Elvis Parsley With A Bee Pollen Body Booster

How can I be so thirsty today, when I had so much to drink last night?

Comin' atcha. Sunday Night. Okay, Monday morning, about 3:41am.

In keeping with recent tradition, I've accomplished nothing on my day off. I slept until 6pm. Feels good to slack, when you have no real pressing obligations.

I had intended to go see Yonder Mountain String Band at the Blue Note. I didn't. It sold out. I had just dressed and was collecting my bearings when JW called to tell me. I had told him I had planned to attend, and was going to request him for round trip cab rides. He heard from his girlfriend that it had sold out and called to let me know.

I wasn't terribly upset. I had never really listened to the band, and was a little put off by the idea of a 'jam band' playing on strings. I knew there would be entirely too many hippies to drown out whatever may be desirable in the music. But, I hadn't been to a show since mid-November, after my second week of cab driving. Okay, it may have been the third week of November, but I'm not going to bother to check. Okay, I checked, but that post was relocated to my blog from the old blog, and the date was superseded. Okay, I checked the old blog and the memory came back to me. The last two concerts were Jason Ringenberg on November 14, and the Asylum Street Spankers on the 21st. I had omitted the Spankers show because it was utterly unfulfilling.

Yeah, so it had been a long time. I figured I'd rather go to a show I'd probably only half-enjoy than to not. And concerts seem to be my A #1 venue for meeting chicks.

But, it was cancelled. I debated on what to do. Either way, I needed to eat. I went to Smokin' Chicks BBQ. I had my usual, except for an unusually attractive waitress. I averted my eyes, mostly, because she was so attractive. She was wearing a denim mini, the kind fashioned to look as if they were made from a pair of discarded jeans, with the seam flattened out in the back, and a frayed cuff. She was wearing running shoes with socks, and had a partially zipped sweatshirt over what appeared to be a boy's thrift store baseball T-shirt. It was blue, and I only saw the top part of the Optimist Club logo. Very tall, and leggy. She was attractive enough to ruin the fanciful waitress/customer flirtation mystique, like when the white trash character in the movie has perfect teeth and healthy proportions, and impairs your ability to suspend disbelief. I'd have preferred a 7.5 or 8.

After eating, I headed downtown, and went to 9Th Street Video. I figured I could use a little visual fodder. I didn't look long before I remembered their box set of The Trailer Park Boys. I rented the second and third discs from the 3 disc set, which covers seasons 1 and 2. The first disc was checked out.

I had only ever seen one episode previously, at my buddy's house in Fayetteville. He had built it up quite a bit. It is a charming series, whose brilliant moments outweigh its realistic flat spots. My absolute favorite part was an episode where Bubbles was stealing shopping carts from the mall Ricky had taken a job at, as a security guard. They do a good job of not overexposing Bubbles' character, and always leaving you wanting more.

I consumed another 6 pack of Pyramid Apricot Weizen while I watched both discs straight through with Peat. It is a show best watched a couple of cold ones down. Also a nice show for heterosexual cat lovers.

So, that took me up to about 1 am. I was a little beer-tired, so I decided to take a little beer nap and wake up to bring you some blogging. That is now going as planned.

Cab!

I showed up Friday and was issued #7 and a call as soon as I hit the door. It was to pick up food at the Main Squeeze, and deliver it to the dialysis lab at the University Med Center. I hate to be a stereotypical Midwestern caveman, but, what a fucking racket. There must be some big money in pretentious vegan and tofu bullshit. This is good though, as this is what makes us different, and variety is the spice of life. Diversity is truly a wonderful thing. Feel free to express the same disgust in my unhealthy delight for smoked hog ribs.

But, I enjoy not being a vegan. I also delight in not wanting to ever live in that Republican-stronghold-new-L.A.-fucking-Colorado. Beautiful scenery? Fucking keep it. I'd much rather live in Salt Lake City. Mormans are fucking awesome. I hope every rich white person with money hurries up and moves to Colorado. You can build 10 Wal-Marts in my back yard in exchange.

Yeah, but, I went to the Main Squeeze. Compulsory, job-related. Don't even try to tell me anything about smoothies. Keep those, too. I parked on Cherry and went inside to pick up the order. There was an unhealthy/healthy unnatural/'wholesome' odor about the place. It made the chemicals and preservatives that have set up camp in my body and are busy implementing their long-term cancer operation want to vomit in revulsion. Sorry, Main Squeeze, I am already otherwise affiliated. I will tell you this--I'd sooner believe that the girl behind the counter got her pleasant curvy figure and good palor from some BBQ than I would from vegan food.

I worked my way through the hospital carrying the not-right warm-smelling bag of food up and down hallways and on crowded elevators (2 or more parties constitute a crowd on an elevator in the Midwest, especially when two are making politely trite nonhumorous comments about stealing the delivery man's food). The 'organic' food seemed even further out of place in the fluorescent and sanitary-chemical-smelling haven of western medicine. I found the dialysis lab and the doctors who had ordered the food.

As uncomfortable as I had been walking into the Main Squeeze, it was even more awkward standing in a big, open room where three sick and old people were hooked up to giant whirring and buzzing machines filtering their blood. While a woman doctor fetched money a guy propped on a bed receiving treatment fretted with alarm that he was hot and his neck was going numb. Being confronted with sickness and mortality in the same setting where a froo-froo doctor was eager to consume an Elvis Parsley with a bee pollen body booster was most unsettling. I had worn my typical thermal underwear top with my heavy knit cab shirt over it. I was perspiring. My face was flush. It was also daylight, and an unseasonal 60 degrees or so.

The order had been pre-paid. The fare, with wait time, was $7.55. The doctor gave me $12.55. A $5 tip is giant at 4pm, even if you earn it by not being reimbursed for the time it takes to find them in the hospital. I took another sweaty, uncomfortable ride down on the elevator and returned to #7. I drove into the parking garage next to the hospital and got out of my cab. I peeled off my shirt and ditched the sweaty undergarment. I unbuckled my belt and unzipped my pants to tuck my ridiculously long uniform shirt back in. Even though I was standing inside the open door of my cab with my back turned at 4pm, I half-expected the woman who pulled in and walked behind me to scream rape at the clinking of my belt buckle. She didn't.

I went home and changed shirts. It felt like a Monday or Tuesday. It was staring slow, and I didn't expect to make much money on the night. I don't think I had another call after the Main Squeeze incident until a 6pm time call. It was on Sanford, which is pretty much in the hood. I knew where it was, because the last lady I 'dated' lived there, and, if I remembered correctly, this was probably her neighbor. Or maybe her.

I would have been more tense if I hadn't have e-mailed her a couple of times in the previous couple of weeks after two months of silence. We had lost contact for a while, and I thought she may be seeing someone with a beard. I hate that, since I can't compete on that level. Ours had been an odd if not informal relationship. We got along great. She was the only cool chick I had ever met that impressed me with a level of useless knowledge that approached my own.

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to a 'relationship' I saw with this chick was her apparent sanity. I kept waiting for a glimpse at some baggage or daddy issues. Bad habits. Insecurity. Bipolarism. OCD. Something. Where could it be hiding, so deftly?

As far as I know, she is still completely sane, and, dare I say, 'normal' and 'stable.' These qualities were in extreme opposition to all of my notions of femininity, and frightened the hell out of me, since I couldn't' really see myself with a woman without having a built-in escape clause. Plus, I have a real crazy-girl fetish. I have some irrational need to have .5% of my mind consumed with the thought, that, at any instant, my lady friend might actually kill me.

Maybe in my sleep. Maybe give me a nudge when I'm looking out over a rocky outcrop some place like Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Who knows, maybe cut my brake lines? It's the myriad number of possibilities that fuels the excitement. It adds a whole new dimension to lovers' quarrels and is one extra, critical factor to weigh when figuring out just how far you can push her or just how much you can fuck with her before she goes Lorena Bobbitt on you. What's life without a little risk?

So, I never got the vibe that this chick would get worked up enough over some jackass as to actually kill him. Which is a good thing. Or, she was so good at masking her insanity that she would actually kill you, without you ever recognizing the possibility or provoking her. Which is a bad thing.

All of this just adds up to the fact that we quit seeing each other. It played out like apathy, and was probably at least influenced by my drastic change in hours when I took the taxi job, and my incessant bitching about my old job, and my renewed bitching in those early days over the cab. I think we only saw each other one time after I started driving a cab, and that was after I had worked exactly one night.

Anyhoo, it wasn't her that called for a taxi, it was, in fact, her neighbor. It was forty-ish grandma, with, I'm assuming, a teenage granddaughter and a 4 year-old grandson or great grandson, not sure. Either way, we were going round-trip to KFC on Worley. The round-trip was a welcome surprise, since it would turn a $6 cab ride into a $10 cab ride, plus any additional wait time. Fares were hard to come by Friday, and this wasn't likely a tipper, demographically speaking.

On the way there I talked about how a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken had been the centerpiece of a family Friday night in Lebanon, Missouri, in the late 70s/early 80s. This was when my dad still left the house for something besides work but before he spent his Friday nights in a bar room. Four of us, smelling like soap, would cram into the seat of a pickup, smelling like sawdust, sweat and motor oil. We'd go to the drive-through of the Kentucky Fried (pre-KFC bullshit), me dodging the big 4speed shifter with my knobby bare knees and staring at the racks of glistening chicken through the window behind the cashier. I'd eat chicken laying on the hardwood floor of a $75 dollar-a-month company rental house, smashing up Hot Wheels while watching The Dukes of Hazzard. The theme song for Dallas meant 9pm and bed time.

So here, now, 25 years later, a tattooed skinheaded white guy pilots a fragmented black family in a Crown Victoria taxi for the same purpose.

I ran wait time while they went in. As the fare climbed some $10 in wait time I expected friction over the fare upon their return. They got back in, with no complaint of the meter. Apparently KFC was getting slammed, and they were running out of a lot of stuff. They got some substitutions and extra food, and weren't too upset about it. She noted the fare and said that she would gladly pay for a taxi rather than deal with thugs on the bus, especially with kids in tow. I mentioned I knew her neighbor, and that we had dated for a time. She said that she talked real nice. The fare came to $20.30, which she paid, graciously, exactly.

I figured it would be another hour or so waiting on the next call. I felt lucky for the $5 tip earlier, and the $20 round-trip fare, instead of a $6 drop-off. I backed out and pulled in the neighboring driveway. My ex-somewhat-lady-friend's car was in the driveway, and there was a TV on. I tried her phone but got no answer, after only four rings. I backed out and drove across town to the gas station.

She rang back before I got there. She had been on the other line. She said she thought she saw a car pull in but assumed she had been mistaken when no one came to the door. We had a very enjoyable chat about nothing. She's a lot of fun to talk to. I left an open (platonic?) invitation to ride around in the cab drinking beer some time.

I had also talked to my old buddy Brandon in Fayetteville and my old buddy Andy in Springfield between my first two calls. I had been enjoying my down time. I got a call to pick up at the University Med Center, on a social pass. These are rarely worth much, and there's never a tip involved, since they are basically reserved for indigents, though you do get the occasional long-distance ones, which can be nice on the meter.

The chick came out and got in. She was going to a shelter on North 10Th, about a $5 fare. Crap. She asked if we could go by Walgreens, to get her prescriptions filled. I told her I could only do that if the pass authorized it. It made no mention. She went back in to ask her doctor. Cool. It may turn into a $15 call.

She came back with an addendum from her doctor, authorizing the wait time. We rolled out. She said she had fallen on some stairs at the shelter. She struck me as a bit of a hypochondriac and an injury pity/drama queen, and seemed to be stifling excitement over the prospect of drugs. I dropped her at Walgreens and went in for a diet soda. I returned to the Crown Vic to wait.

There were two other cars waiting on people to come out. After a few minutes, they had left and I had made it up to the door. With wait time running, the meter had grown from about $3.55 to about $12 or $13. I saw Dan, the new driver I mentioned, walk out of Walgreens. He waived and came over to my window. I knew from looking at the schedule that he was off Fridays.

"You not working tonight?" I asked him how things were going on the job and we exchanged stories, talking about his first couple of weeks on the job. He had pissed off Miss Jean when he didn't know where Chris McD's was. I tried to tell him as many of the little tips and tricks I had learned, and referred him to my blog. He's a fine arts student, recent graduate, from Columbia College. I think he's working towards an MFA. As we talked the wait time kept running. It was well over $20. I told him that I thought that a lot of the homeless people in shelters seemed to get hurt a lot, since they could get free meds. It makes sense, since they have no money and can't drink at the shelters. They can also barter and trade pharmaceuticals for other stuff.

A homeless guy came up to us and stood, waiting to be addressed. I never broke from my conversation, to make him have to interrupt. He asked for $.50.

"What can a man buy for $.50 these days?" I asked. The guy shrugged something, and I added, "I guess you can't buy much of anything for $.50, can you?" He said he could use all he could get. Dan dug in his pocket.

"Here's $.09, if you want it." The man took it, thanked him, and left.

I was still talking to Dan when the chick came back out to smoke a cigarette. She said it should only be a few minutes more. She was wearing terry cloth house slippers and had greasy, stringy hair. She finished her cigarette and went back inside. Dan rode off on his bicycle. She came back out and I took her over to North 10Th. The fare ran $37.80. It was hard to feel too bad about it, since that was money in my pocket on a night where it would be hard to come by. I also hated reporting it, because some people would look at an example of abuse of the system and further hate and condemn people for being poor and/or needy. Regardless, that's how it happened.

So, I had only had three fares in 3 hours, but they were good ones. I got another call, to go out off of Rice Road, out off of Ballenger. That's at least a $16 fare to anywhere near downtown,and people that live out there have cars and usually only use cabs when they're going out boozing or have lost their licenses. They usually have some money. Sweet.

I boogeyed out there and found the spot, a duplex at the end of a cul de sac. I pulled in and waited. A Siamese cat walked by. I rolled down my window and said, "hey, cat." It stopped and meowed at me. The door to the duplex opened and a chick walked out. She had on a half-shirt, barely covering her rack, and was shaking out her long, dark hair with her hand, as if she had just rushed to finish drying it. She was dressed cheap, like a stripper, in jeans and a T-shirt, not classy-slutty like all of the college girls out downtown. The exposure isn't much different, but the implications sure are.

She had a mouthful of teeth, like your typical second-tier mid-Missouri stripper, the one with the nice body but rough face. The one who sweeps up tips from the Mexican truck drivers and dirty old men after the hotter chicks leave the stage. The one who would be the classy-slutty college chick downtown on a Friday night if her family had had any money and taken her to the orthodontist.

She got in, and seemed like she was stressed, in a hurry. "Where are we headed?"

"I need to go to Club Vogue, but I have to go to Gatehouse Apartments first, and grab some stuff."

"You know we charge wait time, right? It's about $1 a minute."

"That's cool. I'll hurry. I'll only be like 5 or 10 minutes, I've got to be at work by 9." It was about 8:30.

"That's a pretty cool cat out there." She didn't have anything to say, except to ask if she could smoke. The fare to Gatehouse was about $20. I started wait time. I amused myself for 10 minutes or so, wondering (but not looking) at what might be in the plastic bag she left to show she was coming back. And what it might smell like. She came back out, wearing the same stuff, at least on the outside. I ran her to Club Vogue. Again, she was quiet, except to ask that I take the highway. She had an impressive knowledge of streets and directions, for a stripper. Or for a chick, for that matter.

I opened up the Vic on the highway, where I could. "You want me to get off at Providence, or Rangeline?" Rangeline was faster, though, technically, maybe a hair farther.

"Rangeline," she said, almost before I could get it out. I got her there at 8:56. The fare was $43.80. I heard her shuffling bills in the back as we took the Rangeline exit and neared the Business Loop. I was curious how she might tip. Strippers are great at making money, and love to spend it. Most of them are cunts, though, and won't tip, and would rather try to hustle you, acting naive and flirting, promising. But, this chick seemed to go about her business, almost resigned.

She handed me several bills, folded, promptly upon stopping, said thanks, and exited in efficient fashion. I took them without counting and thanked her. After she was inside I looked at the money. $52. 3 $10s, 4 $5s, and only 2 $1s. Good girl. The extra $2 shows how hard she tries. Strippers make 'tips,' but its not like a 'gratuity,' meaning it's payment in and of itself (though not technically 'set') and not a percentage reward for a fixed monetary amount, like a cab fare. Besides the social conscience to tip, she also possessed the faculties to do the math, the courtesy to do so, and gave me the extra $2 on an already pricey fare, rather than rounding off at $50, like a business man might have.

So, here I've only ran 4 calls on the meter, in 5 hours, and I've still managed to take in $110 on the meter, with $13 and change in tips. And, still a few hours before bar rush. Any other night 4 fares in the first 5 hours would have translated into about $30-$40, and no tips.

My next call was a couple heading to the Outback Steakhouse. It was a white girl, local, past 30, big enough, and a nice black guy, an over-the-road trucker, from Maryland. He hadn't seen the chick in some time. They were in good spirits, tipped, and asked for a card to request me later.

Next, I had a call to pick up on Zinnia. If you recall, I had a hell-night experience finding it the first time. I had this to say about it, "Zinnia is 3 streets from a street 6 streets from 5 streets from a street you never heard of in the middle of fucking nowhere." It took me an hour to find it, after several frustrating wrong turns and vague directions. This time, it was a time call, due in 7 minutes from when they gave it to me.

Well, let's just say I'm a pretty fucking fantastic cab driver. Despite all odds, I made it on time. I picked up two guys and brought them to a house near downtown for some drinking.

My next call was at a house near where I cleared. Dispatch was doing a good job of handing me calls that were originating near where I cleared, especially considering how few calls they had to choose from. Luck seemed to be on my side. I grabbed the call, a drunk group of 6. The ringleader (drunkest, most boisterous guy--homeowner) thought I was hooking them up by taking all 6 at once, but that's pretty standard. He sat up front, noticed the mandolin, and talked my ear off the whole way. He wanted to hear some pickin'. I took them to the Penguin. They took cards to request me back, but only a marginal tip resulted (~$2).

It was about 11 o'clock. The cab company and all of the drivers had been dead. Likewise, I had few calls, but they were all money calls, especially the back-to-back $40 ones. I went to Hardees and grabbed a chicken sandwich. I was trying to eat it when dispatch interrupted with a call. It was near Harrisburg, several miles up Route E, North of town. This sounded dicey for a number of reasons.

1) Out of town calls near bar time can really suck. You only have one chance at a tip, versus the 4-5 you might be able to pull in the same amount of time. Odds are good that 1 in 5 drunks will throw some cash at you. People spending $50 on a cab ride are usually too annoyed (and broke) to give you much of a tip. 2) There's the very real possibility of a cancellation, especially with drunk people late at night. If I drive 4 miles out south and I get a cancellation, I'm a little annoyed, but have only lost 15 minutes or so. If I drive a half hour north I'm going to lose at least an hour, and near bar time. 3) I'm out of my element. I don't have maps for the woods. I don't know where anything's at in these little towns. It may take me a half-hour to find the place. I can't expect dispatch to be much help, either. If I'm late, it increased the chances of cancellation and decreases the chance for a tip. 4) Highway driving poses bigger risks. Namely, in Missouri, they come on four cloven hooves and have white tails. The hood on a Crown Vic is low enough to clip a deer's legs out from under them and long enough to get them spinning good so they can come through the windshield and thrash at you, injured and crazed. People die like this every year in Missouri. At the very least, I bang up the car and catch hell from the owner, taking out a good car and landing me back in #8 or a shitty Lincoln. And, 5) I was trying to eat my damned chicken sandwich.

It's with all of these shitty scenarios flooding my mind that I gunned #7 North on Route E, which is one twisty, narrow, dangerous, rural motherfucker. I drove 60-70 when the speed limit was 45-55 and the corners were marked 25-35. I wanted to get there as soon as possible, in any case. It worried me that I was going someplace rural, rather than, say, Jeff City. What was this redneck going to do in Columbia that he couldn't do at home? Also, my directions were to go 6 miles north of some other road whose location I was equally ignorant of. Then I was to turn right and look for house number 5711. House numbers are hard enough to find in Columbia subdivisions, much less on houses set way back in the woods with no lights on, housing people who don't want to be bothered.

I found the right road without mishap. I turned on it. Dirt. Great. I've been doing a good job of avoiding washing the cab since it has been so cold, but I 'll have to regardless of temperature if it's covered in mud. So, now I'm racing down an even twistier, narrower, darker dirt road. Luckily, house numbers were easy to read on mailboxes, but the houses were pretty far spread out, and I had no idea how far I was going. The houses started at about 7000 and were descending. The lone pleasing aspect was the serious Dukes of Hazzard shit I was pulling in a retired cop car.

I probably went at least 5 or 6 miles down the dirt road, which became increasingly bad and backwoods. I kept my foot in it. On one tight blind corner a narrow two-track shot straight off, through an open stock gate and into a muddy field. "That can't be it," I thought, yanking #7 to the right and gunning it. The road stopped. Abruptly. Dead-ended with no sign or warning into thick brush and woods. The last number I had passed was 5800something. Shit.

I backed up, and re-evaluated the field entrance. Fuck, gotta try it, I guess.

I idled cautiously through the open gate. The lane turned into a path which curved back to the West. There was a newer, spartan, double wide trailer, with some lights on. It was 11:25. I passed a couple of dead lawnmowers, a tractor, a trailer, and a late-model Chevy work-truck, about a $30K affair, maybe an '00 or '01. The front end was smashed up, and the driver's side front sat on some cinder blocks. There was another, even newer, sporty shortbed 4x4 Chevy in the driveway. It had nice aftermarket wheels, tires, and exhaust. There was a tiny deck with no railing on it. A dude walked out, looking at me, confused.

I opened my door and got out. "I guess you know I have no idea where the hell I'm at, right?" The guy was squinting at me. He didn't look as mad as I expected. "Is this 5711?" I asked, not expecting it was until then.

"Come on in." I wouldn't have normally, but I had already got out of the car and I did have to use the bathroom pretty badly. The guy was wasted. He was in his early 30s, lanky, 6'1" or 6'2". He had short-cropped hair with a tiny curtain of bangs, cut square across his forehead. His jug-handle ears jutted forward, making him look boyish, though his face was riddled with tiny rash-like scars. He wore a plain blue long-sleeved T-shirt, tucked into some plain blue jeans, pulled over some lace-up western style boots.

I walked in the trailer, which was bachelor-messy. I asked to use his bathroom and he pointed me down the hall. I had to kick some pants out of my way to get the door closed. There were kid's bath toys and a potty-chair booster seat next to the toilet. I went back to the kitchen, where he had resumed drinking beer. He acted like we were new friends.

Drunks like this rarely have any sense of urgency. I tried to get him in the right mindset to leave. He had offered me a beer, and pointed to two or three opened boxes of domestic beer. He tried to say something about having had some people come by earlier. He wasn't slurring badly, but was fairly disjointed. He may have said something about his wife leaving him. I tried to steer the conversation towards leaving. I mentioned that I needed to get the $50 up front.

He said something about paying me. I told him I trusted him, but I at least needed to see some green. He opened a bank envelope he took from his wallet and showed me a couple of $100 bills. He started to take one out, and I told him I had plenty of change. He reconsidered, and produced 2 $20s and a $10. He grabbed 3 Bud Lite bottles for the road. I had him in the car and on our way by 11:31.

I asked him how he had been doing. Apparently, in addition to his somewhat recent split with his old lady, he had 1) been fired, 2) by his father, 3) sent to MidMo Mental Health, and 4) been sentenced to some jail time, all since Tuesday. I guess he was going to live it up before having to go to jail to begin his sentence. I would be taking him to Stephanie's Cabaret, by way of an ATM. He also said he would probably be there about an hour, and then need a ride up to Lynn's (whorehouse) before going back home.

He thought I was a good dude. I yokeled it up a bit for him. We made it to Columbia without incident. With all of the talking he only managed about 2/3 of a beer before we hit the ATM. After watching him fumble at it a while, I got out to help. I walked him through it, and he took out another $200. I made sure he got his card back, and got him in the car. I had been holding his open beer the whole time. He was a bit embarrassed over his struggles with it, and I said they were hard enough to operate sober when standing up, because they were hard to read and I always hit the wrong buttons.

I dropped him off at the cabaret. He had some sort of membership card there. He looked intently at every bar we passed, and I believe he had been kicked out of them all, which is why he preferred drinking alone. He also had issues with local law enforcement, who knew him on a first name basis. He said he was ornery a number of times. His neighbors had got him in trouble for shooting his gun at 3am--even way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere. I'm guessing he was going to jail after a ton of DWIs. He took his remaining two beers with him. I had offered to dispose of the empty for him, but he had insisted at throwing it a concrete underpass. "I know how these cops is--you don't want that in your car."

I asked dispatch, but he never called back that night. He may have saved himself some time and just gone to jail from the cabaret.

I had one call after bar closing, at the Med Center ER. I was mildly annoyed to get called out of bar rush to pick up there assuming it would be another social work pass. I pulled up and no one came out. After a couple of minutes, I got out and went in. The woman at the desk didn't know of anyone waiting for a cab. I went around the corner to a waiting room. I was in the process of asking the scattered weirdos if anyone called a cab when a nice looking blond girl who I thought was asleep in a chair got up and came over to me. She followed me out to the cab.

At least it was a cash call. She didn't look like anything was wrong with her, though she looked upset. I figured she had been out with friends drinking and maybe there was a car wreck or something. I hate to ask people stuff like that. "I'm guessing this isn't how you wanted your night ended up?"

It turned out that she hadn't been at the hospital at all. She had some sort of mild drama out downtown with her friends, and took off walking. She was visiting from out of town, and thought she'd find a gas station to call from. Instead, she had been walking across campus and went into the hospital to wait, thinking it would be an easy place for the cab to find her. And it was warm. She tipped $3 on an $11.80 fare.

As I was clearing with that chick, dispatch radioed that I had a request at the Martini bar. I hadn't taken anyone there and was curious who it might be. It was right around the corner from where I was at. I got there quick, and went in. It was the couple I dropped off at the Outback. They were pretty drunk. I told them I would be outside, and saw an old friend, Zeke, from when I worked at Mr. Tranny. He was friends with the guy who owned the business next door, and was often at the shop. He bought and sold some cheap cars and motorcycles. He does security at the Martini bar, something I wasn't aware of.

We had stepped outside and were talking when the drunk dude came outside and said he didn't need a cab. The chick had called her brother, who was picking them up. It was my only cancellation all night, so I didn't mind much. Plus, I was enjoying talking with Zeke. But, the guy went the extra step and gave me $10 for showing up. Fuckin' sweet! They could all cancel, if that were going to be the case. Shit, that would be preferable, actually.

Then I couriered some more bloodwork. I think it was for drug testing purposes, but they said STAT. I picked it up at Columbia Regional and took it back to the University Med Center. It was raining a bit. I went in through the ER. Some drunk college student had come in after falling on some stairs. He was holding a mostly-melted 10lb ice bag on his elbow. I found the lab and dropped off the specimen.

The people from Zinnia called back and requested me, too. Lots of people say they will, but few actually do. I set a new personal-best time getting them there.

I had one more call at the Diner before calling it a night. It was two dudes who had seen the Schwag at the Blue Note. They weren't too hippie-fied, though. They tipped $3 on a $6.80 fare.

So that was Friday night. I only ran 15 calls, but set a new personal best at $283 on the meter. My take-home from that was $99, along with $60 or so in tips. Awesome. That certainly beats the shit out of most nights. It was especially good for only 15 calls--I usually average a little more than 20 on a good night. It averaged $18.90 per fare, compared to an average of $7 per fare on Monday, and about $10 per fare on Tuesday. None of the other drivers got close to that, it was all luck. I was the only one who didn't get hammered with tons of cancellations, and the personal requests helped, too. But, those three big fares ($37.80, $43.80, and $50) were monumental. Some days its good to be the cab driver.