I'll miss the old girl

[skyring]

Taxi 94 on the airport rank,
originally uploaded by skyring.

The phone rang last night, but I wasn't there to answer it. My daughter tried, but wasn't familiar with the buttons and it rang out before she could answer it. That's my new phone, bought last week to replace the one nicked from my cab. I keep it close when I'm driving, but last night was my day off and I was having dinner with my wife, an anniversary dinner to mark twenty three years. So the phone stayed home, or rather, when I realised I'd forgotten it, I didn't go back to get it.

The Aubergine in Griffith. One of our better anniversary dinners. Small enough portions that we could fit in three courses, and each dish a delight. Washed down with Moet and Tasmanian Cape Grim water. But the best part of the meal was the company of my wife, who still makes my heart thump just by walking into the room.

A short walk afterwards - late November usually means a mellow evening after a hot day, just right for strolling around, pleasantly full. I had contemplated calling a cab, but my daughter offered to be chauffeur for the night and turned up on time to wheel her tiddly parents home.

She mentioned the phone call, saying that it had been from the owner, one of the few names I've had time to plug into the new phone. I rang him up when I got home, and received his news with mixed emotions.

Sad, because he informed me that the previous shift had been my last as the night driver for Taxi 94, and I wouldn't be driving her again. Call me a sentimental old galoot, but Taxi 94 was my first cab, and I'll remember her with fondness.

Happy, because I'll be driving a newer vehicle. In theory, all cabs are equal, because they have to meet certain standards of safety and comfort, but in practice some cabs are less equal than others.

I'd tell passengers, as we arrived under a hotel portico, "You're arriving in style in Taxi 94," and that always got me a laugh, because she wasn't exactly what you'd call pristine. Despite my best attempts to keep her spotless inside and out, she had a few faults that were beyond my power to rectify:

• The seat covers didn't match front and back, and although bright lime green and black is a vivid and eyecatching combination, it wasn't one I felt comfortable with.


• I drive a similar model of car, and mine definitely has more pickup. Maybe it's a combination of having the transmission setting on "Economy", the liquid petroleum gas conversion, the heavy gas cylinder in the back, and all the bits and pieces inside and out, but Taxi 94 definitely struggled a bit, particularly on an airport run with four passengers and their bags.


• The brakes were a bit spongey. Mine are nice and tight, and I found that with the taxi, I was having to put a bit more time and thought into braking. I never got to the point that the ABS would kick in, and I'm sure that in an emergency the anchors would work just fine, but still...


• The adjustment for the rear view mirrors no longer worked. I could see out of them pretty well, but as the day driver had been of a different body shape to me, I found that adjusting the seat was an important task at the beginning of each shift.


• The left front power window sometimes didn't operate properly, leaving the window stuck down. Not a huge problem on a mellow evening, but it meant that I couldn't take the cab through a car wash, or leave the vehicle in a secure condition. One evening it would wind down, but not up, and several passengers, in trying to help, would gradually make it worse, a few centimetres at a time. Sometimes jiggling the buttons would get it working again, but two night shifts were spent jiggling to no effect.


• The transmission would sometimes change up to a higher gear with a bit of a jerk. Only happened a handful of times, and I was hardly driving the car hard, but still, it was a bit alarming.


• The windscreen had a fine sprinkling of pits. Must have been driven through a dust storm or two. Impossible to wipe or buf them off, and hardly noticable at all except in certain lighting conditions, but it was an imperfection and it bothered me a little.


• The spare tyre in the boot had almost no tread left. The four regular tyres were in fine condition, but if (say) I had driven over some debris in the road and gotten a puncture, I would have had to offload any passengers while I changed the tyre and driven carefully back to the workshop.


• The headlights were slightly out of alignment on high beam. Taxi 94 had a "bull-bar" bumper, with auxiliary lights inset into the bumper, and the workshop manual wasn't much help to me in working out how to adjust them.


• The CD player didn't work. That was OK, as the radio worked just fine, but it meant that I couldn't load up (say) Mozart to accompany a couple heading home from a restaurant.

All in all, nothing major, and certainly nothing to diminish my overall pleasure in driving, but enough to niggle a bit.

I can't say the same for my wife. She's as beautiful as the day I married her, and twenty three years have seen us grow closer to each other. Many happy experiences together, and every prospect of many more to come. Now that are two children are grown and will be finding their own way in the world soon, we'll have more time for each other, and in a way, the years to come will be something like our first years together, when we could take off for an evening, a week, a month, without worrying about the kids.

I guess I'll grow to love Taxi 165. A new car, a new beginning, a new set of adventures ahead. But there'll always be fond memories of Taxi 94, and our time together. You never forget your first, they say.

Comments

[teotakuu.livejournal.com]

Another beautifully written entry, Pete. I can sense the love you have for your wife in every word and I am sure that she feels the same. May you have many more happy years together.

Farewell to Cab 94 with it's idiosyncracies and memories and welcome to cab165 that will almost certainly have it's unique identity and will create many new memories for you to treasure and share with us in days to come.

((((((((((((((((Pete))))))))))))))))