As she pedals hard alongside traffic, 23-year-old Elizabeth Bradford's pale pink fairy wings gently flutter in the breeze while she steers her rickshaw through downtown Raleigh. Bradford has been a driver for Raleigh Rickshaw Co. about three to four days a week for three months.

"Rickshawing will be the best job I'll ever have. I'm sure of it," says the recent N.C. State graduate as she prepares to ride out her last summer days on her rickshaw before leaving for a graduate program in scientific illustration at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

When asked how she got started, she says, "I love to ride my bike, and I was riding about 10 miles a day to and from campus, and I saw someone doing this and I thought, 'I could get paid to ride a bike. That's pretty awesome,' and I just did it and I was good at it, so I kept doing it."

The rickshaw drivers have created a variety of "secret routes" for passengers who don't have a specific destination in mind. "My favorite is the giant parking deck roller coaster," says Bradford, referring to a downtown deck that she takes at breakneck speeds.

"I genuinely care that people have a great ride. ... I think they can tell it because I'm really excited about my job and excited for people to try it," says Bradford, who tries to lure customers in with her "big smile." She also has a couple of special touches she likes to add for passengers such as keeping a "romantic" playlist on her iPod so that she can create an ambience for lovers.

Bradford, who is known for her fairy wings, says, "I thought everyone's going to look at me really weird, but then everybody just smiled at me so I kept doing it. I guess that was a weird turn of work. I didn't plan on being the bike fairy."

To learn more about Raleigh Rickshaw Co., visit http://raleighrickshaw.com/. To see some of Bradford's work, visit www.lizbradford.com.

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