Wednesday, September 7, 2011

This Past Weekend Not Tomorrow But Today

Okays folks, furry or otherwise, I am back to keeping all taxi matters more or less current.  That truly is the taxi way, more or less being the guiding principal, as if such notions as principals actually exist in this lopsided industry I both love and hate and every other emotion in between. Next week my posting will either originate in Chicago or Toledo, Ohio as I am skipping out of the next weekend to instead join the subject of my biography (Milton Wan) for his South Vietnam unit's reunion.  The reunion is in Chicago, then on Monday morning the 12th I am flying to Detroit and renting a car to drive the 60 miles south to Toledo.  Toledo is where all my family (I was born in Puyallup, WA) was born and where many cousins remain.  I will be visiting the grave sites of both my mother and her parents.

Taxi was typical of a holiday weekend, with enormous business swings, a veritable roller-coaster of taxi highs & lows, the worse happening early Saturday morning.  First we had the entire computer dispatch system go down between 3 & 4 AM.  Then I got shut out the second hour with the third also drawing a blank due to a no show.  Can you imagine that, the GREAT!? taxi guru himself going three consecutive hours without a fare?  I don't think that has ever happened before in all of my 24 years but hey! as I always say, no one is immune from getting their buttock kicked in the taxi business.  Why, you should expect it!  Anyway, it got better and I put in about 900 miles (about the distance to San Francisco) and had over 100 fares.  I kept it easy on Monday and barely worked ten serious hours.  The reverse of the lull was Saturday evening when Seattle's downtown area did a fair imitation of Manhattan when I had a least six consecutive sequences of dropping off and instantly picking up again, the departing passenger getting out as the new rider attempted to squeeze in.  Think that might also be some kind of record.  As I always say, with taxi you never know, and you don't!

Making my sleep deprivation even worse was having to be at the Seattle/King County taxi commission meeting yesterday at 10 AM.  Oh my poor 57 year old body!  Four people failed to show up but one did manage to listen in via conference telephone.  I was impressed with that!  There was some contentious conversation this meeting but I was just glad to hear important issues finally being addressed.  Next week I will report more fully on what went on.  By then I will also will be able to give you my taxi commission email address, allowing all my taxi  driver readers to directly tell me all their concerns.  Thank goodness I get to miss all those wonderful fares this upcoming weekend.  Friends, be my guest, you can have them!

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