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Something went wrong yestgerday. Might have been the power outage, maybe it was the power cord slightly pulled out. Anyway my computer wasn't working proper yesterday, so I didn't get any net time. Or a chance to look in on WhyteRaven's anual chat session.
Not that I had much time. Between finishing work at dawn and starting mid-afternoon, I was mostly asleep.
New Year's Eve was quieter than last year. For a start there was no ferocious hailstorm. And, by and large, we managed to get people home in good time.
Canberra's taxi industry is finely balanced. I won't say finely tuned, because it ain't, but when things go wrong, they snowball away very easily. Get a major delay, such as road closures caused by a storm dumping hail and rain in massive amounts, and cabs start to fall behind in responding to calls. The jobs mount up, and inevitably some of the passengers call for another cab without cancelling their previous booking, or they call another cab company, or they call several and take the first, or they get a lift home or they crash out on the couch.
Whatever, if a cabbie turns up, finds no passenger and spends a few minutes waiting, that's usually at least fifteen minutes travel and waiting time down the drain, and fifteen minutes that the next passenger has to spend waiting for their cab, during which time they are likely to look for another way of getting home. You see how it goes. After a string of noshows, even the most dedicated cabbie stops wasting his time responding to radio calls and heads in for the main ranks, where there are hundreds of people lined up for a ride. Why take a chance on a radio booking when work is guaranteed on the city rank?
Last year, some people waited four or five hours for a cab. Maybe a lot of those people stayed home, maybe they appointed a designated driver. Or maybe we cabbies were efficient for a change. Anyway, it all seemed to work, and I picked up a lot of passengers within a few minutes of their calls. "It's OK," I'd say, "finish your smoke."
The afternoon and evening were slow. I did three newspaper sudoku (I won't say I got them out - I did them) waiting at ranks, and played around with my iPod, finding time-related songs: In the Year 2525, Rock around the Clock...
Just before midnight, I washed up on the Casino rank, parked illegally on the footpath because the rank was full. So was every other city rank. The double-width main rank was growing a third lane. I twiddled on the radio to find a countdown, but the moment was marked for me by the whoosh of fireworks from City Hill. Doubtless the thousands attending the free concerts in City Square got the full impact, my view was limited between office buildings.
With a final series of bangs, the display ended and then it was on for young and old. I was flat out for the next several hours. I pulled into the main rank about five, got three charming people headed for Queanbeyan, a solid forty dollar fare that, but I noticed that the drunks in the line were mostly on the ratty side of sozzled. So I dropped off my passengers and called it a night.
After fifteen hours driving, I'm tired and not quite as easy-going as at the start of a shift. Likewise the drunks are full of piss and bad manners, spent all their money, liable to go to sleep or throw up in the cab, pick a fight with the cabbie. It's just not worth it.
And, at that time of the morning, I'm glad I'm not Ethiopian or Pakistani like so many of my brother cabbies. All too often, white Australian drunks are racist drunks and make a driver's life needlessly unpleasant.
Not a majority, and not even a sizable minority, but just a few bigoted bastards can turn a shift sour. We gather at the Braddon service station and swap stories in the growing light. I hear the pain and disgust in their voices as we gas up and shake out the floormats.
Year's end, and a moment of reflection. I've been driving for well over a year, and I'm loving it. Ratty drunks aside, there's a lot of pleasure in driving a lovely car around a beautiful city, with (if a lady) a beautiful woman beside me, (if a man) saving your honour, sir, beautiful women in the back seat. And they smile at me.
Not that I had much time. Between finishing work at dawn and starting mid-afternoon, I was mostly asleep.
New Year's Eve was quieter than last year. For a start there was no ferocious hailstorm. And, by and large, we managed to get people home in good time.
Canberra's taxi industry is finely balanced. I won't say finely tuned, because it ain't, but when things go wrong, they snowball away very easily. Get a major delay, such as road closures caused by a storm dumping hail and rain in massive amounts, and cabs start to fall behind in responding to calls. The jobs mount up, and inevitably some of the passengers call for another cab without cancelling their previous booking, or they call another cab company, or they call several and take the first, or they get a lift home or they crash out on the couch.
Whatever, if a cabbie turns up, finds no passenger and spends a few minutes waiting, that's usually at least fifteen minutes travel and waiting time down the drain, and fifteen minutes that the next passenger has to spend waiting for their cab, during which time they are likely to look for another way of getting home. You see how it goes. After a string of noshows, even the most dedicated cabbie stops wasting his time responding to radio calls and heads in for the main ranks, where there are hundreds of people lined up for a ride. Why take a chance on a radio booking when work is guaranteed on the city rank?
Last year, some people waited four or five hours for a cab. Maybe a lot of those people stayed home, maybe they appointed a designated driver. Or maybe we cabbies were efficient for a change. Anyway, it all seemed to work, and I picked up a lot of passengers within a few minutes of their calls. "It's OK," I'd say, "finish your smoke."
The afternoon and evening were slow. I did three newspaper sudoku (I won't say I got them out - I did them) waiting at ranks, and played around with my iPod, finding time-related songs: In the Year 2525, Rock around the Clock...
Just before midnight, I washed up on the Casino rank, parked illegally on the footpath because the rank was full. So was every other city rank. The double-width main rank was growing a third lane. I twiddled on the radio to find a countdown, but the moment was marked for me by the whoosh of fireworks from City Hill. Doubtless the thousands attending the free concerts in City Square got the full impact, my view was limited between office buildings.
With a final series of bangs, the display ended and then it was on for young and old. I was flat out for the next several hours. I pulled into the main rank about five, got three charming people headed for Queanbeyan, a solid forty dollar fare that, but I noticed that the drunks in the line were mostly on the ratty side of sozzled. So I dropped off my passengers and called it a night.
After fifteen hours driving, I'm tired and not quite as easy-going as at the start of a shift. Likewise the drunks are full of piss and bad manners, spent all their money, liable to go to sleep or throw up in the cab, pick a fight with the cabbie. It's just not worth it.
And, at that time of the morning, I'm glad I'm not Ethiopian or Pakistani like so many of my brother cabbies. All too often, white Australian drunks are racist drunks and make a driver's life needlessly unpleasant.
Not a majority, and not even a sizable minority, but just a few bigoted bastards can turn a shift sour. We gather at the Braddon service station and swap stories in the growing light. I hear the pain and disgust in their voices as we gas up and shake out the floormats.
Year's end, and a moment of reflection. I've been driving for well over a year, and I'm loving it. Ratty drunks aside, there's a lot of pleasure in driving a lovely car around a beautiful city, with (if a lady) a beautiful woman beside me, (if a man) saving your honour, sir, beautiful women in the back seat. And they smile at me.
