Coyotes Are My Friends

Last Monday I worked the now infamous Seahawk & Green Bay Packers game then pried myself up Tuesday morning and made it over to the basalt cliffs and expansive coulees and the seven lakes that is collectively known as the Quincy Game Range. She-who-can't-be-named and I discovered the area back in 1989 and I have been going back every year since, this year making it four times.  Smoke from the still burning "Table Mountain" fire near Wenatchee was wafting eastward, with some related blazes visible from I-90.  The air quality was pretty good except for Friday when the air around the town of Quincy was rated as unhealthy.  That early Friday morning a pack or packs of noisy coyotes came quite near my encampment, perhaps a hundred feet or so, nothing stopping those partying canines from having a good time.  Their barking and yipping was welcome relief from the privileged attitude from particularly elitist fans.  Two fools who identified themselves as from some ESPN crew were unbearable, paying their five dollar fare with a credit card, announcing that taxi drivers prefer credit and debit cards.  Yes I enjoy supporting the banks with my three percent surcharge.  Word to the taxi wise: you are entering dangerous territory when you claim to know a cabbie's reality.  Why I begin to forget that I am officially a 70s era pacifist.  That's why a coyotes' howl is such refreshing honesty. Or the an owl's hoot echoing across the moon lit desert.  She-who-can't-be named says, and said Monday when she found out that I was working an extra day, that I always regret adding more taxi fun & games to my routine. How correct she always is upon the subject.

This just past weekend was at times frantic, more business that anyone could deal with.  I filled three trip sheets plus six, even making an additional 52 dollars after my now usual Sunday Chinese feast with taxi buddy John. Earlier in the afternoon an extremely kind and grateful passenger gave me a fifty dollar tip for returning his telephone.  He must have been a coyote in a past lifetime. There was also a big Cougars versus Ducks game which generated over sixty thousand in attendance.  But why must the animals fight?  Another weighty metaphysical question.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the new Taxi Commission year. Stay tuned as we try to make it a productive year.  So many issues and so little time.

I heard on Friday that some good results appears to have come from that landmark meeting we had with L&I about a month ago.  A Vancouver, Washington taxi company transitioned from a ninety-one thousand assessment to a seven hundred dollar credit after receiving credit for monies previously paid.  An amazing turnaround which proves what constructive conversation can achieve.  Commonsense is always the best solution.  How can it be any other way?