Friday. She synchronizes delivery from the printer at San Jose Mercury headquarters, fights off would-be box thieves with locks and bolts, repairs assaulted boxes and balances shop owner desires to always have Weeklies with the paper’s aim of minimizing leftovers. She weeds out other publications piled on Weekly racks, survives erratic traffic and fields hundreds of reader requests – while managing 10 drivers and nearly 1,000 pick-up points – without worrying much about the vacuum of recognition.

“I don’t think people think about paper distribution,” she says. “They only think about it when it’s not there.”

It all comes with the territory, Travers figures. But still. The puke?

“I was thinking, ‘This is so far beyond the call,’” she says.

An interesting thing happened after she was nailed, though. She kept going.

“You’re working,” she says. “You just move on.”

• • •

Chuck Foss has a unique logic about him. It starts with his name: Chuck’s not actually on his ID (it’s Langdon), but he took to Chuck after “some kid in biology class” started calling him that in high school. Another atypical instinct with Foss: Where many would find constant fighting for downtown parking – with police openly admitting they are hot to ticket him for double parking – it is his form of relaxation.

As the Alice Cooper radio show blares from his car, Foss zig-zags around Cannery Row dropping off stacks of papers and meticulously writing down drop numbers. He says this side job is “a whole different ball of wax” from his primary job at Black Horse/Bayonet golf course in Seaside, where he maintains golf carts and the driving range.

“NEITHER RAIN OR SNOW OR WHATEVER.”

“When I leave work and come to do this job, it gets me out into the town. Other nights, I work then go home, work then go home,” he says. “When I get to Fisherman’s Wharf late at night, restaurants are closing and it’s a nice atmosphere.”

Foss has delivered for dailies and weeklies all over the San Francisco and Monterey areas for longer than a decade.

“You’re like a postman,” he says. “Neither rain or snow or whatever.”

• • •

Wei Chang likes to talk. Maybe he’s extra chatty today because, in this particular line of work, it’s rare to have anyone besides yourself and hundreds of newspapers along for the ride. But with company in the car, he’s more than willing to talk about his stint as a delivery driver.

Every week for the past three years, Chang has delivered the oversized newsprint magazine throughout East Monterey. It’s a bit of an odd job, he concedes.

“The concept of newspaper delivery is an old one,” he says. “Like a paper boy riding door to door.”

Chang adds that he digs the hands-on nature of the gig.

“The lifting’s not so strenuous, and I enjoy carrying the weight and getting to move my legs,” he says as he grabs two paper bundles from the bed of his pickup at one of dozens of stops. “But sometimes, with the [typically 150-page] ‘Best Of’ issue, I have to get a little help.”

He notes that the Jamba Juice stop has a couple of last week’s issues left on the rack; it’s part of his responsibility to track the return rate of the papers to keep supply in line with demand.

“What’s rewarding is going out to drop the paper when you get only a few back,” he says. “You think, ‘People are reading it;’ you’re doing something.”

Chang, Argentinian by birth but Chinese by genes, spends most of his time as a freelance photographer, working on advertisements, portraits and weddings. While paper delivery doesn’t offer the same creative outlet, he is quick to share why he enjoys it.

“There’s no boss hovering around, telling you what to do,” he says.

Travers echoes a similar appreciation for the distinctive character of the gig, even when it means braving barf.

“I’m not prone to sitting in an office doing the same type of task all day,” she says before hopping out to refill a rack. “A nine-to-five job would just feel like punishment.”