Transporting COVID-19 Positive Passengers In The Taxi & Progressive Insurance Dispute Resolved & Bakersfield Update & Shake Your Flabby Booty? Insane Antics On Aurora Avenue North & Passenger Expectations & A Bakersfield Portrait In Rhyme

 Last Week I Transported A Coronavirus Passenger to Goldbar, WA

My most recent COVID-19 tested-positive passenger originated from Kirkland's Evergreen Hospital, a medical facility I haven't picked up at in at least ten years or longer, rarely finding myself anywhere close to Zone 411 (Totem Lake), it not making much sense battling the usual heavy traffic on I-405 to get there.  That day I just happened to drop off a regular customer of mine at her dental appointment, and since the offered call was .02 miles away, I accepted it but not knowing it was yet another coronavirus-infected passenger, this lady making my sixth such variety of customer.  

Given I am vaccinated, and double-masking both me and the passenger, while also properly ventilating the cab, I feel I am taking a very minimal risk, if any risk at all, providing rides to those who really need to get home or to a quarantine shelter.  What makes the quarantine passengers so inviting is the extra $50.00 King County adds to the fare, something designed to calm the soul and soothe the anxious brow.  

But in this case, as with accounts other than the King County one, there was no such added surcharge bonus.  I have asked Yellow/Puget Sound Dispatch to explore the possibility of our other major account customers also providing a "risk fee" when requesting transport of COVID-19 patients, a kind of monetary acknowledgement and thank you.  And it does remain a potential risk for many of the drivers because this kind of fare is offered to our entire pool of drivers minus warning or notice, PSD not restricting the fares to vaccinated drivers only, something I have suggested more than once.  

To me, the liability issue for PSD is immense, because, if in theory a driver does get infected while transporting a virus positive customer, and dies, or perhaps worse, spreads the virus to a family member, with that person succumbing to the virus, I think it would be hard to defend PSD's current policy.  And to that point, it would be very wise to limit these kinds of fares only to fully vaccinated drivers, thus avoiding the needless hazard of endangering everyone involved.  

As to my Goldbar customer, she, like two others I have given rides to, was in denial that she was virus positive, saying she was only dealing with kidney stones and nothing else.  The ride out on Highway 2 was very pretty and enjoyable save for some heavy eastbound traffic near Sultan.  Being in Sultan brought back many memories, as I once lived there for a few months back in 1973 with my cat Sniffer, having then only recently turned 19 years old, and was at that point attempting to understand just what the hell I was doing.  The house was maybe a hundred feet from the railroad tracks, and I always appreciated that Sniffer was wiser than me, staying clear of those many rumbling trains passing by.   Only a young fool would move next to an active railroad.  That Sniffer and I could sleep through all that clatter was a gift of nature, thank goodness we were able to ignore the penetrating roar. 

Progressive Says I am not Culpable

This morning I got an email from a Progressive Insurance senior supervisor informing me that I hold zero responsibility for the recent accident I have been dealing with over the past few weeks.  It was a very friendly letter and I responded in kind, only interested in my declared innocence and vindication and little else.  But since the issue of damage was brought up, I will be getting an auto body repair estimate on the wound inflicted upon 1092.  That Crown Victoria is one tough car, lots of steel making it more impervious to damage than other cars.  

My personal car, my wonderful 2012 Chevrolet Sonic, would have been demolished in a similar collision but "Taco" does contain 10 airbags, hopefully pillowing the passengers from serious injury.  Thank you Progressive, for your conclusion, and if there is a next time, I will not delay in writing up an accident report and creating an accident diagram, being busy no excuse for not doing what is obviously necessary. 

Sad News Concerning my Sister JoAnn

I am very glad I was able to visit my sister over that recent six-day span as JoAnn passed away yesterday afternoon at 12:12 PM in Bakersfield, two Stage-Four tumors taking her away less than two months after her initial diagnosis.  She was 76, and born in 1945, the second of four children.  JoAnn was responsible for my first car driving experience, when in 1967, when I was age 12, she insisted I get behind the wheel of her beautiful 1955 Ford and drive down the road.  Scared, I made it a total of one block before putting the car in park and leaping out of the driver's seat.  Later that year, "dear old Dad" made me learn how to drive, this time in our 1952 Dodge Cornet.  RIP JoAnn! and thank you for taking me to the movies in Denver  1962-64 and buying me all those one dollar Woolworth's pizza slices. Who ever knew Elvis Presley was a boxer?  Or that Vincent Price would introduce me to Edgar Allen Poe?

Some Local Seattle TV Station Needs to Take Live Footage of the Ongoing Madness

I couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself, last week seeing this prostitute wearing nothing covering her buttock, turning to the ongoing traffic and "shake, shake, shaking" her butt for all the world to ogle, a kind of "live-in-your face" advertisement for what you too can enjoy if only you would hire her for your personal pleasure.  Not that her buttock was in any way worth viewing but there it was in living color, whether wanting to see it or not.  

The situation on Aurora Ave North is getting fairly wild, with new hookers taking over for previous sex workers, new troops for the sexual trenches.  Does this make any sense?  Where are the Seattle Police?  Where are the King County Sheriffs?  This is nuts!  Shall we start calling Seattle the "New Amsterdam," and even there, in ribald Holland, these kinds of antics aren't happening.  Will it ever stop?

Passenger Expectations 

The passenger complained when I showed up a mere nine minutes late for her scheduled time call taking her to Sea-Tac International Airport and her flight aboard British Airways winging her to France.  As I told her, nine minutes late ain't nothing these days but here is the problem.  Customers are calling Seattle Yellow Cab all hours of the day and night with the old expectation that we are a fully operational twenty-four company, and when they find out the opposite, they complain.  Why do I have to be the one to tell them that we have been crippled, handicapped by a series of events over the past 7-8 years that were and are completely out of our control?  Did this particular passenger understand my explanation?  Maybe because she gave me a nearly $10.00. tip.  I liked that.

Bakersfield in Rhyme 

Merle Haggard and Buck Owens waving hello from the grave, while static filled AM fundamentalist Christian radio warns don't become Satan's slave,

be instead be a Cowboy road racer flying down Bakersfield's 151 square miles of streets and roads, like a mad hatter, like a Wild Mister Toad,

disregarding the reality of red lights and what makes sense to the common everyday woman and man, shouting I don't give a rats ass because I am a free Trump-loving denizen in our great American land,

shooting my guns bang! bang! bang! all objections be hanged and strung from the Great Oil Derrick floating high in the western sky, taking all the Colorado River's water to irrigate my carrots, grapes and 

lemons too, because out of the desert we have created a city bright and expansive and completely new, another kind of thinking, a combination of Mexican tequila and Budweiser beer fueling our unique human 

zoo, and we don't care what you say, we will drink unleaded gasoline straight and do what we gonna do, minus any Liberal crying, so please go soak your heads you damn assholes, straight into the nearest loo.