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Sep. 28th, 2007 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringI've got a tonne of stuff to do today, and I suspect that, as usual, not a lot will happen.
At least I've got the fatigue excuse available.
Tomorrow, early tomorrow, I'm off with Kerri overseas. Much as I love taxidriving, it was hard to stop bubbling over with excitement last night. I wanted to discuss New Zealand with them all. I wanted to talk of the delights of airport terminals. I wanted to help them visualise a BookCrossing convention.
It was a slow night and I didn't get to do a vast amount of this. Oh well, at least I've got my online friends to share my enthusiasm with.
Yesterday I put a deposit on the February holiday. There's a few bits and pieces to add, but the cruise and flights and hotels are arranged. I'll book the Guernsey-Paris-Edinborough-London road trip by myself. I'm guessing that early April won't be a difficult time for accommodation.
This won't quite be the trip of a lifetime, but it will certainly be the trip of the year, because I'll essentially be spending the balance of the twelve months working to pay for it.
I've got to come up with the balance of the travel agent-booked stuff in a month, which will spice up my incentive to stay out late after the other cabbies have gone home. I'll book the rest of the trip, ferries, cars, hotels etc when I get back, and most of that will only require a credit card number.
Almost didn't get my preferred cruise. Berry, the travel agent who has replaced the departed but beloved Tessa P, was all set to send me an email saying there was no availability when she did a last check and one opened up. It's the cheapest possible outside cabin, and while I appreciate the advice to get an inside cabin, I do like to look out the window, and I'm not going to spend a month of having to get dressed up for public just so I can take a peek outside.
So that's five months of dreaming. Kerri wants to go shopping in all of the ports, starting with Hong Kong, and I caught her looking at pages of shoes on some website the other day. What is it with women and shoes? She was like that before I married her, so I can't claim I went into it blind. To my mind you need a pair of boots for general use, a pair of shiny shoes for going out to dinner, and a pair of sandals for summer and ugg boots for winter. That's it.
I'll get a dinner suit in HK. Every bloke needs a black formal suit, right? My previous one, 25 years old, is now the property of my son, who fits into it. There will be formal nights aboard, and while I'm sure that I can rent one, I'll save money by buying in HK and I can then use it for the rare formal occasion back in Australia. And there'll be other cruises. Everybody says you can't stop at one.
Last night started off bad. My first job was a Silver Service booking from a boutique hotel in Civic to the airport. I was on time, maybe a few minutes early, but five minutes double parked and a visit to the front desk and it seems my passenger had already gone. This at a time when base is screaming for cabs and I'm fighting off desperate passengers. I took one of the latter to the airport, and I had a prebooked Silver Service pickup there. Parked the car, hung around the terminal for half an hour with the sign, but nobody on the flight. Bugger. I could have had at least one fare in the waiting time alone, let alone the wasted parking fee. I went around the loop again, into the cabyard, paid my fee, the boomgate went up, and my screen lit up with a job offer for the airport.
Ooooh, you probably heard the string of fukkity-fukkity-fukkities from where you are, gentle reader. That was two dollars down the drain and I got to go around the loop again, park, write up my sign and go wait some more.
All this in peak time, let me remind you. I could have quite happily shuttled people to and from the airport and made a bundle. instead I was paying parking fees and hanging around the terminal. At least I like airport terminals.
Got my passenger - a lady of incredible beauty just back from New Zealand, so that was nice - and I charged her ten minutes waiting time and the parking fee, which I usually waive. Being a nice guy is one thing, going backwards with the money is another. I reckon I could pretty much pluck a figure out of the air, double it and add a cup off coffee, and these people on government or corporate credit cards would happily sign without a blush. I suspect a lot of my fellow limousine drivers are cleaning up big time.
And that was pretty much it for the peak hour. It got real slow after that. I could see that it was going to be big post midnight, but in between I was scratching for work. I hadn't even made my target by twelve.
After twelve, it got busy, but it was mostly the cheap drunks on the cheap drinks night, and a couple of times they wanted me to stop the cab when their funds ran out and they'd walk home. I'm not going to leave drunken young folk on the side of the road in the early hours of the morning, and it's usually only a dollar or two, so I tell them, "Your fare is twenty dollars, regardless of what's on the meter when we get home."
Happiness in the back, and the anxious counting and recounting of small change ceases. I usually make enough from tips from other passengers to cover the difference anyway, and I set a high value on a smile from the passenger when they get out. Security aside, walking home alone through darkened suburbs, kilometre after kilometre when all you want to do is crawl into bed, is no fun. It takes me a minute or two in the cab and I get a grateful passenger. Half the time they pay the agreed amount and pour a torrent of small change in as well, as a tip. And then I check around the seats at the end of the shift and there's usually a spilled coin or two under the mats or slipped down behind the cushion. Those little golden two dollar coins are tricksy fellows in the back of a dark cab when you've had a few drinks.
Anyway, it wasn't until four that I felt I'd done my duty and made my dough. I washed the cab, vacuumed it out - and looky here, a gleam of gold down by the seatbelt buckles - packed up my gear and drove home, thinking happy thoughts.
I'm not doing a shift tonight. I'll probably need the time to tidy up loose ends and do my packing and grab a reasonable sleep before the flight.
If I don't report back for a week, that's because they don't have the internet in rural New Zealand.
At least I've got the fatigue excuse available.
Tomorrow, early tomorrow, I'm off with Kerri overseas. Much as I love taxidriving, it was hard to stop bubbling over with excitement last night. I wanted to discuss New Zealand with them all. I wanted to talk of the delights of airport terminals. I wanted to help them visualise a BookCrossing convention.
It was a slow night and I didn't get to do a vast amount of this. Oh well, at least I've got my online friends to share my enthusiasm with.
Yesterday I put a deposit on the February holiday. There's a few bits and pieces to add, but the cruise and flights and hotels are arranged. I'll book the Guernsey-Paris-Edinborough-London road trip by myself. I'm guessing that early April won't be a difficult time for accommodation.
This won't quite be the trip of a lifetime, but it will certainly be the trip of the year, because I'll essentially be spending the balance of the twelve months working to pay for it.
I've got to come up with the balance of the travel agent-booked stuff in a month, which will spice up my incentive to stay out late after the other cabbies have gone home. I'll book the rest of the trip, ferries, cars, hotels etc when I get back, and most of that will only require a credit card number.
Almost didn't get my preferred cruise. Berry, the travel agent who has replaced the departed but beloved Tessa P, was all set to send me an email saying there was no availability when she did a last check and one opened up. It's the cheapest possible outside cabin, and while I appreciate the advice to get an inside cabin, I do like to look out the window, and I'm not going to spend a month of having to get dressed up for public just so I can take a peek outside.
So that's five months of dreaming. Kerri wants to go shopping in all of the ports, starting with Hong Kong, and I caught her looking at pages of shoes on some website the other day. What is it with women and shoes? She was like that before I married her, so I can't claim I went into it blind. To my mind you need a pair of boots for general use, a pair of shiny shoes for going out to dinner, and a pair of sandals for summer and ugg boots for winter. That's it.
I'll get a dinner suit in HK. Every bloke needs a black formal suit, right? My previous one, 25 years old, is now the property of my son, who fits into it. There will be formal nights aboard, and while I'm sure that I can rent one, I'll save money by buying in HK and I can then use it for the rare formal occasion back in Australia. And there'll be other cruises. Everybody says you can't stop at one.
Last night started off bad. My first job was a Silver Service booking from a boutique hotel in Civic to the airport. I was on time, maybe a few minutes early, but five minutes double parked and a visit to the front desk and it seems my passenger had already gone. This at a time when base is screaming for cabs and I'm fighting off desperate passengers. I took one of the latter to the airport, and I had a prebooked Silver Service pickup there. Parked the car, hung around the terminal for half an hour with the sign, but nobody on the flight. Bugger. I could have had at least one fare in the waiting time alone, let alone the wasted parking fee. I went around the loop again, into the cabyard, paid my fee, the boomgate went up, and my screen lit up with a job offer for the airport.
Ooooh, you probably heard the string of fukkity-fukkity-fukkities from where you are, gentle reader. That was two dollars down the drain and I got to go around the loop again, park, write up my sign and go wait some more.
All this in peak time, let me remind you. I could have quite happily shuttled people to and from the airport and made a bundle. instead I was paying parking fees and hanging around the terminal. At least I like airport terminals.
Got my passenger - a lady of incredible beauty just back from New Zealand, so that was nice - and I charged her ten minutes waiting time and the parking fee, which I usually waive. Being a nice guy is one thing, going backwards with the money is another. I reckon I could pretty much pluck a figure out of the air, double it and add a cup off coffee, and these people on government or corporate credit cards would happily sign without a blush. I suspect a lot of my fellow limousine drivers are cleaning up big time.
And that was pretty much it for the peak hour. It got real slow after that. I could see that it was going to be big post midnight, but in between I was scratching for work. I hadn't even made my target by twelve.
After twelve, it got busy, but it was mostly the cheap drunks on the cheap drinks night, and a couple of times they wanted me to stop the cab when their funds ran out and they'd walk home. I'm not going to leave drunken young folk on the side of the road in the early hours of the morning, and it's usually only a dollar or two, so I tell them, "Your fare is twenty dollars, regardless of what's on the meter when we get home."
Happiness in the back, and the anxious counting and recounting of small change ceases. I usually make enough from tips from other passengers to cover the difference anyway, and I set a high value on a smile from the passenger when they get out. Security aside, walking home alone through darkened suburbs, kilometre after kilometre when all you want to do is crawl into bed, is no fun. It takes me a minute or two in the cab and I get a grateful passenger. Half the time they pay the agreed amount and pour a torrent of small change in as well, as a tip. And then I check around the seats at the end of the shift and there's usually a spilled coin or two under the mats or slipped down behind the cushion. Those little golden two dollar coins are tricksy fellows in the back of a dark cab when you've had a few drinks.
Anyway, it wasn't until four that I felt I'd done my duty and made my dough. I washed the cab, vacuumed it out - and looky here, a gleam of gold down by the seatbelt buckles - packed up my gear and drove home, thinking happy thoughts.
I'm not doing a shift tonight. I'll probably need the time to tidy up loose ends and do my packing and grab a reasonable sleep before the flight.
If I don't report back for a week, that's because they don't have the internet in rural New Zealand.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 06:45 am (UTC)Unless it's easter and ESPECIALLY if it's half term for the schools.
Even if you dont formally book anywhere, have a couple of places to hand just in case!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 07:29 am (UTC)