Car 58, where are you?

Last Post

2010-01-17T16:33:00.003+11:00

I'm moving my blogging effort to WordPress, consolidating several blogs into one platform. From now on, look for my taxidriving stories at OneMoreFare.com

I've transferred my blogroll and advertising across to the new domain and I'll be renewing links with my brother cabbies around the world. And writing new content.

Promise!

Darkseeing

2010-01-12T03:11:00.000+11:00

I was munching on a carrot in my cab, number two on the Manuka rank. Reading Further Tales of the City and just chilling.

So I was surprised when a passenger opened the door and got in. "What about him?" I asked, indicating the cab ahead.

"I didn't want to wake him up," she said, and gave me a destination on the further side of the city, an easy forty dollar fare.

I take the position that if a cabbie is asleep on a rank - especially at five in the afternoon - then he's too weary to drive safely.

Sleep management is an important part of a cabbie's life. The average rate per hour is so low that if a cabbie wants to make serious money, he's got to drive serious hours. In theory, I drive a thirteen hour shift each weeknight, and other drivers, especially those who own their own cabs, will drive even longer hours to make the money needed both to pay the huge costs of operating a cab and make some sort of living.

While a cabbie's shift isn't continuous driving, and it's a sight more interesting than the highway driving of long-haul truckers, it's still a long time to be awake and alert. A good cabbie, even if he's not actually driving, will be waiting for somebody to walk up and get in, or for the chime of an incoming radio job. He'll be watching the stats screen to work out where the work patterns are flowing best, and he'll be cleaning the windows or shaking out the floormats when there's nothing else to do.

Or he'll be chatting to other drivers, reading a book, doing the crossword puzzle, listening to the cricket... There's a lot of idle time in a cabbie's life.

What he shouldn't be doing is sleeping. Other cabbies will take his passengers, he'll miss out on radio jobs, he'll lose income.

In an ideal world, a cabbie gets eight hours of good, solid sleep, drives his twelve hour shift, and has four hours left over for recreation. Not much of a life, but, as I always tell the passengers, "It beats working!"

In the real world, it's hard to get a solid chunk of uninterrupted sleep, especially for a night cabbie like myself. There's the unavoidable noise and activity of the rest of the family waking up and going to work or school. There are traffic noises, horns honking, construction vehicles rumbling. There are phone calls. In summer it's hot, and there's always the problem of too much light seeping around the curtains.

I'm lucky if I get three hours of sleep in a row. I'll take a nap in the early afternoon before starting work at three, but somewhere around midnight, I'll be running down. With the last planes landed at the airport and streets full of cabbies competing over the last few fares, it's an ideal time for me to take a nap before joining the die-hard taxidrivers serving the empty city. There's always work around at two in the morning on a weeknight. You might have to drive a bit further to pick up a passenger, but in a city the size of Canberra with a floating population of students and parliamentary staffers and public servants staying a few nights for a course or a convention, there's always someone in the wee hours who needs to go somewhere.

I don't pump myself full of energy drinks or pills to stay awake. I know other cabbies do, and I've tried some of those pills many years ago, but it's an artificial alertness, and while the body stays awake, hands gripping the steering wheel, the mind goes off in strange directions. I know that everyone expects cabbies to be a little bit crazy, but I don't want artificial assistance in that direction.

But I can't drive when I'm tired. I start making mistakes. I'll give out the wrong change, I'll take an inefficient route, I'll miss out on fares. And, worst of all, I'll drive in an unsafe fashion. There are only so many traffic lights you can misjudge, only so many Stop signs you can roll through, only so many Give Way signs you can ignore.

Or I'll begin to microsleep.

When that happens, I'll stop work and take a nap immediately. I usually stop well before I get to that point, but sometimes when the flow of work on a busy night doesn't give a natural break, I'll find myself whipping down the Monaro Highway, long and straight down to the far suburbs of Tuggeranong, with eyes that don't want to stay open.

I've got my own private map of quiet little corners of the city. Dark and deserted at midnight. Parks, sporting fields, carparks. What I need is something off the streets, not too much light or noise. I'm lucky in that Canberra has many such places. In fact there are four excellent carparks right in the middle of the Parliamentary Triangle in Federation Mall that are dark and deserted. Telopea Park and Haig Park have some good spots. But there's always somewhere.

I park the car facing my best exit route, I lock the doors, turn off as many lights and displays as I can, crank the seat right back and zonk off. Even a five or ten minute powernap is good, but sometimes I'll doze for an hour. I don't set any alarm, because I figure that I'll wake when I feel rested.

Usually what happens is that I get woken up by an incoming radio job after fifteen or twenty minutes. I can ignore it if I want, but generally I take the job and get back to work, good to go for those last few hours before I hand the car over to the day driver at four in the morning.

An alternative strategy, one my wife prefers, is that on a slow night I finish early. Like most other night cabbies. Trouble is that if every cabbie did that, then there would be no taxis on the streets to cope with the small demand at that time, let alone the unexpected load of a delayed flight or a late bus or a big function going late. There are always people to be shifted around the city and it is at these times that I feel most useful, saving people a long wait or a long walk. And making myself a few quid getting them home safely and comfortably.

RIP Betsy

2009-11-07T17:38:00.002+11:00

I returned home from the USA on Sunday morning, ready to drive my first night cabbie shift on Monday evening, rightly assuming I’d be tired and not wanting to drive.
That was the night the owner crashed our lovely new cab.
And now the car is written off.
We only drove it for a month, enjoying every moment. While I was away my day driver felt so emotionally attached, he gave our silver cab a name: Betsy.
Heavens to Betsy, but she was the cab they drive in Paradise. so much to love about her. Automatic windscreen wipers, for example. They worked off a sensor, so you never had to fiddle with intermittent settings, or even turn it on. They were always on, and the more rain you got, the faster they went.
Just remember to turn them off before going through the car wash!
So many lovable little features. She had an auxiliary input, so we could plug our iPhones straight into the sound system.
Built-in Bluetooth. Auto up/down on the driver’s window. Clever lighting under the doors to reveal puddles before you stepped into them. Fog lights.
She was a delight to drive. I’d finish a thirteen hour shift, get out and stroke her silver flanks with real affection.
I never found her limits on the road, either. She always had more to give if I needed to overtake, or to grab that last half second of amber light. I felt in control, sure of myself and my place on the road.
And she was new. Well, a couple of years old, but for a cab, that’s new. The previous owners had looked after her, and my co-driver and I were taking good car
The only drawbacks were small ones, such as the fact that the drivers seat had no memory function, or that the A pillars were wide, creating a blind spot that could obscure oncoming traffic.
Passengers would get in, look around admiringly, and say something like, “This is the cleanest cab I’ve ever been in!”
Music to a cabbie’s soul!
She was beautiful, and now she’s gone. Saturday night the owner drives the best shift of the week. He was crossing Jerrabomberra Avenue, four lanes of traffic with a service road each side, paused to let two cars past, and then floored it in the cabbie way. Unfortunately, there was a third car, coming up from the left in the blind spot on that side, and he collected it in the middle.
No injuries, which is the main thing, but poor old Betsy had her front crumpled right in, headlights and bumper dangling. After a short period of hope, she was written off by the assessor.
So now we’re driving replacement cabs and wondering what we’ll get next as a permanent mount.

Turning eighteen

2009-09-27T04:24:00.003+10:00

Last night was a fresh start and a storm.
I've driven TX58 for the last time. A short shift, because I was so very tired. I collected my wife from the airport - it's been a long day, she warned me, I need some TLC! - and instead of taking her the short drive home, I headed for Belco, where the car is living at the moment.
I turned the meter on, which is something I do when running family and friends around in the cab. It means I have to pay the owner for half the metered fare, but it's his car, his investment, his gas.
Gassed up, vacuumed out, drove the few blocks to the day driver's house, where I cleaned out my gear, and drove home in my own car.
TX58 has been a mixed bag. I've crashed it a few times, run into a kangaroo (well, vice versa, actually), learnt to live with its engine quirks, and just driven it about a bazillion kilometres listening to some great music and chatting with some amazing passengers. But the car was getting ever more shabbier and rattlier, like all of the remaining Silver Service Fairlanes. Ford hasn't made a Fairlane for years.
On Friday my new owner let me know that the car would be on the road later today. He spent the day at the Dickson Motor Registry, battling bureaucracy to get the car registered, have all the boxes ticked, gas conversion approved and so on. It was about five when he swung past to pick me up.
"I've had the apprentice run it through the car wash and give it a good chamois," he said. And Taxi 18 was gleaming, pristine, pure and fresh when he gave me the keys and said "Have a great shift!"
It's a Holden (General Motors Australian arm, for my overseas friends) Statesman. A year or so old already, but in lovely condition, as Alfie said of Ruby. Pretty much all the same features as the Fairlane - and more, including a direct auxiliary input from our iPhones, which will finally see the end of the clunky radio transmitter - though this car doesn't have the Ford's leather seats.
So many buttons to press!
The controls are all slightly different, and it's going to take a few days for the muscle memory to kick out and in again. The window controls are on the centre console rather than the door, for example, and the audio and cruise controls are slightly different. So I'm fumbling a bit.
The drivetrain rumbles and roars under acceleration a bit more than it should for a car at this price level, but the power is there when I need it. Turning circle for this big car is workable. Front and rear park assist, always a handy feature in a cab. And a nice big back seat. "You could hold an aerobics class in here!" said one of my passengers.
First passenger was a charmer. A student from a boarding school, I picked him up at his gate to go into Civic to meet his girlfriend for a movie. We talked about movies and themes and novels and plots and music all the way in, and I gave him a card with my Monash Drive serial novel URL hand-scrawled on it. "Good night, First Passenger!"
Friday evening. A few airport jobs, a few people going home from work or dinner, and at the end of the shift, it was the regular drive the young people home from the nightclubs routine on Alinga. Despite my late start I was well over budget, and it was a good night.
The only problem was the drizzle of mud. The huge dust storms that have swept across Australia over the past few days have left fine red dust in the air, and the slightest rain is full of it. Light mud from the sky adding to that thrown up by the wheels on the road. By midnight the car was filthy.
My last passengers were a mixed bunch. I got one young man, who turned to ask the lengthening queue if anybody else was going to Belconnen. Three folk did, and climbed into the back seat together. They had aluminium foil packages in their hands, and my heart sank when I realised it. I wouldn't have unlocked the doors for them, but the first passenger had invited the, in to share his ride, and it would have been very awkward to refuse.
My misgivings were justified. They unwrapped their burritos and the cab filled with savoury smells - most unsettling for a man on a severe diet - and I knew the back seat would be littered with bits of dropped food, grease on the seats, wrappings in the footwells. Not a happy cabbie.
I dropped the young man in Bruce, and when he asked the others to share the $22 fare, they refused him. They wanted me to start the meter again. "So you've just had a free ride most of the way home?" the young man exclaimed angrily. And yes, they had.
I didn't restart the meter, pointing out that it would be an extra $4.00 flagfall and that I'd subtract the money already paid from the final bill. Bruce to Macgregor to drop off one passenger, and onto Ngunnawall to finish the trip. It was about $80 all up.
Past three in the morning - oh how the hours whizz past when you are having fun! I turned Sister Hazel up and headed for the servo. Gassed up, and went inside to get a taxi wash voucher.
"No use!" said the chap behind the counter. "Five minutes and it will be just as dirty."
Well, it had stopped raining, and I was hoping the short ride home wouldn't get too much road dirt on it, and there was no way I could return the car in that condition.
Ran the car through the wash, vacuumed it out - sure enough my bastard passengers had left flecks of onion and burrito all over - and drove home.
A lovely car, a good night, and I'm looking forward to many more happy shifts in Silver 18!

Girl in a blanket

2009-09-14T01:48:00.002+10:00

She was waiting for me outside Accident and Emergency. A cold night and she had a hospital blanket draped over her shoulders. I cranked up the heat as she got in, but she said, “No, I’m warm as toast. These things are great!”

I had Chet Baker blowing a golden trumpet on the CD. Mournful he wailed into the early morning. He’d been matching my mood, but my passenger grimaced and asked if we could change the station.

I looked at her. Female. My age. There was only one choice. I reached over to the iPhone, turning on the ABBA golden hits video.

That brightened her up. In fact, after a bit it was a battle to keep her from getting up and dancing. The Fairlane’s a big car, but not that big!

It was a long fare out to a far western suburb and in between songs, her story emerged.

A week back, she had driven home drunk and crashed her car. Some minor injuries, but only to herself. “Rooted me car, but.”

She’d been looked after in hospital, come home and some days later had had a bad day with the depression and concern over upcoming court appearance, the expense of fixing her car and repairing relationships. She’d said a few things she probably shouldn’t have, gone for an afternoon nap and woken to find a couple of policemen, who escorted her to hospital, where she was locked away in a room bare but for a bed and a bucket and placed on suicide watch.

She’d gotten loud and cranky to begin with, but after several hours managed to convince a doctor that she wasn’t going to harm herself and they’d let her go, giving her a blanket and a Cabcharge card good for a ride home.

She and I and ABBA had a party on the drive home and she was anything but depressed when I dropped her off. Outside, her car was indeed rooted, crumpled bonnet and half the front end missing.

But she was alive. Alive and vibrant, and as I smiled goodnight to her at two in the morning, I hoped she’d stay that way.

There’s no future in driving drunk. Let a stranger drive you home in a silver cab.

Wait and return

2009-08-30T15:14:00.001+10:00

Words to gladden the saddest of cabbie hearts. Wait and return means to collect a passenger, take them to a destination, wait with the meter running for them to pick up a package or complete an errand, and then take them back to the pickup point. Easy money.

I first met this particular regular passenger one Thursday a year or so back. Thursday afternoon with Parliament rising, height of the peak hour. Every cabbie in Canberra is flat out, and there are passengers waiting in every zone.

The address given was in my own suburb, and it had those magic words, "wait and return". I smiled all the way to the pickup point, a private residence in a quiet street. Waited in the driveway. Waited some more. Eventually a young lady about eighty years old came out, leaning on a cane. I jumped out and helped her into the front seat, holding the door for her.

She turned to me when I asked for a destination. "Just the shops, please, driver."

The shops. Two blocks away. This wasn't going to be a long trip.

I backed out of the driveway and a minute later we were at the local shops.

"The end shop, please."

The grog shop. One of my favorites actually, because the owners have a great range of alcohol. I'll walk down of a weekend, tell the owner what I'm having for a dinner, and he'll recommend an appropriate wine. Often his recommendations are so good I'll come back and buy more.

We pulled up, and I sighed as I turned the meter off. "Wait and return" it might be, but for a pensioner, moving with difficulty, doing her weekly shopping and digging into her own pocket for the fare, well, I'm just not going to charge her for waiting.

I held the cab door for her, and followed as she went inside. "A half, James," she said to the chap behind the counter.

He smiled, reached into the display fridge, and came out with a half bottle of white wine.

She paid for the wine, counting out every coin, tucked it into her handbag and turned for the door. Walked across to the cab. I held the door open for her as she settled back in, my eyebrows reaching for the heavens. The busiest hour of the week, and I'm driving a pensioner down to the shop for a glass or two of wine. What on earth was she thinking?

Back home we went, all of two blocks.

"Ah, that will be five dollars," I said as we pulled up. Flagfall was less than four dollars in those days, and the meter had recorded four blocks of travel.

And then she produced a voucher, entitling her to 50% off the fare. Senior citizens and partially disabled folk get a supply of these to help ease the expense of travelling by taxi, given that they can't drive.

She handed me the two dollars and fifty cents, counting out the coins.

That was the first time. I went on my way feeling just a little cheated.

Since then, I've picked her up a few more times. Last Thursday, for example. I was driving a spare taxi while my regular limosine was in the workshop, and as is my habit when I'm driving a replacement cab, I looked under the seat cushions for loose change. Sometimes I've scored gold coins and notes.

This time it was $3.20, not a fortune, but even so a nice little start to the shift. And my first job, once I logged in, was a "wait and return" for an address in the next street, an address I recognised.

I've learnt my lesson now, and even if it is a busy period, it's pension day for my passenger, and she goes down to the grog shop for her "half", and it's too far to walk, so she calls a taxi.

And I was the taxi. I pulled up at her house, reversed up the steep and narrow driveway so that the passenger door was facing the right way, leapt out of my seat and scampered around to open the door and help her in, along with her walking stick and handbag.

Then I turned the meter on, drove down to the shops, parked outside the bottle shop, turned the meter off, jumped out to open the door and help her out and then gave her my arm for the short walk inside. I took the bottle from the sales assistant, she held onto my arm as we returned to the cab, I tucked her in again, turned the meter back on and drove back, again with the tricky reverse up the driveway.

She pulled out a 50% docket to pay the $6.60 fare - taxi rates have been bumped up by the government a couple of times - and when she dug around in her purse for her contribution, I remembered the $3.20 in coins I'd found in the back seat.

"No charge!" I assured her.

And then I helped her out and up the path to her door, telling her it was no trouble at all to offer my arm to a beautiful lady. "Oh, if only I were twenty years younger!" I said, looking into her smiling face.

"Go on with you!" she spluttered. "There must be something wrong with your eyes."

"Never in life," I replied.

"Then you've been kissing the Blarney Stone."

Maybe. But it's sheer delight to be in a position to help someone who needs it, and to put a smile on their face. If I see a passenger with a walking stick, I crank the passenger seat back to give them room, hold the door and tuck them in. If I see someone elderly living alone, I encourage them to chat.

Businessmen and public servants may be my bread and butter, but the passengers I treasure pay me in a currency that doesn't show up on any bank balance.

Why I love this job!

2009-08-21T03:41:00.000+10:00

Just a quickie.

I was waiting on Manuka rank on a slow evening, logged into the Manuka zone, and I got a radio booking. Collect a passenger at 2030 and take them to the airport for a late flight. Nice job, and I'd likely get a fare from the airport.

Pickup address is only a couple of minutes away, and I arrive early, waiting in the driveway when a young lady comes out. No luggage. She's not even dressed for the cold outside. Ok, I think, she's going to tell me the passenger(s) are on their way.

But she bends down, leans in the window and tells me the job's cancelled and is there any call-out fee to pay?

"No, of course not, that's fine!"

But she insists and gives me a five dollar note.

Thanks, good night, I say, and no-job the booking on the computer as I back out heading back for the tail end of Manuka rank.

Base calls me up, "Hey what's going on? That's a timed booking for 2030 there."

"She came out, leaned in the window, cancelled the booking and gave me five bucks," I reply.

"Oh, okay. Easiest five dollars you ever made, hey?"

"No, but certainly the most pleasant!"

Assault update

2009-08-16T01:39:00.000+10:00

First, I'd like to thank everyone who responded with messages of support and sympathy. Having such friends around the world is one of the joys of my life, and each message made my sun shine just that bit brighter. I'll be around to collect some of those hugs in person!

The security camera footage was downloaded from the car, and I got to see a few frames at the police station. It wasn't quite as broad and as complete as I was expecting, though the picture quality of the interior of a dark cab was excellent.

The police sergeant who took my statement told me that he believed my passenger was genuinely contrite, it was out of character for him, he was willing to apologise in person, pay the fare etc.

This pretty much matched up with what I'd been thinking on looking back. Sure, and I've labelled that photograph "Face of Evil", but he didn't come storming across the road, he didn't look agitated, he just stood there and let me take his picture. Nor was there any sense of following a script in the way that fare-evaders often have a routine performance they've used many times before.

And, although he was very drunk and unwilling to give me a destination address, I carry a lot of the responsibility. I should have found some way to jolly him along. Instead, I pretty much backed him into a corner outside the police station and then was astonished when a drunk man took a couple of swipes at me.

Given that he didn't do any real damage, I've decided not to proceed. If he had made a solid connection, or if the police had indicated he had a history of violence, I would have gone ahead.

I'd been feeling pretty cranky myself. I'd just made the decision to avoid Parliament House bookings because far too often my fares get stolen, and I enjoy carrying these sort of passengers, especially the folk from the Press Gallery. I've carried Michelle Grattan a number of times, and she is a real sweetie.

One of the drawbacks of driving drunks around is that they aren't always logical. I've been a cabbie long enough that I should have handled the situation better. In particular, I should have gotten a destination address before I even left the hotel. It was my failure as much as anybody else's, and the result is that several people, including me, have been inconvenienced, embarrassed and stuffed around.

Still, it was a stressful evening all round, and not one I'd care to repeat in a hurry.

Four dickhead night

2009-08-13T04:08:00.001+10:00

Continuing on from my fare-evading punch drunk, I got back in my taxi and contemplated what to do with the rest of the night. Realistically, after a stressful event, I’d be best served by going home and taking an early mark.

But sitting down with the police sergeant and filling out a statement had calmed me down. I had the feeling that matters were in competent hands. That same time, however, had been carved out of a good fare-earning part of the evening. Take away the money I’d lost, and I was woefully short.

So I continued bravely on, looking with suspicion on each fresh passenger and being charmed each time by a succession of pleasant chats, medium jobs, nothing challenging.

But the work pretty much dried up after midnight, and I sat on the rank waiting, waiting, waiting.

At last I was first cab on the rank, with a few more hopefuls behind me.

A group of maybe ten people come out from one of the clubs and head to the rank. A young lady gets in, pulls out her phone and says, “Can you wait a minute? I just need to make a call.”

Of course, no problem. She makes her call to a friend, saying how she found this really hot young man, and he’s just walking past the cab now, going to the casino.

Behind me, I can see in the rear-view mirror, other people getting into the cabs behind me, their drivers smiling and pulling out. A couple of young men are walking off in the direction of the casino, which is about the only place left open at half past two.

My passenger finishes her call, says “Thanks! I just wanted to make sure my friends were out of the way!” and gets out to join the young men.

And there I am. Empty. On an empty rank on an empty street. I glance at the despatch screen. It’s been seventy-five minutes since I last had a passenger, it’s been a pretty shoddy night, and I’ve been screwed over once more.

I wait another fifteen minutes. Civic is dead. Finally, I get a call to the casino for a passenger. Uh-oh. The casino has another cab rank right outside. I’d better be quick!

I fire up the cab, whip around, disregard the speed limit on the deserted streets, and as I turn the last corner, there’s the sight of a pair of taxi tail-lights disappearing into the distance. And of course, there’s no passenger waiting for me.

Right. That’s it. Gas up the car, run it through the wash, drive home and fall into bed, punched by one passenger, stuffed about by another, and totally screwed by my brother cabbies.

Punch drunk

2009-08-13T01:37:00.000+10:00

Two things before I begin.

If and when this bloke gets charged, and it becomes sub judice, then I’ll pull this, or at least make it restricted.

Second, this isn’t “alleged”. This is my story, and this is how it happened.

I’m a firm believer in the “three dickhead rule”. If I get stuffed around by three people, I give the night up as a loss and I go home and get some sleep. Or blog about it. This was one of those nights. This was a four dickhead night.

Parliament is sitting this week, and it’s been a mixed blessing. Parliamentary staffers, media folk and lobbyists are trouble-free passengers. Usually intelligent, well-read and well-informed. I like driving them around, the only drawbacks being that fares from Parliament House tend to be short and paid with cards, rather than cash.

Recently I’ve been noticing that other cabbies have been stealing these fares. I’ll get a call to one of the pick-up zones and be unable to find my passenger, no matter how quickly I get there or how long I wait. Some other cabbie has been illegally waiting and pretending that they have the booking when the passenger walks out. I’ll round the corner to see a cab’s tail-lights vanishing in the distance.

Frustrating.

I got a call for a Silver Service job this afternoon. Parliament House, Ministerial Wing going to the airport. This was a job where I can charge an eleven dollar booking fee, and better yet, it was an immediate booking, meaning that I wouldn’t have to wait. I pulled up, and no passenger was waiting. Ten minutes later and he hadn’t shown, so I guessed he’d taken another cab. Base attempted to ring him, but no answer on his mobile.

Then and there I decided that I wouldn’t bother with Parliament House jobs again. It’s just not worth me losing my position on the Manuka rank to go hunting passengers who haven’t the decency to make sure they take the correct cab.

So I drove back to Manuka, worked my way up the rank, and got a radio booking for the Rydges Capital Hill hotel. I drove down Canberra Avenue, made the turn into the pick-up point, and there were three middle-aged men and a young lady, all busy making their farewells, hugging each other and so on.

The lady leaned in my window. “It’s alright,” she said, “he’s not dangerous, just drunk.”

They looked like happy drunks to me. Smiles and hugs. None of them seemed to be falling down drunk, and while throwing up drunk could be a worry, I’m fairly well prepared for that.

The lady got into the back seat, slid across to the other side, and one of the men followed her. A chunky guy, about my age, at a guess, wearing a jacket.

Then the lady opened the door on my side and got out. She wasn’t going anywhere with this bloke. Laughter and waves as I moved off.

I stopped ten metres later, still in the hotel forecourt, before heading out on the road where I’d have to make a choice, according to destination.

“Uh, where are we going?”

“Drive on!” he said.

I stayed put, debating with myself as to whether I should drive on, or just cut my losses. I’ve found that if a drunk stuffs me around right at the beginning of a trip, it’s unlikely that they are going to become sober and serious later on.

I could have refused to carry him, and been justified within the law as he was well under the influence of alcohol. But he would have been embarrassed in front of his friends, and ultimately it would have been another cabbie who had to drive him home anyway. I look on getting drunks home safely as an important part of the job, but still...

He muttered and swore a bit, but eventually said “Kambah.”

I asked him for an address. Two reasons for this. First, Kambah is a big suburb, and there are a couple of different ways of getting there, depending on the exact destination. Second, I’ve known drunks to fall asleep on the trip, and then when we get to the specified suburb and I want further direction, I have to wake up someone who doesn’t want to be woken, and isn’t all that coherent anyway.

“Kambah,” he said, more distinctly.

I made my decision and drove off. A u-turn at the lights, around Parliament House onto Adelaide Avenue heading south. Decision time coming up. For east and south Kambah, driving through Woden and onto Athlon Drive is the go. For west and north Kambah, ducking across to the Tuggeranong Parkway is quicker and cheaper.

“Go left here,” he mumbled as we came to the turn-off. I was glad of the direction. He was paying attention, and like as not would continue to give directions all the way home.

But then, as we headed west along Cotter Road, I was getting disturbed by the activities in the back seat. Judging by the sounds - and the smell - dinner hadn’t agreed with him. He also looked to be lying down on the back seat for a while. Never a good sign. But with several kilometres of empty road ahead, I couldn’t realistically drop him off on a cold night, so I drove on, hoping for the best and ready for a sudden stop if need be. Usually I get a few seconds’ warning, and so long as they spew outside the cab, I’m not going to worry. I’ll pull up, let them stagger out onto the verge, turn the meter off and let them empty themselves properly.

Approaching Kambah, I asked him again for a destination. At some point I’d have to go east or west - there are no houses fronting onto the main road - and I’d have to get into the correct lane well ahead of time. Drakeford Drive is six lanes wide going through Kambah, and I was glued to the left hand lane, just in case I had to stop in a hurry.

He wasn’t being helpful. “Take me home,” he said.

“What address is that?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“Could you give me directions?”

“Fuck you. Take me home. Take me to my beautiful house and two lovely kids!” he said.

“Where’s that?”

“Fuck you. Drive straight.”

I continued straight. We drove straight until we approached the last intersection in Kambah. Final choice.

“Look, we’re about to run out of Kambah. If you don’t tell me where to go, I’ll take you to the police station in Tuggeranong and we’ll let the police sort it out, okay?”

He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to tell me where to go either. He wanted to argue about some point I didn’t care about. Cripes. Why do people do this? They can see the meter’s running, they need to get home, and instead they play silly buggers with the poor cabbie. All I want to do is get people home safely, make a few more pitiful dollars to share with the cab owner and the tax man, and drive off to repeat the process. Twelve hours, ending at three on a winter morning. Heaven knows why I like the job so much.

As we drove on, I ignored the abuse from the back seat, called up base and told them what I was doing. They got back to me, saying that they’d get someone from the Tuggeranong police station to come out.

“Look, we’re going to the police station. If you don’t tell me where to take you, we’ll get the police to sort it out.”

“I’m getting out.”

“So long as you pay the fare, that’s fine by me.” We were amongst housing and buildings now. Tuggeranong Town Centre, with shops and service stations and cafes, bus and taxi zones, just a short walk away. He’d be okay.

“Fuck you,” he snarled.

We stopped for the lights and he fiddled with the door handle. The lights changed and I drove around the corner, stopping outside the police station.

“We’ll wait here for the police.”

“Fuck you.”

“Look the fare’s forty-eight dollars. Do you have the money?”

“Fuck you.” He began to open the door.

I drove off again. There’s no parking outside the police station on Anketell Street, and it isn’t really safe to stop in the traffic flow. We went into the car park. He opened the door. I put the car into reverse and moved slowly back. He stayed inside. I stopped and he began to get out. I moved the car forwards.

He looked at me. “We just going to go up and down all night?”

“When the policeman arrives, we’ll sort things out.”

“Fuck you. I’m going to knock your block off.”

I was really needing a tall figure in a blue uniform to appear about now. Lacking any outside assistance, I pressed the panic button. This immediately starts transmitting live video and audio back to the taxi base, and stores the stream to the hard disk in the boot. The infrared cameras work in the dark and it’s a useful tool for the protection of cabbie and passengers.

I guess I should have let him get out and go. I wasn’t going to run over him, for any number of really good reasons, the best one being that if I’d hurt him I’d really be in the poo. But he didn’t know this.

The point became moot anyway. The engine spluttered and stopped. This has been happening quite a bit recently, and the owner has promised to get it into the workshop, but so far the problem hasn’t been fixed, and I have to drive a car that runs rough every now and then.

He leaned forward and punched me in the face.

“Geez! Did you see that, base?”

As a punch it was a failure. He was in the back seat, the Fairlane’s a big car, and he was right at the end of his reach. He hit my glasses but they staid on.

I was far more astonished than injured. In three years, I’ve never had a passenger take a swing at me. I’ve had them shake my hand, give me an impromptu back rub, hug me, kiss me. Once a passenger laid a hand on my thigh, but I indicated that I wasn’t interested in his advances. But nobody’s ever done more than swear at me, and that’s been very bloody rare.

He hit me again. Same deal, weak and ineffective. And then he got out and ran away. Without paying.

I got out and watched him go down Anketell Street. He went straight past the door of the police station, crossed against the lights and headed on towards the taxi rank.

I went inside, and eventually hooked up with a policeman, who had gone out to the car park just in time to miss everything. We got an incident report started, and a call for patrols to keep a look out. I returned to the cab, let the base know what was going on, and a description and warning went out to the fleet.

I made a few notes while events were fresh in my memory, and then cruised around looking for him. With things like this, identification is key, and unless I could find him and direct the police onto him, he’d get away with it.

I figured that he’d try to walk home to Kambah, or look for a bus or cab. A quick patrol along the two main roads leading back to Kambah showed nothing but empty, so I hunted up and down Anketell Street.

Got him! There he was at the bus stop, mobile phone to his ear. I pulled out my phone and called up the constable who’d taken my details. Within a minute, there were police cars beside him and a police sergeant assured me that they were getting his name and details, and would I like to make a statement back at the station.

Too right I would. I’ve been known to give out free rides to get a drunk or a distressed young person home, and I don’t mind if they don’t have the money, so long as they are honest about it. I make enough in tips to cover an act of charity, and I feel good about helping someone in need. I tell them to be nice to somebody else tomorrow, and they smile. I’ll do a lot for a smile.

But I really hate it when someone tries to take advantage, or run off without paying. Or assault the driver. We had an incident a year or so back, where a driver was severely injured. Cabbies have been killed in Canberra. The last episode, there was an impromptu cab strike, and we heard all sorts of things from all sorts of people about cab safety. A few things were done, but not near enough.

So I sat down and made a statement, referring back to my notes. I’m sure that my passenger will tell his own story about a mad cabbie, but I’ve got the security footage to back me up. We’ll see what happens.

[Continuing]

West Waiting

2009-08-08T04:55:00.001+10:00

I've been watching West Wing on the iPhone between passengers. Sometimes the waits get pretty bloody long, especially around one in the morning.

When the series was broadcast in Australia, it was usually late at night, often pulled for a sports broadcast, had huge gaps in transmission, switched channels and eventually just killed off.

I became a fan somewhere halfway through the first series. I had a hell of a job just trying to understand what was going on, especially when Josh would disappear off to congress and have complicated meetings with all sorts of monster-egoed people.

And it was West Wing I was watching - a crucial episode with the death of a minor character and an escalating world crisis - when a bulletin came in that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centre. The episode came to an end as fiction segued into reality and the world changed.

Eventually I began watching the whole series on DVD, often with the subtitles turned on to catch the details I'd mist the first time around. I'm up to series six now, and a lot of the new characters are now making the sense they didn't when it was first screened, Channel Nine having decided that the first few episodes in the season didn't need to be shown.

Seasons Six (and presumably Seven) are very different to the first five. In a way this is good, because it was starting to get just a little bit predictable with the election out of the way and Jed Bartlett heading for retirement, but it was unsettling to see so many of the gang break out into other pursuits.

But enjoyable, full of incomprehensible American politics and as addictive as ever. One reason why I don't mind too much if the action becomes a little slow out on the taxi ranks. With a few screen touches, I'm back in Washington DC.

She hopped into the cab on the main city rank, late at night. "Oooh, that's cool!" she said, indicating the iPhone, showing Dire Straits. I considered changing to ABBA. She looked about the right age.

"Bit of in-flight entertainment," I said. "And when I'm waiting on a rank, I watch episodes of West Wing."

Oh boy! Was that the button to push! For the rest of the ride, a longish ride, we two West Wing fans enthused about the show. Our favorite episodes, our favorite characters. Like me, she had bought the series on DVD, but she had looped through it all two or three times - I'm still working my way through Season Six, with Season Seven to go.

Seldom have I let a passenger out of the cab with more reluctance, but she insisted.

Walking in blue and gold

2009-05-19T08:47:00.000+10:00

I guess I'm a bad blogger nowadaze. It's been four weeks since the Christchurch convention ended, and two since I broke my arm, and in almost every respect my life is not at all what I thought it would be just now.

Seldom have I enjoyed a BookCrossing convention so much. It was so close to perfect, with the setting, the season, the fun and the friends. I don't think anybody wanted it to end!

I got home, and felt so incredibly blue. Yes, I know that Canberra is a beautiful city, and autumn is the best time of year, but after a week in paradise, everywhere else is bleak winter.

My friends found ways to buck me up, and I'm back to my normal operating mode, fondly remembering the good times past and dreaming of those to come. Looking forward to the Edinburgh trip, capped off with a few days in Rockhampton, which is always pleasant in midwinter, compared to Canberra's chill. Especially with the family around me. I'm getting to be one of the older generation now, with the youngest members down around kindergarten age.

I had a fairly normal week back in the cab, swapping shifts with my day driver, enjoying his twice-daily chats, and getting back into the swing of things. But then he went away on his own delightful holiday - and yes, I'm grateful for the updates, Paul - and I did double shifts until the owner found me a co-driver.

Doubles mean that I have the car 24 hours in a day, and it pretty much means dawn to dusk and beyond. Fifteen or eighteen hour shifts with a nap in the middle.

And then I broke my arm. No more driving, not even my own cars. I stay at home, do all the things I've been putting off for months if not years, read books, do housework, cook meals, and best of all, get to enjoy the company of my wife. My usual cabdriving life sees me spend huge amounts of each week either absent or asleep, and that's probably not the best way to be a good husband and father.

I'm enjoying the break. Could not be happier in fact. It is so pleasant to be able to chat with my friends online, or watch evening tv shows with the family. And I'm even getting a bit of exercise. My plan is to lose ten kilos of excess over the next 50 days, which should see me reach a healthful weight, rather than being just a bit tubby.

I walked into Civic yesterday, listening to my "Smiles" playlist on the iPhone, kicking through piles of leaves under trees of rapidly disappearing gold, and feeling on top of the world.

Just a friend

2009-05-14T06:43:00.000+10:00

This happens sometimes. They hop in the cab, all funked up, I put a music video on, they start singing and I singalong. I don’t have a wide range of stuff available on the iPhone, but I’ve usually got something.

Pleasant as it is to cruise around this beautiful city, enjoying the bus lanes and the easy parking and the other perks available to cabbies, it’s the people who make the job for me.

Most people are nice, a lot are good company, and a few are simply wonderful. Sharing their lives for a few minutes is what keeps me jumping in the cab, firing it up and heading out for another twelve hour shift.

It’s poor pay, long hours, appallingly unhealthy, sometimes stressful and dangerous, but Oh Lord, is it fun!

Cast away

2009-05-12T16:38:00.000+10:00

Today was my day for a review. Last Monday, I slipt over at the service station, breaking my fall with my outstretched wrist. The next day I had it x-rayed, confirmed as a break (though not a major one), given a sling and a temporary cast, and told to return in a week.

The temporary cast was sturdy enough, but basically just a moulded plaster slab along the underside of my forearm, held on with tightly wrapped gauze. I had to keep it dry, and it allowed a certain limited amount of movement, which although I tried to keep it down, was painful.

After battling my way around the hospital this morning - such an amazing rabbit warren of a place - I filled out various forms and got my wrist x-rayed afresh. Again, I barely had time to sit down and read a page of the book I brought along, so smoothly and efficiently were things going on.

Doctor called me in, showd me the images, and explained that the break wasn't serious enough for surgery - they probably wouldn't be able to fix it any better than was going to happen anyway - and I was to be put in a solid cast for four weeks. No driving - I asked specifically - and I would have a greater susceptibility to arthritis as I got older.

Then they put me in the comfy chair, rested my elbow on a little rubber cushion, and a pretty young nurse cut away the old cast. "You could probably unwind the gauze," I pointed out.

"Quicker this way!" she said, snapping open a set of mean-looking shears. She chomped them through the material and my arm was exposed to view for the first time in a week.

"You might want to give it a wash now," nurse said, directing me to a nearby sink and indicating the controls for the water flow. Wave your hand in front of the sensor and the tap runs.

I gave it a quick wash and patted it dry with paper towels. Swelling had gone down, mostly, and when I looked close, there was a fading pastel yellow purple bruise. I had a better one on my backside - really spectacular - but happily no photographs of that ever got taken.

At this point my nurse was called away, and I got a good look at the bloke in the next chair, who had either had some bad compound fracture, or had been given internal fixation of some sort. There was a long wound in his forearm, sutured shut, and I figured I'd gotten off lightly, considering. I averted my gaze when his nurse unwrapped something really sharp and began unstitching him.

First step in my new cast was a sort of sticky white bubblewrap underlay, wrapped around my arm to layer the skin against the cast. Nurse took some care with this, and I admired her professionalism. This had to guard against chafing for a month, and she wrapped me up carefully, cutting out bits around my thumb to allow finger movement.

Then she stuck on two blue strips of heavier tape, one each side. I raised an eyebrow.

"When we cut off the cast, this will stop the saw giving you friction burns."

Right. Hadn't thought that far ahead.

"You've done this before, haven't you?"

She smiled.

"Can I take a picture?" I pulled out my iPhone when she nodded yes.

"Good idea!" the bloke next to me said, and he whipt out his phone to capture his rather more gruesome forearm for family consumption.

"You've got a choice of colours," my nurse said, showing me several swatches. "Anything but white."

Two shades of blue, black, white, and a dark pink. I indicated the pink. "That's more my colour."

She smiled at that. "We've actually got white - I just won't let you have it!"

Then she drew on some purple rubber gloves, dipt a roll of the pink material in water, and carefully wrapped my arm up. Three layers, just slightly inside the white underlayer. I could feel the thing growing warm. Some chemical reaction, triggered by the water, turning the flexible material into rock.

"We've got maybe five minutes before it hardens, so there's only a small window," nurse said, deftly cutting away curves for my thumb, working quickly and efficiently.

She smoothed in a few curves around the palm, giving me a bit of finger movement, and the thing was done. She handed me a sheet with some tips for care, and a card for an appointment in four weeks time for removal.

And that was it. It had all been very quick, efficient and friendly. Smiles all round, and I was outside, waiting for a ride home, texting the cab owner to let him know I was out of action for a month.

Life in a sling

2009-05-10T20:53:00.001+10:00

If Kerri's right on this, there's at least a month to go. "Bones don't knit in a week, Pete," she says.

Likely scenario is that I'll go back on Tuesday, get re-x-rayed, have an orthopaedic surgeon from over the pix, and then get my forearm encased in a full plaster until the middle of June.

That's going to stuff up my taxidriving career no end!

It's also going to put a serious dent in my income stream, just when I'm needing money to top up my credit cards and build up reserves for the Edinburgh trip.

Mind you, the time off isn't hard to take. It's been a long while since I had several days in a row to do nothing much.

The flip side of that is that it's bloody inconvenient to have my left arm in a sling. Not half as inconvenient as it would be to have my right arm out of action, but still...

Simple tasks, such as opening a jar or splashing aftershave on my face, become simple or impossible. Having a shower is interesting. I have to keep the plaster dry, so I wrap the cast in a plastic bag, slap a rubber band over and hold the arm high out of the way. Can't squirt shampoo into one hand with the other, so I apply it directly. And, of course, it's almost impossible to soap up my right arm!

Drying gets patchy, once I step out of the shower. And I have to wear my watch on my right wrist now.

Sleeping can be patchy as well with this great unbending lump clunking around. There's only a few positions where I'm remotely comfortable.

I can't drive, so if I can't walk someplace, I have to depend on others.

But, all in all, the discomfort and inconvenience is nothing compared to what some folk in the community go through. It's giving me more of an insight into the problems of others, and I trust I'll be more patient and understanding with them in future. As a taxidriver, meeting the very real needs of others is a big part of the job.

Live at the Hospital Bowl

2009-05-05T03:37:00.000+10:00

I went to bed, relatively early, with a planned 0300 start to my shift, but a bit after midnight I was awake with the pain from my wrist. I'd hoped it would settle and I'd be able to drive, but no, this was serious. No strength in my grasp and if I held my hand the wrong way or bumped my wrist, the pain would make me gasp.

I took another dose of painkillers and resigned myself to attending hospital. Kerri had warned me that if I had a break there and I toughed it out, then I'd likely have pain and arthritis for the rest of my life. One thing about having a doctor in the family, we might hide splinters and minor injuries from her, but if it's serious, we listen carefully.

She dropped me off at Accident & Emergency on her way to work. I was prepared for hours of waiting in a crowded room. Computer, painkillers, nice thick book.

But within a few seconds of entering the room, I had a nurse taking the details, probing my arm, testing the extent of injuries, tying a sling - "Um, could you bend down a little, please?" the tiny woman asked as she looped it over my head.

They wanted me to take off my wedding ring against potential swelling, but it hasn't been off my finger since Kerri put it there quarter of a century ago, so I promised I'd keep an eye on it.

That was triage, a few details from the clerk, then I barely had time to open my book and a doctor was calling me over. She looked carefully at my wrist, agreed that an x-ray was necessary, and escorted me to the waiting area. Just a page read, and I was inside, getting the images taken.

A little longer afterwards, but I took the time to twitter updates and take a picture of this lovely great silvered mirror dome on the ceiling above a four way intersection, which incidentally showed me with arm in sling and book on knees.

"Yes, it's broken," the pretty young doctor said said, "but not badly."

The x-ray showed a tiny fracture line along one knob of my radius bone. Didn't look too bad, but she said a cast would be needed for a week, then review by an orthopod.

She then took me into the plaster room, and under supervision from a jolly nurse who called herself the Plasterqueen, I got a cast. What they call a volar slab, so it's not a big heavy thing, just a stiffener secured with some gauze.

Kerri says that's in case of swelling, and a full cast will go on for another five weeks after review.

And that was it. Quick, efficient, even enjoyable. Kerri picked me up and I was back home for a late morning tea in the sun.

I told the cab owner. I doubt he was happy, but if I can't drive, I can't drive. Somone collected the cab in the arvo, and I won't see it again for a week.

What worries me is the prospect of six weeks off work.

No sick leave or workers compensation in the taxidriving game, and I've got an ongoing tax liability, not to mention a world trip coming up in seven weeks, for which I've got no savings. I might have to find something else to bring in some money.

This is all a bit of a worry.

Day tripper

2009-05-04T03:32:00.000+10:00

While my day driver's off on a five week holiday - yesterday he drove the Great Ocean Road - I'm on the day shift. At first I was doing doubles, meaning that I could drive the car whenever I wanted within the 24 hours of the day, maybe with a nap here and there, and then I was supposedly given a night driver, putting me on the day shift.

I say supposedly, because as yet I haven't seen him, and though I know the cab was driven on the weekend, it certainly sat idle last night after I finished at three in the afternoon.

I've been enjoying day driving. There's more traffic on the road, but there's also fewer kangaroos, drunks and crazies. I get more of the little old ladies and gents who are scarce after dark but fun to chat up and be nice to.

And I get to be out on a series of glorious autumn days. Cool and clear, leaves in red and gold and everything in between. It's pure pleasure.

I was doing well yesterday. Took in about as much as I do in a nightshift, thanks mostly to a long duration "wait and return" government job. Banked the big notes, gassed up, ran the car through the wash, vacuumed it out...

And then, as I walked the tangled vacuum cleaner hose out across the service station forecourt to straighten it out before replacing it on the holder, I tripped. I lurched backwards, trying to gain some support from the slack hose before I went down under the wheels of an oncoming car, but after one or two steps, I landed heavily on my backside and outstretched hand, cap flying off.

Luckily the car stopped, the driver laughing on, I retrieved my cap and limped the hose back. Hurting like blazes, but that's how these things go - a day or three of bruising to show off and then fadeaway.

I drove home, unloaded the car, and waited a bit for a night driver. But not too long. I was hurting in two places and exhausted after a long day.

Woke when Kerri came home. She wasn't too concerned about my bum, but the wrist was a worry. It was hurting a lot, and though painkillers were found, I still have no strength in it. Maybe it's broken rather than spraint.

I'm to take the day off and get it x-raid. If it's broke, there's the chance of six weeks in plaster. Six weeks of no driving. Six weeks of no income. And me with a world trip coming up in seven weeks.

But if I can't hold the wheel firmly in two hands and lift baggage in and out of the boot, then I can't drive a taxi.

Hitting the sweet spot

2009-04-03T03:27:00.002+11:00

Once upon a time, tennis players knew their tools intimately. John McEnroe reckoned that rackets had a “sweet spot”, and the secret of his success lay in hitting the ball just right. He’d have extra bounce, extra control, extra spin if he could use just the right few square centimetres of racket.

The taxi racket has its own sweet spots, and every cabbie knows them well. For Canberra, on the weekday nights I drive, the sweetest spot is between four and six in the afternoon. That’s when demand is at a peak, finding a fare is easy, and the passengers are at their best.

I’ve mentioned the three questions that every night cabbie asks to himself of his passengers:
Is the passenger going to attack me?
Is he going to run off without paying?
Is he going to throw up in my cab?

If the answer to any of these questions is “Yes!”, then you lock your doors and drive away.

Afternoon passengers are definite “No’s”. Mostly, in Canberra, they are public servants wanting a ride to the airport. People in suits and briefcases, loaded down with corporate credit cards and Cabcharge vouchers. They might have a drinkie or two in the Qantas Club before their flight, but for now, they are solid, sober citizens, and every cabbie loves them.

For two hours, they line up on ranks, they clog up the radio despatch system and they leap out at you on the streets. Cabbies make half their night’s takings in the afternoon.

After six, the flow is the other way. It’s people wanting to get home. People finishing off in the city, people loaded down with groceries, people on the arriving flights at the airport. There’s no frenzy to it, but until about ten o’clock, it’s steady work. I generally work out of the airport, finishing up around ten, when two or three flights arrive at once to overload the waiting taxis. After that, the last flight is half past eleven, it’s often only half full, and most of those passengers on the no-frills carrier have a family member to give them a lift home. For a cabbie, it’s hardly worth waiting an hour for the chance of a fare.

But there’s not a lot of other work around in the late evenings. If Parliament is not sitting, with a flow of staffers catching cabs home, then it’s usually a matter of hoping for the final few restaurant patrons, and sharing the work with hungry cabbies all wanting one last good fare to go home on. The sweet spot is well and truly gone at this stage.

Sometimes there will be a concert or a conference or a ball finishing up. A hundred people in dinner suits, all wanting cabs. Be in the right place at the right time, and a good cabbie can make a quick fifty before the flow dries up.

Midnight, and there’s nothing much. Sit on the main city rank chatting with the other drivers, scanning the empty streets. Wait an hour for a passenger. Most of the fleet has gassed up and gone home, but there’s always a few people out and about, and with the public transport shut down at midnight, cabs are their only way home.

But it’s slow work, and on a quiet night, you might work two hours for five dollars in your pocket. Or get a good fare to a distant suburb for sixty.

Thursday nights can be busy, and there’s always a tonne on Fridays. But carting drunks home is where the cabbie has those three questions in the front of his mind. It can be good money, but it’s not sweet. Besides, on Thursdays and Fridays, those same cabbies who went home early on other nights are now staying on. More competition.

And as the end of the twelve hour shift approaches at three in the morning, the drunks are getting reasonably ratty. They have drunk their money away, and sometimes scamming a cabbie is the only way home.

It’s a matter of balance, skill and experience. Making the most of the shift’s “sweet spot” is what it’s all about.

Sleeping on the job

2009-03-27T10:23:00.001+11:00

I picked her up from the airport just after sundown. She’d had a long day travelling, and she gave out a few yawns on the way to her distant suburb.

“This cab is a non-yawning zone,” I mock-growled. “I’ve got another seven hours yet before I finish at three in the morning.”

But that didn’t stop her. Honestly, I was afraid that she might fall asleep on me, and I was glad I’d gotten the full address from her.

But we staid awake together, chatting about this and that. Give me a limousine, a lovely lady beside me, late night in the nation’s capital, and I’m in cabbie heaven. And then she pays me for my trouble. It doesn’t get better than this!

Found her house, right where she said it would be, she covered up one last yawn, and as I handed her the receipt, I used my stock joke, “...and now I’ll drive away with your suitcase.”

“Oh, don’t do that!” she exclaimed, “My pillow’s inside it!”

The best coffee in the world

2009-03-22T23:49:00.002+11:00

When I began cabbing a couple of years ago, occasionally I’d pull a day shift on a Monday, or finish off the Saturday night shift around dawn on a Sunday. I’d be tired and needing something to kick off the day, or to keep me going after fifteen hours of driving.

The Manuka rank was always a good place for these times, and I followed the lead of the older cabbies, who would leave their cabs, walk across Franklin Street to the bakery, and return with a takeaway coffee and maybe something munchable in a paper bag.

So of course I followed them. And so began my love affair with Artoven.

At one end of the counter was the coffee machine, and while I waited for my espresso, I had leisure to look at the array of cakes and pastries for sale. Oh, the temptation!

There was another case full of hot food. Pies, sausage rolls, stuffed flaky pastries, all sorts of savoury treats. A framed newspaper cutting and award certificate pointed out that Artoven made the best pies in Canberra.

It’s been a couple of years now, and Artoven in Manuka is a major focus of my taxidriving life. Sometimes my objective will be to get to Manuka, park and get my coffee without getting a radio job or picking someone up off the rank. Time and again, I’ll be Manuka-bound down Canberra Avenue and there will be a chime on the computer announcing a new job, meaning I have to go away to find my passenger, take them to where they want to go, and then return to Manuka. Sometimes it takes several attempts before the work slackens off.

But when I find a moment, it’s worth it.

First, the pastry. I’m not keen on light fluffy things, so some of the sticky cakes and airy creations are just for looking at. My preference in the sweet range is the rock cakes, which are the best I’ve ever tasted. They will last hours, one solid bite at a time, finishing off with the half cherry in the centre. Just the right consistency, just the right amount of dried fruit, just perfect.

There’s the prize-winning range of pies to choose from, and I’m torn between the meat, cheese and bacon pie, or the shepherds pie topped with a mound of mashed potato glazed with melted cheesiness. The frankfurt, mustard and onion roll is glorious, but it vanishes too fast to give good value for money. I can get through it in a few bites, whereas demolishing a pie is a more serious business.

But it’s the coffee that I’m really needing. A boost of caffeine gets me through a long shift. Sometimes it will be four or five hours before I’ve drained the cup. It’s good cold, but that first taste of steaming hot coffee is heaven itself. I go for a skinny latte nowadays, to counter the calories of a pie or rock cake. “Large family size,” I tell the barista, my hands sketching out a coffee cup the approximate size of a wheelie bin.

The very best part of the Artoven experience, however, isn’t the pastry or the rolls or even the coffee. It’s the smiles I get from the counter staff. They all know me by now, and they know how much I love my evening snack and drink. Having a quick chat with one of the baristas, and a smile as they hand over my coffee, it’s better than the sugar hit or the caffeine jolt.

Friday and Saturday nights, they don’t close at all. The place runs twenty-four hours, and it’s always packed. Forget the instant coffee and greasy pizza slices of roadside vans or sidewalk stalls - this is the real deal. Good tucker, served with genuine affection. People drive across town for an Artoven pie at four in the morning.

I’ve had cups of coffee at sidewalk cafes on the Boulevard St Germain, frothy cappucinos in trendy Flinders Lane boutiques, Kujo in Charleston, Kona in Honolulu, vanilla percolated in Fredricksburg, and flat white at the Tate Modern, but for the best coffee in the world, my money’s on Artoven when Franklin Street is buzzing on a mellow autumn evening.

For me, it’s not Artoven. It’s Heartoven. I love it.

Full of dreams to last the years

2009-03-13T13:27:00.006+11:00

It was a quiet shift last night. I have a book with me - at the moment it’s Paul Theroux’x Ghost Train to the Eastern Star - but I rarely read in the cab, even if it’s such a rattling good railway story as this.

Instead I succumbed to my romantic side and watched one of my favorite movies, reduced to a splinter of its original self on my iPhone, but still as grand a love story as you can get. In fact, just the thought that I had it ready to play when I got a spare couple of hours had inspired me to download a song to match.

Perry Como, my patron saint of sentiment, singing with the aid of a bass-voiced backer:
You pray that you will find
Someone warm and sweet and kind

I’ve met her on three continents now: child of New York, English language teacher in Japan, intrepid Greyhound explorer of Australia. She’s as much in love with travel, the world and its people as I am, and she is the sort of someone Perry Como would have us find.

I staid with her in Japan, sleeping on the couch in her tiny living room at night while by day we explored Hiroshima and climbed up to the pagodaed peak of Osaka Castle. I took a picture of her smiling out over a smoggy city. She had been there several times before, but was happy to guide yet another visitor up.

I’ll be forever catching up to Cari, I think. She’s seen more of my country than I have, and she’s off to Antarctica later this year. My travels usually involve revisiting the same places, and I’m only half joking when I say that I have a favorite luggage trolley at all the great airports. My last world tour, there was only one new destination for me. But what a place!
The bluest skies you’ll ever see are in Seattle
And the hills the greenest green...

So I watched Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle when I had time, and listened to Perry Como when I could only sneak a couple of minutes.

There were a few people I wanted to meet in Seattle, and the thought of visiting the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field was a bonus to an aviation nut like me, but mostly because it was a place I’d always longed to see ever since I learnt how to pronounce it properly. And to check out those blue skies.

The movie (and the song) were a way of revisiting this fascinating place, and I cherished the scenes where I could recognise landmarks. The Space Needle, of course, and Pikes Place Market, where Tom Hanks discussed the cuteness of his bum with a coworker and some years later I posed Ringbear for a night shot.

I loved Seattle. The Museum of Flight was all I could hope for, and I got to board a Concorde. The Space Needle was delightfully hokey, one of those Sixties visions of what the future would be like, but it had the most stunning view over Seattle. Forests, lakes, mountains bordered the corporate home of Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks. At one stage I looked out and there, just clearing itself out of the clouds, was the biggest mountain I’d ever seen. It was so much a part of the sky that at first I thought Mount Rainier was a cloud. I stood goggle-eyed.

I loved Seattle. So the song and the movie brought back some happy memories.

At a couple of points in the movie, a little map of the USA appeared, and a planetrail of dots showed the characters flying from Seattle to New York. That was me in October, and Cari was there to meet me that evening, sharing a dinner before I cabbed it back to my Harlem hostel.

The next day we did a bunch of touristy things, including a visit to the Empire State Building, where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan began their shared life together.

Get this. Cari, born in New York, lived there for most of her life, at home on the viewing platforms of towers across the world, had never been to the top of the Empire State Building. She actually called her mother while we were there to report the fact!

My day in Seattle and my guided tour of Manhattan: days to sparkle in my memory.
Never knew a day so fair,
It makes you feel so proud that you could cry!

I’ll admit it. There were tears in my eyes when the closing credits rolled, reflecting those when I hugged Cari goodbye before boarding the long evening flight to Sydney.

Back to my everyday world of cabdriving. Back to my days of smiling dreams of wonderful people and places.

I wonder if there are any sweet romantic films of New York?

Duel Carriageway

2009-03-12T12:25:00.002+11:00

Work began on the Anzac Parade resurfacing on 12 November last year, with a completion date of 24 April this year, so as not to upset the two major commemorative events of Armistice Day and Anzac Day.

For months, traffic has been limited to the eastern carriageway, with a line of concrete barriers dividing three lanes into two. It has been a major inconvenience, not to mention a continuing eyesore on one of Canberra's prime tourist views from the War Memorial down and across the lake to Parliament House.

I've mostly avoided Anzac Parade as a taxidriver for the past few months. There are other ways of getting places. But what has really bugged me is that they closed the cross street, which has been my prime method of getting home after a shift. It's one thing to go out of your way when the meter is running and someone else is paying. But when I've been driving a twelve hour shift and I just want to get home and into bed, well, it's different.

Today the concrete barriers were being removed and traffic was flowing smoothly again. Here the barrier blocks are being lifted onto trucks beside the Vietnam Memorial.

Roundabout routing

2009-03-08T14:25:00.002+11:00

I could fill my blog with these. Screenshots of the ridiculous routings that the despatch system GPS advises.

This was one afternoon last week, and I was heading along Constitution Avenue (my car indicated by the red circle/black arrow icon) when I got a job, with the pickup point on London Circuit (yellow circle marked "P1"). London Circuit, as the name implies, is an octagonal street, and as I didn’t recognise the street number and didn’t want to go the long way around, I hit the “Navigate to Pickup” button. It usually gets the pickup spot correct, because it knows all the street numbers.

But it likewise usually makes a hash of the route. The above is a typical example. I’ve moved further down Constitution Avenue from the point where I asked it to calculate a route, but it wanted me to turn left down Coranderrk Street, go once around the roundabout on Parkes Way, come back onto Constitution Avenue, make a right turn onto Allara, a left onto Bunda, follow that around and then make an illegal trip through the bus interchange before finally turning left onto London.

Not surprisingly, I ignored this advice, proceeded straight down Constitution Avenue to the end and made the right onto London, where I u-turned to stop in the loading zone at the pickup point. About a quarter of the recommended distance. Sometimes I wonder if the advice isn’t aimed at maximising the journey, rather than minimising it.

That’s Ringbear, peeping over my screen above. He was telling me to bear right.

Kapooka cruising

2009-03-06T13:50:00.001+11:00

Just when you start thinking that you’ve seen it all, along comes a shift like the last one.

Pat the day driver turned up early. I was fresh out of the shower and only partially uniformed, but I heard the dog give a bark, so I went out to chat. Once upon a time my little skittish terrier dog would have yelped herself into a frenzy, but nowadays someone can come along in the middle of the afternoon, park a limousine in my carport, get out and begin polishing the windows, and she barely mentions the fact.

We chatted for a while, and at one point I opened the car door to check something inside, and then we said goodbye. He was off to home and an early night, me to finish getting my stuff together to begin my shift.

Took me about five minutes to pack up my gear, put my shoes on, etc. I came down, logged onto the despatch system, got out a fresh envelope, jotted down the start of shift figures, stowed my bits and pieces away.

“Warm in here,” I thought, and reached down to start the engine and get the aircon working. Oooops. No key. Felt into my pocket, checked all the usual places, went and looked inside the house. No key.

“Errr,” I messaged Pat, “do you have the key in your pocket?”

He didn’t exactly reply that he did, but his response, that he had swearwords on his tongue, suggested to me that he was leadfooting it back.

So I began my shift a little late.

I got a lovely job early on, collecting some members of the Australian Academy of Science building from their distinctive meeting place, officially known as the Shine Dome, but shown off to bemused tourists as the Eskimo Embassy. Got a great picture of the cab outside, but that will have to wait for another day.

Later on, I got a call to a major government building for a ComCar offload job. ComCar is the Commonwealth limousine service, and they generally shuttle members of parliament around, taking up all the good slots at the airport, idling the evenings away outside restaurants etc. Usually they only work when parliament is sitting, which it isn’t at the moment, so occasionally they call on Silver Service for an odd job.

I won’t say who my passenger was, but he was a senior government minister, and I waited half an hour for him.

It wasn’t quite the same as a Washington DC cabbie giving Hillary Clinton a lift, but it was still an experience I don’t get every day. No photograph from this trip, neither.

I went back to the airport to meet the last flight, the one from the Gold Coast getting in half an hour before midnight. Normally this is a bit of a gamble. You don’t want to drive out to the airport, have nine passengers get off the plane heading for the cab rank, and be taxi number ten. On the other hand, jobs from the airport are usually a lot more pleasant and better paying than picking up folk from the nightclubs in town. I’ll often get some very cheerful drunks and we’ll have a wonderful time, but you never know.

On this occasion, I was taxi number eleven, and when it became obvious that the airport was clear for the night, there were a few swearwords on my tongue as I drove off.

Drove past the service station, accelerating away into the night, into town, when I got a job offer. “Canberra International Airport”, it said. The passengers from the Queensland flight were all gone, but every now and then I’ll get a job from a late worker at the business park, or the VIP squadron, or the private aviation hangars.

So I took the job. Better than lining up in Civic with a bazillion other cabs for the eight dollar fifty fares getting carloads of woozy students back to their colleges.

Well, blow me down and sweep me up! My job was to Wagga Wagga, for a five hundred and fifty dollar fare!

My pickup was outside the Qantas doors, and there they were, a few young folk chatting to a policeman. The cop approached as I drew up. “Looks like you’re going to Wagga!” he said.

We loaded the bags into the boot. A bit of a squeeze, but we filled up all the corners. Likewise my passengers.

Money up front - that’s the rule for long fares. I didn’t think that these youngsters were going to run off into the night when we got to Wagga Wagga, but best to get things sorted out before heading off several hours into regional New South Wales.

We got the fare settled - a bunch of pineapples and a card, for which I had to get authorisation, and then we headed off.

Oddly enough, it was the cab’s second long trip of the week. A day earlier Pat had taken a gentleman up to Sydney, and almost continued on to Brisbane with a thousand dollar tip in his pocket. His blog tells the story far better than I could have, but I’d had to drive a spare taxi that night, and my backside was still wincing after a shift spent sitting in the most uncomfortable car seat in the world.

I could tell there was a story to this trip, and with laughter and embarrassed sighs, it all came out.

My four passengers had a friend who was graduating from the Army recruit training centre at Kapooka, just outside Wagga Wagga. They had flown down, intending to hire a car for the two to three hour trip out. But when the only driver in the group went to the rental desk, he discovered that he’d left his drivers licence back in Queensland, and not surprisingly, the rental firm wasn’t going to hand over one of their cars to a group of teenagers without a drivers licence between them.

Midnight, and there are no trains, no buses out to Wagga. In a strange city, their options were either to camp in the terminal, or hire a taxi.

Five hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of money for a cab ride, but they scraped it up - probably their spending money for the trip - and luckily they drew a Silver Service car, with the leather seats, the legroom in the rear cabin, the driver who was polite enough not to laugh at their story...

No, seriously, I was thinking that these things happen to anyone. Even the most organised man in the world - my day driver - had forgotten a car key that very day.

Midnight, and a long drive ahead. But I swung around Parliament House for these late night tourists to have a look at the building and to get a photograph.

Then we headed up Anzac Parade, that glorious ceremonial avenue leading to the Australian War Memorial, and after that the buildings became ever more sparse.

They were tired after a big day, and gradually the chatter ceased, and the young lady who had been given the front seat cranked it back and began sleeping. I turned the music down and the heat up as we flew down the empty highway. It would have been a great trip in daytime, but at night it was just distant lights, roadsigns and a great darkness hiding the beautiful rolling golden hills of southern New South Wales.

We joined the Hume Highway, a stream of double-length semi trailers improving the midnight hours between Melbourne and Sydney, but after a few minutes of cruising with these monsters, I pulled in at the Yass services. The car needed gas, and I needed coffee for the long drive there and back.

I also took the opportunity to text Pat, letting him know that I wouldn’t be back until dawn. Just in case he got dressed and turned up at my place at three in the morning to wait for a taxi that was halfway across the next State.

It was a quiet ride down the Hume, apart from trying to share the road with people whose professional careers consist of steering mighty trucks through the night. They know every twist of the road, every speed sign, every lane change the same way I know the road out to the airport, and when we hit roadworks five miles from Gundagai, I had an impatient semitrailer not just filling all three rear-view mirrors, but illuminating the cab’s interior with blazing searchlights telling me to hurry up.

I hurried, sipping my coffee and anxiously looking out for wildlife on the road. At 120 kilometres an hour, I’d make a fine mess of any kangaroo. And vice versa.

The GPS display tightened up and eventually we were at a scale where street names made sense. Wagga Wagga, here we are!

Wagga Wagga was not interested, and the motel was dark and deserted. We found an all-night service station, unloaded the bags, posed for photographs, and parted ways. I had to get the car back for the day driver’s shift and there was a lot of driving to do before I could sleep.

I loaded up some junk food, put “The Long Tail” on the iPhone, and hit the road, enduring a series of horrible punning text messages from my waiting day driver.

Luckily, no wombats were injured in the making of this voyage and I delivered a car that was full of gas, if not sparkling clean, just as the sky began to pale.

And there’s one brand new soldier today, who has the best friends in the world. They were four lovable, engaging young folk, and it was my privilege to be of service to them.

Rock Taxi

2009-02-20T12:23:00.001+11:00

A new city, a new destination, and the first thing I look for outside the airport is the taxi rank. Professional interest, I guess. What sort of cabs do they have here? What’s different about them? What nifty little feature does the cabbie have that I can blog about?

There is a free bus service from the airport to Yulara resort, and we loaded our bags aboard. “Ayers Rock has no taxis,” the driver advised us, with just a touch of smugness.

Rental cars are available, but are limited to 150 kilometres per day, just in case tourists decide to drive out to Alice Springs, a good four or five hours away.

Apart from the large buses running the airport transfer, there is a smaller shuttlebus looping around the various resort options every twenty minutes.

And that’s it. Of course, you can walk between places, and nothing is more than ten minutes brisk pacing in the desert sun, but it’s not the same as jumping into a cab for the local commentary, the personalised service and Radio Al-Jazeera playing in the background.

Happy people

2009-02-20T01:02:00.000+11:00

I picked my passenger up from the Kingston rank. She gave her friend a hug and smiled into the cab beside me, giving an address in a nearby suburb in a bright American accent.

It was a quick and pleasant late afternoon trip. The weather is mild after some weeks of extreme heat, and Canberra’s older suburbs are looking delightful in their summer foliage. In a few months, the leaves will turn to red and gold and all will be glorious autumn.

She paid the fare, adding “I know you don’t tip over here. It always makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“I don’t need a tip,” I replied. “Just a smile.”

She reacted in the nicest possible way, face crinkling into happiness. “Well, you’ve got that!”

I love making people smile. It makes my day.

That was the start of a good shift for me, and at midnight, I was once again at the Kingston rank, one more fare to make my night before knocking off early to get a few hours sleep before my morning flight to Ayers Rock.

Two cheerful young men approached, getting into the cab as I packed away the Air.

They were even more cheerful on seeing Dire Straits playing on the iPhone, and they bopped their way to destinations nearby.

“Let’s just ride around until the album finishes,” I suggested.

“I could do that!”

But of course we didn’t, and went home by the best route. They were full of laughter and smiles and good wishes. And I the same.

Some days, driving a cab is the best job in the world!

Scum

2009-02-16T12:49:00.003+11:00

A report in last week’s paper:

A taxi driver signing off for the night was robbed at gunpoint in Lyneham on Tuesday night. The victim was in the car park of a unit complex on Goodchild Street about 10pm when he was bailed up by a man with a handgun wearing a black balaclava. The gunman demanded the taxi driver hand over his takings, and then fled into bushland. (Canberra Times, 12 Feb 2009)

I’ve often dropped passengers off in this complex and noted that several cabs “live” there. The carpark is enclosed and not visible from the street, so my guess is that one of the residents noted the habits of the cabbie and either did the deed himself or told a mate. This is actually one of the things we’re warned about in taxi school. Don’t count your money in a secluded location, especially at night. All too often cabbies get into a predictable pattern and make themselves into targets.

Looking at my takings for that night, and it was a pretty good one for a Tuesday, well over half was through plastic cards or vouchers. I would have had maybe a hundred dollars in cash at that time of the night, and that’s including my float.

Very likely the gun was a fake. It is extremely rare for a gun to be used in a crime here, and when they are used, it’s for things like gangland murders or bank robberies. Far more common is for a passenger to pull a knife on a cabbie.

Even so, with the number of security cameras and devices in a cab nowadays, there’s going to be photographic evidence of a crime, and if it’s serious enough, the cops will track down the criminal.

I’ve occasionally felt uneasy about a passenger, but for the most part, people in Canberra are very good, and I’m far more likely to be swapping yarns with a late night passenger, or smiling as they sing along to Abba or play air guitar to Dire Straits.

I had a passenger pull a knife on me a few nights ago. He was canoodling with his girlfriend on the main rank in Civic, and when they eventually grew tired of this and wanted to get home, mine was the cab they jumped into.

He wanted to talk, and it was the usual opening step of “You must get some scary passengers.” He wanted to talk about the possibility of getting stabbed, but I deflected him onto the kangaroo track. Kangaroos scare me far more than passengers. His advice to me, based on sound physics, was to brake as hard as I could, and just before impact to accelerate suddenly, thereby raising the nose of the car and increasing the chance that the beast would go underneath, rather than over the bonnet and through the windscreen. Good advice if you’ve got several seconds to think about it, but in that time I can slow to a crawl and avoid hitting them entirely. The two times I’ve run into kangaroos, I’ve had maybe half a second to react, so I’ve never gotten past the stomp-on-the-brakes-as-hard-as-you-can part of the plan.

He was on something. Just a little bit odd in his manners. I didn’t think he was any danger, especially not with a young lady companion, so I was surprised when we pulled up at the destination and he produced a knife.

A sort of Swiss Army knife, except it had a box-cutter blade inside it, neatly folded up. He handed it to me and I took a look. I suppose the message was that he could have stuck it into my ribs.

Instead, he gave me a credit card for the $32 fare. Unfortunately, my card reader chose this moment to decide that it was out of radio range of the bank network, so the transaction was declined. He and his girlfriend scraped around and came up with twenty dollars, which was better than nothing.

The real danger to a cabbie in Canberra is runners. I’ve had a few, like maybe one every six months or so. Not a major threat to my income, and I make more in tips than I lose to runners, so I tend not to worry about them too much.

Still, it’s irritating when it happens. Not only do I lose my half of the fare, I’ve also got to take cash out of my own pocket to pay the owner’s half, meaning I’ve got to work another hour or so to make that money. So I usually end up having worked a couple of late night hours for no gain.

Worse is that the runners get rewarded for their actions and tend to become repeat offenders, ripping off cabbie after cabbie on a regular basis. For me, it’s no big deal, but for a cabbie depending on the long hours and poor income to support a family, it’s gotta hurt. And it’s always the long fares. Nobody ever runs on a ten dollar fare to the next suburb, but when it’s a forty or fifty dollar fare, and the passengers are young men trying to evade the security camera by sitting in the back seat, cabbie beware!

The excellent Sydney cabbie blogger Adrian Neylan made a recent entry about a runner. He was able to find a police car, and policemen who gave a stuff, which is rare on both counts.

One cabbie advised me to keep the car in reverse gear when stopping, and if a passenger runs, hit the gas, knock him down with the open door and run over him with the front wheels. A little extreme for the crime, but I can understand why a cabbie might do such a thing.

My last runners were a group of three young men, about the same age as my teenage son. Would I run over my own son? No. So why would I run over anybody else’s son?

But I’m seriously thinking of installing a webcam in the cab, so I have footage I can put up on Facebook and YouTube. I reckon anyone scum enough to rob a cabbie is also going to have a fair number of enemies in regular life.

Better yet, the cabs in Melbourne all advertise that advance payment is required during late night hours. I consider it rude to ask for money up front, but I might start doing it for high-risk fares. The argument against is that restaurants don’t ask you to pay for a meal before consuming it, but my response is that the average cab is more the equivalent of Macdonalds than The Golden Fingerbowl, and you just try to get a Big Mac without reaching into your wallet.

My funny valentine

2009-02-14T04:25:00.005+11:00

I picked up Kerri in the taxi this evening for a work related dinner. The sun was still high in the western sky at six thirty as we headed down past Russell Offices to go over the lake to the Brassey Hotel. She leaned over and gave me an affectionate squeeze. What a sweetie!

Better yet, Taxi 22 was passing by in the opposite lane, and the expression on the driver’s face was priceless!

Happy Valentines Day to all my friends and all the lovers reading my blog. So many of you have pieces of my heart. May love and romance sweeten your day, your weekend, your life.

All that jazz

2009-02-12T20:15:00.009+11:00

If there’s one thing cabdriving has given me, it’s a love of jazz. Experimenting with music in the cab, I soon gave up on commercial radio stations. The ads were too intrusive and the chatter too distracting.

Public radio was better, but even the classical radio station with its minimal human presence was sometimes unsatisfactory. The tracks they selected rarely matched my needs: some pieces were too quiet for easy listening in the ambient noise of a car, some were too raucous, and opera is an acquired taste.

But the jazz segments of a Saturday evening hit the spot. I soon learnt the big names and the best albums, and before too long I was building up a CD library of favorites.

“They made the mistake of putting the cab rank in Manuka outside Abel’s record store,” I’d tell the customers, “and I’m blowing all the profits in there.”

Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane and all the rest. I loved them, and every now and then I’d meet a fellow devotee amongst my passengers. Not everyone likes jazz, but few people dislike it, and it’s pleasant listening, with enough interest to keep the brain stimulated.

I picked up a couple of senior bureaucrats the other day, driving them back across the lake to Department of Foreign Affairs. They picked up on Miles Davis playing Kind of Blue, and reminisced to each other about jazz clubs in exotic locations. Little hole in the wall locations where you’d have to sneak a bottle in from the convenience store around the corner, but the last member of some famous band swung a mean saxophone.

“Let’s just stay in here for another hour until this finishes,” one said to the other. I smiled. My kind of people.

But they got out at the office. “Thanks for that, driver,” one said as he signed the chit. “I love My Funny Valentine.”

Dusky

2009-02-10T13:35:00.003+11:00

We’ve had a cool southerly change after the scorching heat of the past couple of weeks. A welcome treat for we night drivers, trying to get our sleep in before it gets too hot.

But the winds have brought in just a hint of haze from the devastating bushfires in Victoria. I stopped on Adelaide Avenue to take a picture of the declining sun slanting through the brown smoke coming up from a thousand kilometres away.

Nobody talks of anything but the bushfires. The memories of Canberrans stretch back to 2003, when we lost five hundred houses in the suburbs between lunch and afternoon tea. Five hundred houses but only four lives.

The news from Victoria is far worse. They have a death toll of well over a hundred now. And counting.

It’s quite rare to lose houses in a bushfire. Generally the rural fire brigades do a great job of protecting property. The bush burns, resprouts in the next rains, and two years later there’s nothing to see. The burnt bark falls off the trees and fresh treestuff grows.

It’s even more rare to lose lives. People stay to save their homes, but they have the car packed and ready to go. If things get too hot, they run for safety.

But every now and then we have a period of intense heat, drying out the fresh spring growth, hot winds from the desert interior, lightning storms to spark fires in remote areas, and if the hot windy conditions persist and worsen, the blazes become firestorms, speeding along valleys like a formation of jet fighters on afterburner, unstoppable, melting roads and vehicles, boiling swimming pools dry, racing through the tinder-dry forests to hit houses with a rain of embers before an explosion of flame.

The wind brought down trees onto roads, trapping people escaping the fires. It’s not something I want to think about too much.

But everyone had a thought for Victoria. One passenger said that the Commonwealth Government should divert some of the latest stimulus package toward rebuilding houses and infrastructure. Another, a journalist, read me out a piece he had written about his childhood holidays in one of the destroyed towns, learning to play piano and billiards in a quaint guest house.

And I thought about that town, where I’ve spent a few weekends on computer programmer conferences. The church camp we hired was spartan but comfortable, surrounded by green ridges, where “the tallest trees in the British Empire” had been drawing tourists since the 1800s. It was a delightful, restful retreat, and the small town of Marysville was a few tree-lined streets, old wooden houses and the sort of rural general stores and pubs that you don’t get in the slick cities any more. A community.

Now it’s gone. The black streets remain, but the rubble and ash of the buildings mark out from the air where people lived and worked. One or two lucky homes remain, but the rest, the houses, hotels and guesthouses are gone. Piano and billiard table just a few twisted remnants amongst the fallen walls.

Word is that my birthplace, up in the Ovens Valley, might be under threat. It’s been years since I was there, but I hate to think of that little community looking anxiously to the south as they tidy away their yards, piling garden rubbish away from houses, seeking out photographs and family treasures for the car, listening to the radio for warnings.

But they are also lining up to give blood for the burns victims pouring into the hospitals, taking boxes of canned goods and can-openers to the charity collection points, going through their wardrobes for those with just the clothes they stand up in.

Canberra, where the smell of smoke freshens memories of 2003, is collecting containerloads to send south. We might be an urban society, but in our hearts, we are out in the bush, standing firm to defend the family farm, packing into the shire hall to help out our neighbours, offering a place at the table and a bed in the spare room for those who need it.

Not much that I can do directly. Any bushfire survivors find their way to Canberra, they’ll get a ride for free from me. And for this week, I’m making a donation each night to send south. I don’t make a great deal as a cabbie, but I can certainly help those who have nothing but the ash-blackened shirts on their backs.

Six in a cab

2009-02-06T17:06:00.003+11:00

You get all sorts of bad behaviour at the airport cab rank. We’re not supposed to pick up except from the rank, and then after paying two dollars to go through the boomgate from the cabyard. But sometimes cabbies will slipstream through the boom on the tail of another, or swing in from the airport circuit without going through the yard at all.

One of my mates was livid the other day. He was third on the rank, there were three passengers coming out from the arrivals gate, and he was expecting to get the third one. The first two passengers got into the first two cabs, but just as the first cab in line pulled away, an arriving cab swung onto the cab rank, dropped off his fare, and scored the final passenger. My mate was furious. What’s the point of going around the terminal circuit - five minutes at the best of times, several times that at peak periods - lining up in the cabyard, paying the boomgate fee and waiting on the rank, if some opportunist can swing in, drop off, pick up and move away again in one fluid movement?

And then there’s the blatantly illegal behaviour in the photograph above. Cabs used to have bench seats and a column shift in the old days, so you could squeeze in five passengers. Two in front beside the driver, and three in the back. But they haven’t made special cab models for years, and all the cabs in the fleet have two bucket seats in the front, with the gear lever on the floor in the middle. If a group of five or more want to share a cab, they get into one of the increasingly numerous people-movers or minibuses. Some cabs can seat eleven.

But a normal cab is licenced for four passengers. There’s a sticker on the window to show this, but it doesn’t stop some folk from trying it on, so as to avoid paying for a second cab. Drivers of station wagon cabs get sick of people asking if they can sit or lie in the rear compartment, and sometimes a party of drunks will cram in four abreast in the back seat.

I don’t bother listening to their stories. If there’s four in the back, my cab stays put. I once had five burly soldiers get into my cab at the Royal Military College Sergeants Mess. Big blokes, used to getting their own way, but they weren’t going anywhere with me. Eventually a couple got out and I called another cab for them.

Apart from being illegal to carry five passengers, it’s unsafe, because my cab is fitted with five seatbelts - one for me and four for passengers - and if six people are aboard, then one of them is obviously unrestrained.

Five o’clock on Friday on the airport rank, and I notice that the driver of the cab ahead is having trouble fitting all the luggage into his boot. Then I realise why: there’s five passengers in the party, and they are all squeezing into the cab.

If I hadn’t immediately got a passenger, I’d be upset at having another cabbie steal my fare, but even so, I was angry enough to take a photograph.

Check it out. I’ve tweaked the exposure and contrast a bit to bring out what’s going on. Reading left to right, we have:

1. Silver-haired gent in the back seat.
2. Tallish man in the front passenger seat.
3. Dark-haired lady in the front. She must be sitting on the centre console.
4. Blonde with a ponytail in the centre position in the back seat.
5. Driver. Obviously a driver in this moving cab, but you can see his ear in silhouette.
6. You can just make out the head of the sixth passenger sitting directly behind the driver, partially obscuring the inside of the B-pillar. If you look carefully, you can see that there are two distinct head profiles:

The blue-green object on the rear parcel shelf is the first-aid kit, by the way.

Five of the six occupants are correctly positioned and presumably safely belted in, but the young lady sitting on the centre console is not just having an uncomfortable time of it, there is no seatbelt for her, and if the cabbie has to brake suddenly, she will go full-face into the windscreen. Possibly straight through it. That’s when that sun-bleached first aid kit might come in useful.

Later. Time to eat my words. A fellow cabbie doing his Monday morning shift has taken a look at TX 88 and informs me that it is a vintage cab, one of the last few genuine cabbie models on the road, and is, in fact equipped for five passengers. Given the limitations on how old cabs can be, it can't have too long left on the road, but for the time being it's legal.

Daytipper

2009-02-02T23:01:00.004+11:00

Australians don’t do tips. That’s a pernicious American habit, and any good Aussie will make a point of paying exactly what’s on the meter and no more.

And that’s in America. We Aussies do our best to stamp out tipping by not doing it. Usually this lasts until we find out that waiters, cabbies, doormen and so on aren’t paid a decent wage and depend on tips to make ends meet.

So, when I’m travelling, I’ll happily add fifteen percent to the total, scatter a few dollar bills around the hotel, etc.

And nowadays I’ll do it at home. If there’s an element of service involved, and I’ve enjoyed myself, I’ll add a good tip. I always tip cabbies. And it guarantees a smile.

I’ve got more to say in future on the subject of tips. Strategies to maximise tips. The best tips I’ve ever gotten. And the biggest tip I’ve ever given. Worth every Welsh penny for a job well done!

The real reason

2009-01-29T14:24:00.003+11:00

OK. The secret’s out. The real reason I drive a cab is because I like aeroplanes. Looking at them, flying in them, reading about them.

And, being a cabbie means that not only do I get to hang out at Canberra airport where I can watch planes landing, taking off and cruising around looking for a parking slot, I can earn enough money to fly in them every now and then.

Canberra International Airport (otherwise known as CIA) is perhaps a little too grandly named for its primary function, which is being one end of seven domestic air routes, mostly to the other capital cities. There used to be an international service to Fiji some years ago, which operated during the winter months, but that got cancelled due to poor attendance. Every now and then the airport management makes optimistic noises about flights to Singapore or New Zealand or Hobart, but the truth is that with Sydney airport a couple of hours up the road, offering regular services to just about everywhere in the world, Canberra can’t compete.

However, every now and then we get some international flights. If Sydney airport is closed in by weather, we’ll get an occasional diversion, such as the time the London flight came in late at night and sat around on the tarmac for six hours before the exhausted passengers were finally released. Or there will be visiting heads of state in colorful official jets.

It’s always worth while looking over at the RAAF VIP Squadron base on the other side of the main runway. Yesterday, I spotted an aging DC-9 in United States Navy livery, and while I was snapping telephoto photographs through the heat haze, there was a tremendous noise and a USAF KC-10 tanker aircraft landed. Presumably they will fly back home together, because there is no way a DC-9 could make it back over the Pacific alone.

The other aircraft in the background of the photograph above is one of Australia’s VIP transports, a Boeing Business Jet used to fly the Prime Minister and his media staff around. I suspect that we’ve used the same aircraft livery consultant, or maybe we bought some surplus aeroplane paint from the Americans.

Aussie Cabbie

2009-01-26T23:48:00.001+11:00

Australia Day, the 26th of January, commemorating the arrival of the First Fleet at what is now Sydney in 1788. Nowadays it’s a holiday, new citizens are sworn in, lord mayors make speeches, concerts are held on outdoor stages and the day finishes with a firework display.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did his bit for political solemnity by naming an Aboriginal Australian as Australian of the year. Mick Dodson promptly bit the PM on the bum by stating that the day should be moved to another date, because Aboriginal Australians regard the date as Invasion Day, a day of mourning for the original occupants of the land.

A bit rich, considering that 95% of todays Aboriginal Australians have European or Asian ancestors and wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for their grandparents, but let’s not spoil a good Aussie whinge.

I wore my Australian flag tie, copping a few smiles and comments. Always nice to dress up a bit, at least as much as a cabbie uniform allows.

With the major Canberra celebration occurring on the weekend, in the form of a major free concert outside Parliament House, I was about as patriotic as it got today. I picked up a couple of young women with Australian flags on their cheeks, but as far as I could make out, they were Swedish tourists.

A few cars were flying Australian flags on plastic mountings, and here and there a green and gold t-shirt could be seen. But we’re not like other countries, making a meal out of national pride. You get more patriotic clothing and noises out of sporting contests than anything remotely political. Americans often have a flag flying outside their houses, but in Australia to have even a flagpole is a sign that there is something deeply wrong with the resident.

Americans make a fuss over presidential inaugurations, but in Australia, heads of state and heads of government are sworn in at private ceremonies in Government House. Maybe we’ll see a press photograph, maybe not. Nobody cares or waves a flag.

I finished my shift by taking a shortcut past Old Parliament House, now a museum. Across the road is the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a motley collection of shacks and campfires, manned on a casual basis by people from the Sydney slum suburb of Redfern. The so-called embassy purports to represent the ancient sovereignty of Australia before European settlement, and the occupants want a treaty, their own state, massive reparations, freedom from taxation, rental income from ordinary Australians and special reserved seats in Parliament.

Most Aboriginal Australians live in cities, and are indistinguishable from the rest of the population, but the few who maintain a remnant of their tribal lives exist in small settlements remote from services, ridden with violence, drugs, sickness and crime. The most violent place on Earth, outside a warzone, is Palm Island in Queensland, an Aboriginal settlement with an economy almost entirely funded by government benefits.

In contrast to the sad and mixed remnants of the first Australians, I cannot help but think of the refugees who came here after the end of the Vietnam War. After sailing in leaky fishing boats through pirate waters, those that made it to Australia landed with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

A feature of citizenship ceremonies ever since, they and their children are the best investment Australia ever made. Doctors, lawyers, academics, solid business owners, they have set an example of hard work, devotion to study and attention to civic responsibility.

Successive waves of immigration have made Australia a melting pot and a rich stirfry of cultures. Nowadays we eat Thai tucker with chopsticks, flock to late-night kebab takeaways, and swoon over fresh naan bread in Indian restaurants. I need only look at my fellow taxidrivers to see the direction in which Australia is heading. We’re a world in microcosm and all the better for it.

I wear my Australian flag tie with pride. The British Union Jack features prominently, but, like our British heritage, it is fading. Within a generation we’ll likely have a new flag, a constitution that doesn’t have the British monarch playing a leading role, and a stronger confidence about our place in the world.

We’ve had our unpleasant moments, to be sure, but when I look at my nation, I see a peaceful land where riots are rare, civil war unknown, and all transitions of power are peaceful. Our American cousins might have begun their nation with a revolution, but we started with a signature. They had a bloody civil war, we had the Sheffield Shield cricket competition.

And may we keep it that way.

My pleasure

2009-01-24T14:26:00.005+11:00

Last night’s shift began on a high and I kept smiling all the way through. A normal enough Friday shift, and by normal I mean rest-of-the-year normal, not month-of-Sundays-January normal. There was plenty of work, and I was well into the afternoon rush, shuttling passengers to the airport.

Once again, the airport road system has changed, so that was an added challenge. Paul, my day driver, has been telling his passengers that the new layout is a joint venture between the airport and the taxi industry to make the trip as long as possible, and honestly the roads in and out are the most appalling series of loops and zig-zags and detours.

I dropped my passenger at the terminal, and headed back into the city empty. Once I was clear of the roadworks, my phone rang. The young lady on the other end identified herself as a Qantas representative, and while I was wondering about the various reasons for Qantas to call me, she totally floored me, telling me I’d won a prize in a travel writing competition.

This was a competition I’d entered well before Christmas, and after looking at the vast quantity and quality of the other entries, displayed online, I’d given up hope that my modest little piece about Guernsey had any chance at all.

But apparently it had ranked ninth, giving me a shot at one of the twelve prizes on offer. I’ll have my choice of four weekends away at an Australian resort, and a condition of accepting the prize is that I have to write and submit a 500 word article on the weekend, with photographs and video footage shot on the Nikon camera which comes as part of the prize.

“Ooooh, with pleasure!” I sighed into the phone.

So I’ll be a guest writer for Qantas’s Travel Insider e-magazine, once I return from the weekend, which I’ll have to take in the next three months. Maybe this will be a shot at a new career - taxidriving is a job I love, but travelling the world and getting paid to do it, well it just doesn’t compete, does it?

We’ll see. Writing tight, focussed articles for professional publication is a long way from my usual rambling style.

The photograph above is of St Peter Port in Guernsey. A darling little town and it was no trouble at all to write a paragraph about it. The hard part was keeping it down to the 250 words required by the competition terms.

The Qantas lady congratulated me again, the call ended, and I pulled into a government office building to collect a public servant for her trip to the airport. She must have wondered why she had the happiest cabbie on earth as her driver!

Marooned

2009-01-22T03:56:00.000+11:00

Some nights I do things I’m not proud of. But my work isn’t entirely delightful old ladies flirting with the cabbie, or returning tourists swapping travel tales. Sometimes I have to put the driver ahead of the passenger.

Thursday night. It’s what they call “Uni Night”, and the clubs in Civic cut their prices to attract customers who would otherwise stay at home. Not the after-work drinkies of Friday, nor the solid frenzy of Saturday, Thursday night is Uni Night, and it’s when the cheap drunks go out on the town.

The drinks are half price, and this means two things. First is that some people drink twice as much as normal. Second is that the cheapskates drink the regular amount. Either way, they are not necessarily the sort of people I want in my cab.

You get a better class of drunk on Friday. People with money in their wallets. People who can handle their grog. People who can carry on a civil conversation. Mind you, as the night progresses, the drunks become increasingly ratty, but on Friday, they start from a high base, and by the time I finish up at three in the morning, they aren’t too bad.

Tonight there’s been thunderstorms hanging around. I scored at the airport early on. A young lady got in and said “Dunlop”. That’s about as far west as you can get in Canberra, with the state border only a couple of hundred metres away. Nice long fat fare and it’s freeway most of the distance. Once I dropped her off, I headed in to “Bernies From the Bay”, a fish and chip shop at Charnwood. Not healthy tucker, but they do a very good grilled fish and chips. Especially the hand-cut chips.

I ate my dinner outside, under the awning, just as a storm came through and dumped a lake full of water on Canberra. Luckily I was sheltered enough not to worry, but Lord, what a deluge!

I finished my meal and followed the storm all the way back to the airport, spectacular lightning strikes ahead of me, puddles on the road, the setting sun lighting up the landscape under the dark clouds. Spectacular.

I did a few airport jobs and when the planes stopped landing, hit the main Civic rank. By half past one, I was dubious. There was a long line of cabs on the rank and the drunks were looking very ratty.

Two young men got in and gave an address in one of the northern suburbs. The guy beside me was fine. He was almost sober, in fact, but his mate in the backseat was gibbering. Calling me names, talking at random, telling me how drunk he was.

We pulled up at the sober bloke’s apartment block and he paid me with a generous tip, while his sozzled mate got out and gave the flower beds a watering. Then he climbed back in for the second half of the trip, out to Gungahlin. The address he gave sounded implausible, he was extremely drunk, his financial status was uncertain, and he’d cranked the window down - never a good sign.

“Just pull into the servo, willya? I need some fags.”

The good old cigarette stop for the nicotine addict. Every cabbie knows it well.

Every cabbie reading this also knows what was on my mind, as I pulled in beside the service station for my passenger to get out and buy his cigarettes.

He left the cab door open, but that was no problem. I gave him maybe ten seconds and hit the gas, the door swinging shut as I peeled back out onto the road. He came back out and peered forlornly after me, but I was too far away and moving too fast.

I’m allowed to refuse people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, so I was within my rights. I’ve spent far too much time and money on passengers who fall asleep, throw up, run away without paying, abuse the driver, leave rubbish in the cab or some combination of the above. I’d had a very good look at this guy, and as well as being very drunk, he was pressing all the wrong buttons with me.

I don’t feel good about leaving him stranded, but then again he was on the main shipping routes of Canberra’s cab world, and he wouldn’t have waited too long before finding a less wary cabbie.

Or walking home. I sure hope he didn’t try walking home, because about fifteen minutes after I left him, there was a second rainstorm, dropping another Sydney Harbour’s worth of water on Canberra.

Just as I was taking the cab through the carwash to remove the mud spatters from the first storm. I’d had enough of ratty drunks and I deserved an early night.

The heat of heart

2009-01-21T04:06:00.002+11:00

I ended my shift early last night, stocked up on hot dogs, sarsaparilla (another name for root beer, apparently) and Oreos, and staked out a position on the couch for the Obama inauguration. The Good Morning America coverage began with a shot of the Mall just as the first rays of the morning sun were lighting the tip of the Washington Monument, and already the space was crowded, with streams of people flowing in. By noon it was a solid mass of onlookers, all there to be a tiny part of history.

The GMA crew interviewed the spectators, asking, “Who has the most layers of clothing?” It was cold. Cold with windchill.

I’ve been there. I’ve walked through a bitter pre-dawn in Washington DC, and I’ve crunched across the Mall covered in fresh snow. That was exactly four years ago, the day after the second Bush inauguration, so I knew exactly how cold it was for the swelling crowd.

My wife and I had the city to ourselves then, and we spent a sparkling afternoon exploring the Smithsonians and marvelling at the wealth of art in the glittering halls of the National Art Gallery. But eventually the early twilight drove us outside, where we looked for a place to hail a cab. Most of the street was lined with parked cars, but outside an impressive building on Constitution Avenue, there was a clear space, albeit lined with the ugly cement barricades that have sprouted like toadstools in the years following the 9/11 attacks. I set down my heavy tote bag with a sigh of relief and in a few moments a cab drew up beside us, just as I became nervously aware of the approach of a couple of uniformed security guards. Heavily armed security guards.

We hustled inside the cab and sped off.

“Crikey,” I said to the cabbie, a silver haired gent, “What’s the story there?”

“That the Department of Justice,” he replied. “They antsy over Gitmo.”

Guantanamo Bay, where terrorist suspects were detained, had been the subject of some fairly high-level protesting in the weeks before our visit, so I guess that anybody carrying a bulky bag might arouse suspicions. After all, Washington itself had been attacked in 2001, and there were good reasons to be antsy.

The cab itself was an old model. Beautifully clean and tidy, but definitely showing the signs of a long life as a hack. I learnt later that the tax regime made it uneconomical to buy new vehicles, so cabs were operated until they fell apart, and this one didn’t have long to go.

We rattled through an intersection and I nudged my wife. “Look, the White House!”

“Yeah,” said the cabbie, “they got the wrong guy in there.”

We chatted the rest of the way to the hotel. He was interested in Australia, and we told him about the wildlife and the climate, stressing that we didn’t see much snow there. In fact it was summer right now, and we’d come straight from 30 degree heat to this snowy, subzero environment.

“Might move there,” he mused. “Might marry up one of them native girls, hey?”

We assured him that there was always room for taxidrivers in Australia, and gave him a small tip when he dropped us off at our hotel.

So when I saw Washington DC last night, looking frosty in the winter air, and joyous in the atmosphere of celebration, I remembered my own first fond impressions. Compared to Canberra, it’s a very different city, but there are similarities - the broad ceremonial avenues, the grand public institutions, the monuments and memorials. It’s a place where I can feel at home on the far side of the world.

“Aren’t you cold?” asked the television interviewer of one lovely old black woman, showing all her teeth in a fabulous smile.

“No, honey, I got my heart to keep me warm.”

There were a lot of happy hearts in Washington. A million strong, they thumped away and surged with excitement when Obama came out to take the oath. The sight of that sea of flags waving in a joyous tumult was unforgettable. I wish I was there, to share the excitement, to wave a flag, to feel the warmth of history and a glorious new dawn.

And somewhere, maybe in that crowd, maybe parked on a side street, listening on his cab radio, I am sure that there was one very happy cabdriver.

Time for change

2009-01-20T10:47:00.004+11:00

I’ll be giving myself an early mark tonight, ending my shift before midnight to drive home for the broadcast from Washington. I’ve got some hot dogs, buns, onions, American mustard and for dessert, Oreos. I’ll see if I can find a bottle or two of root beer, but it’s hard to come by in Australia. I can always fall back on Pepsi, I guess.

Four years I got into Washington just after the second Bush inauguration, and it was a cold old town. Bleak in the snow, ice covering the Potomac, and homeless finding shelter amongst the grand monuments. But there were shops chock full of unsold red white and blue caps, buttons, scarves and nosewarmers. In the days afterwards I virtually had the place to myself, examining the Hope Diamond at leisure, and sharing the “Rotunda of the Charters of Freedom” with only a handful of other visitors, despite the fact that all of the grand institutions in which I rattled around were clearly set up for thousands.

This time around, there are going to be millions of visitors. Whole communities are hiring buses for the drive in. They want their piece of history. Washington will be a city buzzing with excitement, and I wish the local cabbies, creaky old black gentlemen every one of them, a windfall profit.

In Canberra, it’s hot and quiet. You could fire a cannon down any main road and not hit anybody except maybe a lonely cabbie looking for pedestrians.

There’s a bit of work available, but what is it with everybody in January? Does nobody have anything smaller than a fifty dollar note?

I start out with a float in my money bag. Two twenties, two tens, two fives and whatever coins I can cram into my dispenser, usually heavier on the silver than the gold one and two dollar pieces. I might have a few notes as a reserve in my wallet.

The first passenger offering a fifty I welcome with a smile. But the average fare is fifteen dollars and giving change for that wipes out half my float. Still, it can’t be helped, and I tuck away the golden yellow bill, known as a “pineapple” for its colour.

The second is greeted with a groan and the third pineapple just reams me out completely. I’m reduced to making change in handfuls of coins.

My wife doesn’t help. She raids my wallet for cash before departing for work, and at the rustle of notes I’ll wake from a sound sleep, muttering “take the fifties, take ‘em all, just leave me the little ones!”

Yes, it’s true - I love the little five and ten dollar notes with a passion. Give me a thick wad of the small notes and I’m the happiest cabbie that lived, but if I have a fistful of fifties, I’m haggard and wary, looking suspiciously over at my passengers as we near the end of the ride.

Which, of course, brings me to the classic old taxidriver story.

A late night cabbie, much like myself, was cruising the streets when he spotted someone flagging him down. Just an arm frantically waving, and a desperate face peering around the corner of a hedge.

He drew up to the curb and a stark naked woman raced across the footpath, flung open the door and dived into the back seat.

“Thank god you stopped,” she said. “The wife came home at the wrong time and I didn’t have a moment to...”

She stops as she realises the cabbie hasn’t driven off yet, and in fact is staring at her through the rear vision mirror.

“What’s the matter?” she snaps. “Haven’t you ever seen a woman before?”

“Well, yes,” the cabbie says slowly, “but I was just wondering how you intended to pay the fare.”

She leans back and opens her legs. “Will that do?”

“Awww, geez lady, don’t you have anything smaller?”

A month of Sundays

2009-01-18T10:17:00.006+11:00

January is the month Canberra cabbies hate. It's the middle of summer and it seems that everyone but the taxidrivers are off on holiday. Long days and nights waiting on motionless cab ranks, reading newspapers.

"It's great for passengers," I tell people more used to long delays, "and that's the main thing, isn't it?"

Happy passengers equals happy cabbie, I say to myself, but there are limits. Much as I enjoy taxidriving, when I check the meter and it comes out to something like five dollars an hour after tax for a job with no leave or benefits, I have to wonder.

Come February, it will all change. Schools start up again after the break, the defence academies will be loaded up with cadets, the public service returns to life, and then Parliament will resume, overloading the taxi system once again.

It’s boom or bust in Canberra, and January is bust. The morning and afternoon peaks have disappeared. Normally there’s a period of a two or three hours where I’ll be offered more work than I can possibly take, usually taking people to the airport to catch the evening flights out. For two hours I’ll be running a shuttle service to and from the airport, and I won’t have a moment to scratch myself. Then it dies down and I’ll find somewhere around six o’clock to have my dinner.

January, I sign on and look at the statistics screen. There’s a flood of taxis booked solid into every despatch area, and a scattered few fares or upcoming jobs. From the moment I book into an area, I’m competing with other hungry cabbies. I’m eating my dinner at four, contemplating a long wait for my next fare.

Lately, I’ve been watching movies on my iPhone during the slow times. Movies and books and newspapers - January cabbies have to be patient.

Sleeping on the job

2009-01-15T22:13:00.001+11:00

People ask me about the worst parts of the job. “Picking up the drunks on Fridays and Saturdays?” they suggest, but no, it’s the kangaroos that give me the most stress. They jump out in front of you without warning, and can do a great deal of damage. Occasionally they kill people, especially if they go through the windscreen.

“But don’t you have trouble with drunks?” they ask. Well, yes, but not in the way one might think. The chap above is a textbook example of the sort of drunk that gives me the most trouble.

I spotted him in the early hours of Thursday morning, dozing on one of the bus shelter benches at the main Civic rank. These benches are designed to deter sleepers, having low armrests which make it impossible to stretch out. This chap would doze off, wobble left and right until his head was dangling like a ripe plum, and then the discomfort would jerk him upright again. Amusing to watch, and as I had a moment to spare, I pulled out my camera to take a couple of photographs.

A couple of reasons why he wouldn’t make a good passenger. First, he was obviously very drunk. When people don’t feel comfortable staying upright, they are a good chance to throw up in the cab. Secondly, he was obviously sleepy, and when a passenger goes to sleep in the cab, it can be very hard work indeed to wake them up again. Thirdly, he was hanging around the cab rank on a quiet night. If he wanted to get home, why didn’t he just get in a cab and go home?

I moved up to the head of the rank and picked up a fare. Just a short one, but that’s the chance you take. Sometimes you get a fare to a distant suburb, sometimes to a hotel a few blocks away. It all evens out.

When I got back to the rank, it was after two in the morning and I was starting to think about getting the car gassed up, cleaned out and home for the day driver. One more fare would make my night.

A couple of young women headed towards me, but were intercepted just shy of the cab by a friend and after some discussion, they disappeared. Half past two and I was on the verge of giving up for the night when the door opened and the sleepy subject of my photograph above slipped in beside me.

He named a suburb near Woden, and then must have keyed off the expression on my face. “I’ve got money to pay,” he assured me.

I generally find that when passengers have the money to pay the fare they don’t bother to tell me up front. It’s just assumed.

Anyway, he was in my cab and the fare was a reasonable one, so I headed off.

“Bit cold in here.”

I cranked the heat up. Big mistake. A few minutes into the ride and he was nodding again. I asked him for his address, just to make sure.

A minute later he was fast asleep, but I figured that I could wake him up on arrival. Usually turning the airconditioning on full blast and putting the sound up to extreme is enough.

It wasn’t, not this time. He was out for the count. Shouting at him didn’t produce so much as the flicker of an eyelid.

At that point my chance of a good result dropped to zero. I’m not going to touch a sleeping passenger. Not if they are an attractive young lady, and not if they are a tattooed young man in football kit.

I put the car into gear and headed for the police station, luckily only a few minutes away. It took me a bit of time to stir the police on duty into action, but eventually they came out to me, pulling on gloves.

It took them a few minutes, pushing on my passenger’s chest and speaking very loudly to him, before he came around. They found his wallet - empty - and looked at me.

“I’ve got to be on the northside in five minutes,” I said. “He’s got no money, and he’ll just fall asleep again.”

“We’ll get him home,” they promised.

So they took him off my hands, and I cleared the meter of the thirty three dollar fare. That’s sixteen-fifty straight out of my pocket, not to mention half an hour of my time.

Luckily I’ve got an understanding day driver, who merely smiled at my story when I delivered the car late and unwashed.

Taxi TV

2009-01-09T10:50:00.005+11:00

If there’s one thing I like about cabdriving, it’s listening to other cabbies. Every cabbie has a stock of stories about life in the city, late night people, love and lust and all of the other sins. It’s a never-ending drama full of bit players and the occasional star.

“Every single shift is different,” said Gerard Donaghy, one of three cabbies invited onto an evening talk show a couple of years back. The host, no slouch at telling stories, just sits back and lets them go at it. It’s marvellous reading, and it must have been great television. The transcript is full of marvellous phrases, pungent and provocative.

...being a cabbie is, kind of like, you don't have to travel the world, the world comes to me...
...you become, like, a Liberal Socialist Communist Buddhist...
...late at night you get a bit aroused...
...I thought I'd turn on the interior light. Well after that, I turned it on, there was a massive loud scream. Very loud scream....
.... it went off in the back seat and it was all up the side of my ears and down the back of my shirt. It was on the windscreen...

Marvellous material. I wish that I could record some of the stuff that goes on in my cab. Have a button I could push to save the last half hour of security camera footage. Most of the time it’s talking about the weather, or listening to girls talk about boys, or boys talk about the footy, but every now and then there’s a few moments you’d like to bottle up and keep forever.

Which is why I keep a blog, I guess.

Cabbie fun

2009-01-04T09:03:00.002+11:00

A guy in a taxi wanted to speak to the driver so he leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.
The driver screamed, jumped up in the air and yanked the wheel over. The car mounted the curb, demolished a lamppost and came to a stop millimetres from a shop window.
The startled passenger said “I didn’t mean to frighten you, just wanted to ask you something.”
Taxi driver says “Not your fault Sir. It’s my first day as a cab driver; I’ve been driving a hearse for the past 25 years”.

A cabbie classic that one. The cartoon is closer to home. Things go wrong with cabs all the time. Especially with some of the older cabs, a million kilometres on the clock and years of life left in them. Bits rattle loose, one speed bump too many, passengers tinkering with the moving parts, or just old age sneaking up on cab and cabbie alike.

And what’s a night driver to do when the workshop is closed, the defect isn’t serious, and there’s people lined up to be driven home? Naturally, the 24-hour servo is the handy-dandy patchit shop, and a roll of duct tape is just the thing to hold a wobbling wing mirror straight. Next time you load your bags into a taxi boot, check out the corners. Like as not there’ll be a couple of elastic straps, the kind with hooks on the ends, tucked away somewhere. You can hold a cab together with octo straps, and if there’s more luggage than the boot can easily contain, just pile it in and use the straps to hold the boot lid down on the trip.

Had to laugh the other day. Driving up Commonwealth Avenue towards Parliament House, and there’s a ratty old Holden Commodore parked on the median strip, a gaggle of young guys standing glumly around. The car had obviously been in a recent shunt, because the front end was slightly bent, bonnet buckled, bumper missing. But obviously drivable, because the bonnet was held on by about a kilometre of duct tape. Checking under the hood would be a major (and expensive) exercise.

My guess is that the lads had come to Canberra to attend the annual Summernats car festival, a three day event where young men spend all their money on petrol, junk food, beer and birds. They head back home on the Sunday, sunburnt a blistering red and running on the last fumes of their credit cards.

Naturally, the local police call in all their reserves for this weekend, which they spend cruising up and down looking for galahs. They haul them over by the dozens, breath-testing drivers, issuing defect notices, speeding tickets. This car held together by tape wouldn’t have lasted long.

I would have stopped to take a photograph, but I had a passenger beside me, and so the opportunity was mist.

My cab’s safe for the weekend. The owner called in my day driver last week, giving us three new tyres and replacing some burnt-out lights. We’re street-legal again.

The cartoon and joke above courtesy of the Irish Taxi website, though I suspect that the cartoon was borrowed from somewhere else. Africa, Ireland, Australia, cabs and cabbies are pretty much the same the world over.

Happy cappie

2009-01-03T10:27:00.005+11:00

There I was in St Malo, fresh off the boat from Guernsey, where I'd bought a fair dinkum guernsey. A thick blue woolen jumper as worn by Guernsey fishermen for centuries, and now sold to tourists. A lovely warm garment, but I was feeling very self-conscious, so when Kerri suggested I buy one of the Breton fisherman caps, as sold in every single one of St Malo's many souvenir shops along with the chocolate fish and the wooden lighthouses, I declined.

Since then, I've gone through a Canberra winter loving my guernsey. If there's a nip in the air, I snuggle into its baggy blue comfort.

So happy am I with it, that I'm sorry I didn't buy a Breton fisherman cap to go with it. Next time, I told myself. Brittany is a long way to go for an item of headwear, but well worth the trip.

Williamstown last week, and we (Ken and his charmant parents) had just finished lunch, settling it down with a walk along the Gem Pier. While the older two ventured aboard the museum ship HMAS Castlemaine - "They served aboard during the battle of Jutland!" I yelled from the pier, hoping to score them a discount and maybe a quick spin around the bay - and Ken remained perforce ashore in his wheelchair, I went back to move the car to a better position.

On the way, I noticed that the maritime historical society was having a sale and of course, I stuck my nose in. A half price brass divers helmet us still enough to put a dent in even the boldest credit card, but amongst the t-shirts and compasses I noticed a pile of dark blue caps. Breton fisherfolk caps. Half price!

I'm sorry now that I didn't buy two, but I guess I can always go back.

It will go well with my guernsey, but I also had my Silver Service uniform in mind. I like a cap or hat to cover my bald spot in sun and cold and the official wide brimmed uniform slouch hat is quite impractical in a car. Other drivers wear non- uniform baseball or flat caps, but I hadn't seen anything that I truly loved.

Until now.

I felt a little self-conscious at first, especially when other drivers pulled up alongside and peered curiously in at me, but all my worries evaporated when on of the older drivers smiled and said, "That is one righteous cap!"

Melbourne cabs

2008-12-31T18:13:00.005+11:00

Love him or not, Jeff Kennett left a lasting legacy from his time as Victorian Premier. He reorganised Melbourne’s taxi system, directing that cabs be painted yellow, that drivers wear uniforms, and a number of other things. The drivers themselves might be as mixed a bunch as in any other city, but there are some proudly carrying the torch:

FAITH is central to Mohammed Jama's life. In keeping with his Muslim beliefs, he prays five times a day, often driving his taxi to a mosque in King Street mid-shift to carry out his spiritual obligations.

Jama, as he is known, keeps a tiny copy of the Koran discreetly on his dashboard, but don't ask him to discuss religion while he's driving; he has nothing to say on the matter since such conversation between Melbourne taxi drivers and their passengers was banned by the Victorian Taxi Directorate.

Likewise, don't expect a lively debate about the state of Australian or global politics; that's also a no-go under VTD guidelines.

Full story here in an article from The Age.

Driving to Melbourne and back, I didn’t need a cab, but I was impressed with the look of those I saw. They look clean and bright.

I relied upon my own Navman GPS, now nearly three years old, for directions. I didn’t have a copy of Melways, Melbourne’s excellent street directory, and although I have a rough idea of the layout of the city from living and working there twenty years back, there are a whole stack of new tollways and tunnels. Some of them aren’t in my Navman at all.

Driving down, with Ken beside me, I had his helpful guidance. Even so, the Navman directed us far too close to the CBD for my liking. In fact we drove along beside the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the first of the crowd were beginning to straggle out from the stands. Another half hour and it would have been rush hour on what was all but a holiday.

Coming back from Frankston, I ignored the GPS advice for the most part. It seemed bent on steering me into the city before letting me out again. Instead I peeled off the freeway well east of the city centre and headed north. For the next half hour I tried to angle my way across a relentless grid, rapidly losing all but a rough idea of direction under the overcast sky, through a series of unhelpful signs bearing names of unfamiliar suburbs. I’d hit a junction: left would be Bungey, right Page, and Gullett ahead. Which way to go?

Eventually I found my way through Bundeela and saw a sign for the Hume Freeway, heading north. But without a street directory and under the guidance of a machine which reckoned the congestion of the CBD to be part of the swiftest route, it had been an uncertain trip.

Smart yellow cabs or no, I’m very glad that I’m not a Melbourne cabbie. Melbourne is too big to know well. No cabbie can be intimate with every street in every suburb. Not to mention the traffic. Canberra’s peak hour lasts an hour, and only along a handful of streets. In Melbourne, you can get gridlock lasting for hours.

Canberra has a well laid out system of arterial roads. Traffic flows smoothly along wide roads through dedicated reserves. Suburbs are clearly defined and grouped into town clusters. It’s just a joy to drive in Canberra.

Eventually I left Melbourne’s grid of trams and traffic lights behind, seven hours of freeway driving ahead. Melbourne’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to work there.

Long fares

2008-12-27T04:56:00.004+11:00

I’ve had all sorts of people in my cab, sharing a moment in their lives. Politicians, judges, artists, sportsfolk, authors: people whose doings and photographs fill newspapers. And the ordinary every day folk who are fascinating in themselves. We share a story, a joke, an observation, and I go on my way chuckling, or thoughtful.

But of all the passengers I’ve carried, by far the most fascinating, the most unforgettable is Ken Haley.

He’s an author, a world traveller in unlikely places, and he’s in the newspaper just about every day.

That’s because he’s a journalist, currently working as a sub-editor on The Canberra Times.

He has a memory crammed full of trivia, every Monty Python or Pete&Dud skit, a stock of quotes from movies and books and famous figures of history, and a love of puns and wordplay that made me his adoring fan after a few minutes in his company.

He’s written a book or two, and I’ve read and reread my copy of his quirky travel book, Emails from the edge. Now I’m waiting for the next adventure to be published. I’ve seen the manuscript on his kitchen table, and I long for the day when I have my own copy to add to my collection of Morris, Theroux, Chatwin and other great travel writers.

He’s all these things and more: he’s a paraplegic. Half man, half machine, I have to position the cab carefully to allow him to come alongside, transfer his bum into the front seat, and then shift his disassembled wheelchair into the back seat.

The result of a breakdown and attempted suicide, Ken’s paraplegia doesn’t stop him getting into places where most people would fear to tread. Places like South Ossetia, Syria, Botswana (where his taxidriver managed to get bogged in the only mud puddle in the nation).

He roams the world in a wheelchair, vital medical supplies and spare parts in his baggage, finding willing hands in unlikely places.

He pulled up beside my cab on Manuka rank one evening, and when I realised that instead of some fetching young lady leaning in my window, there was a head bobbing around at hip-height, I leapt out of the cab.

When I see a walking stick, a pair of crutches, a Zimmer frame, or a wheelchair, I know that the passenger has a genuine need for assistance, and I do my very best to supply it. People with mobility problems depend on cabs and cabbies to get around, and when you can’t walk, things as simple as popping down to the shop for a loaf of bread can become time-consuming and expensive adventures.

I like helping people, but I suspect that the real reason Ken keeps calling me when he needs a taxi, and I drive like a demon across town to be there, is that I laugh at his jokes.

Every trip with Ken is a delight. I chuckle happily, or listen enthralled, all the way home. Sometimes the trip is not enough, and I stand in his doorway, demanding more entertainment, until the lights on the cab begin to fade out.

There’s a legend in the lives of cabbies of the mother of all long fares. The lady who walked up to a cab rank in Sydney one day in the 1920s, asked “Do you take long fares?” and when an affirmative reply was given, asked to be taken to Sydney, the long way.

After visiting every mainland State and Territory, she paid the fare and walked off into history.

Ken related the story to me with gusto, and ever since, I’ve lived in hope and terror that the day will come when he wheels up to the door and asks, “Do you do long fares?”

Well, that day has come. We’re off to Melbourne in a few hours.

The worst part

2008-12-26T08:08:00.005+11:00

“It must get hard,” people say, when I tell them I drive the night shift. “Don’t you have trouble with the drunks?”

Well, yes, sometimes, but I take the position that everyone is entitled to a few drinks with their friends, and after a few drinks, you can’t drive, it’s too far to walk, the buses stop running at midnight, and how else you gunna get home, hey?

I have very little trouble with drunks.

The crazies give me more bother, but there’s none too many insane people wandering the streets of Canberra, despite what the rest of the country thinks. A few on the fringe, but they are more entertaining than scary.

“Nah,” I say, “it’s not the drunks and it’s not the crazies. It’s the herbivores.”

And that’s a fact. The absolute worst part of this job is the kangaroos.

It was the middle of a prolonged drought when I began cabdriving, and after dark, or indeed at any time of the day or night, you could find kangaroos browsing on the few patches of green, mainly the grassy verges of the main roads, or in suburban gardens.

I’ve seen them in the Parliamentary Triangle in mid-afternoon, attempting to cross six lanes of rush hour traffic on Adelaide Avenue outside the Prime Minister’s Lodge, bounding across the top of Hindmarsh Drive before sunset, two unlucky cars ahead, and of course after dark, they flood in from the surrounding bushland, looming up suddenly, five metres high, as I round a suburban corner.

Other nations have sacred cows, or deer, or elephants wandering through the streets, but in Canberra, the bush capital, the roos rule the road.

They can be big creatures, somewhere between a dog and a horse in bulk and speed, about as clever as your average chook, and mainly distinguished form other creatures by their long muscular legs, top-heavy appearance, and curious bounding movement. They move at speed by making long jumps, using the muscles and sinews in their legs to store energy as they land and then taking off again.

At full speed, they can appear out of a dark nowhere, up around windscreen height, in the space of an eyeblink. They don’t pause on the side of the road to peer nervously left and right, oh no, they jump across at full speed. And where there is one kangaroo, there is usually a mob of them. You can go in a heartbeat from being alone on a night road, your headlights picking out nothing but the white lines, to being surrounded by hurtling herbivores.

Kangaroos scare me. When you get down to it, they are just a big ball of muscle with sharp claws on the ends, and the thought of one of them crashing through the windscreen and thrashing around in the front seat is what gives me nightmares. People die from kangaroos: torn up behind the wheel, driving off the road or into other cars, or just from a heavy body suddenly demolishing the front end of the car.

Driving along at night, I see other creatures. Cats scamper across streets, foxes look up and down the road before picking their moment, and cows are big enough and slow enough to be seen from a safe distance.

But kangaroos are right there in front of you without warning. Twice I’ve had them jump out from roadside vegetation into my path and there was nothing I could do to avoid them.

The first one bounced off my passenger side quarter, taking out the headlight and half the bumper. The second one went under the car, taking out a headlight and half the bumper before demolishing various bits of the underneath machinery.

Both times, I was at the end of my shift, able to limp home on a single headlight with a surprise for the day driver. I was lucky to drive away.

“Bloody things!” I say to my passengers when they ask me about the worst part of my job. “Bloody kangaroos give me the screaming nightmares.”

That’s why I drive tense, hunched over the wheel and peering nervously into the dark, flipping on high beam whenever I can. My fellow human beings might be mad as cut snakes, sick up in the back seat, or run off without paying, but they are saints and angels compared to those bloody bounding kangaroos.

Christmas Cabbies

2008-12-25T23:09:00.003+11:00

My days are about forty-eight hours long. It’s not that the night shifts stretch out interminably - on the contrary, the hours flash by - but that I’m always conscious of the hours before and after Canberra’s day.

About the same time as I flip the meter onto the night-time rate, it’s midnight in New Zealand, where so many of my friends live. I drive through the dark, wash the car and crawl into bed on Thursday morning, but it’s still Wednesday for another six hours in Europe. And in the USA, where so many of my Internet friends live, it’s just about always yesterday. They must think I’m a being from the future sometimes.

And occasionally, I have a very long day indeed when I’m travelling with the sun. Typically Hong- Kong to Heathrow, but the longest Friday of my life had two dawns and two dusks, from waking up in Canberra to falling asleep in Washington DC, with a midnight pass over a glowing Hawaiian lava field somewhere in the middle.

For me, Christmas Day was yesterday, spent on the road up to Gosford, having lunch and a lazy afternoon, and then driving home again. But it’s still Christmas in other parts of the world.

We passed through the centre of Sydney on the way up, and, waking from sleep in the back seat whilst my wife and daughter shared the driving, I took a picture of two Sydney Silver Service taxis returning from the airport. My day driver later reported in, saying that he was having a profitable shift.

One cabbie was doing very well, I noticed. We were stuck in a creeping traffic jam from North Sydney to Pymble where the north coast freeway begins, and amongst all the grim-faced drivers was a happy cabbie crawling along beside us. And a couple of grim-faced passengers in the back seat.

We had a delightful lunch with my sister’s family, including my mother down from Rockhampton, played with the toys scattered about in various stages of assembly, experimented with Skypevision with other family members and just had a grand time before it came to an end too soon and we had to be back on the road.

Christmas is a special time in the Western world. My day driver and I exchanged presents, he dressed up in a Santa cap for his Christmas shift, and every single passenger I had on Christmas Eve wished me a Merry Christmas, often with a nice little tip.

Good humour, fellowship and smiles are the order of the day.

It’s been a great year for me. Sometimes I feel that it’s Christmas every day. Sometimes I just have to stop and savour my delight. Driving around the Arc de Triomphe was a highlight, as was kissing my wife on top of the Eiffel Tower. Looking out for giant gorillas on top of the Empire State Building, walking through the entrance to the National Building Museum in Washington, watching the incredible light show on Hong Kong Harbour.

Giving a helping hand to a lady in need, swapping travel stories with tourists picked up at the airport, singing along to Abba with some party-goers, laughing at the wicked wordplay of one of my regulars, hanging out with other cabbies - it’s been a blast.

Or just driving along a deserted freeway in Canberra, a favourite song playing as I pass some floodlit monument in between passengers. A happy cabbie.

But one moment sticks in my mind. Yesterday morning Paul and I wished each other a Merry Christmas as we sat in the front seat of the cab parked in my driveway. I’d finished my Christmas Eve shift, he was starting his Christmas Day, and we just sat and chatted for a few minutes.

Another cab passed by, stopped, reversed, and the driver got out. It was Geoff, who happens to be Paul’s father-in-law. We swapped more greetings, shook hands and then he was gone, Paul fired up the car and drove off, and I went back inside, very very happy with my job, my life, my family, my friends and the world in general.

It all comes back to what I answered on my taxi driver course two years ago, when we were asked, “What do you expect to get out of being a taxi driver”.

I thought for a moment and wrote down, “A lot of company for a short time, and a few good friends for a long time.”

The instructor looked at this and said, “You’ll have no troubles.”

And he was right.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

The Cabosphere

2008-12-24T12:08:00.003+11:00

I’d never taken much notice of taxis or taxidrivers before. Colourful characters in colourful cars. Part of the background. Lined up here and there, scurrying along city streets, minor characters in movies.

And then, when I became a cabbie myself, suddenly everything was cabs. I’d look at a line of cabs, pick out the tiniest details and point them out to my wife. I bought “Taxi Driver” to relish in Robert de Niro. I scoured the internet for taxi stories. I started my own taxi blog. I wrote copious accounts of my adventures.

I was hooked, plugged into a life I’d only guessed at before. The crackling radio conversations of codewords - suddenly they became clear.

Other taxidrivers fascinated me. We’d chat on ranks, occasionally I’d drive one home - mates rates - from a club, interstate or international cabbies would jump in at the airport. I relished the chance to swap stories with other cabbies. Each yarn would spark another memory, of runners, pukers, singers, jokers, kangaroos and caribous.

When I travelled, I’d go hunting taxi adventures, hauling my big yellow bags to a tiny yellow taxi, jumping in beside the driver in Frankfurt, Chicago, Hong Kong and swapping tales.

Hasim in Istanbul handed me his business card at the airport, with an email address of “Sultan of the Taxi”, posed with RingBear, and drove away out of my life.

Melissa Plaut encouraged me with my blog and when her superb book “Hack” was published, I bought my own copy, fresh mail-order from Amazon. I devoured the hilarious tales of a taxi despatcher in Arlngton, cabbies in Hawaii, London, Canada.

And I’m still loving it. There’s not enough hours in the day to drive a shift, read up on the blogs, and write up my own adventures. But I try.

And, in what may be a first for the cab sector of the blogosphere, my day driver Paul is tag-teaming with me. Two drivers, one car, night and day, the driver’s seat is never cold. His stories are my required reading, even when they’ve been summarised in a few words at shift changeover. He posts them in off moments from his iPhone, and he calls them Taxi Typos.

Midnight granny

2008-12-23T11:08:00.004+11:00

They were four young things, tweenie Australians out on the town, two from Perth giving their impressions of Canberra to a couple of locals as I drove them all home. A deserted freeway skirting Parliament House, the Prime Minister’s Lodge and the Mint. We owned Canberra.

“You’ve got the city planning down nice,” one said, “but it’s so far from anywhere.”

That was just great, I thought, coming from a sandgroper. Perth is three day’s hard driving across deserts and several State borders.

“It’s two hours to the beach,” said another. “In Perth it’s fifteen minutes max, and we can watch the sun set over the ocean.”

Fair call.

“Canberra’s public transport sucks.” The first one was on a roll. “The capital city and it sucks arse.”

No argument there, either. Canberra’s public transport consists of infrequent buses meandering through strings of suburbs. People sometimes accuse cabbies of going the long way, but with the bus system here, you get the maximum journey time for your money. And it stops running at midnight, long before the drunks get really ratty.

In fact, apart from the rare worker such as a baker beginning his shift, or a public servant burning the midnight oil when the government’s in a jam, it’s pretty much all drunks after midnight. Anyone else out at this hour has their own car.

So I was astonished to see someone waiting at a bus stop, getting on for two in the morning, after I delivered my four passengers home. It was a quiet night to begin with, and by now we cabbies were really scratching for fares. Luckily there were only a dozen or so cabs still on the road, so it kind of evened out.

I pulled up at the bus stop, and could hardly credit the sight. A little old lady, great-grandmother age, walking stick, sensible shoes, big handbag and floral dress.

She teetered over the kerb to me. “Are you a taxi?”

“Yes, hop in.”

Easier said than done, and I jumped out, scurried around the car, opened the door for her, tucked her in, made sure all was secure and closed the door.

“I can’t tell if it’s day or night,” she said, and then named a suburb about five minutes away.

Maybe she was blind, but she seemed to know where she was as we owned along Adelaide Avenue. “Turn here,” she commanded, not that I had any option for the address she’d given me. Canberra’s like that - there’s only a certain number of ways you can get somewhere, and if you don’t make the turn, you’ve got a long drive and a cranky passenger to recover.

I figured she was befuddled, as folk my age and up so often are, and when she mentioned that her knee and her back were hurting bad, I wondered if she had had one pain-killer too many earlier in the day. She spoke with an accent as she repeated her address a few times, and I reassured her that this was exactly where we were headed.

It was a small house on a pleasant street, garden overgrown, narrow driveway, letterbox vanished in the foliage. But it was the right address, I was sure of it.

She peered out uncertainly at the house in the headlights, and when I flipped on the side light to give more illumination, she nodded.

“That’s fifteen dollars fifty,” I read the meter for her.

“Fifteen dollars? So much!”

She was living in another time and place inside herself, a time when fares were cheaper, maybe measured in shillings and pence. “Fünfzehn Reichsmarken fünfzig,” I almost said, but instead, when she emptied out her purse, I picked out four gold coins and left her the silver. Not a note in sight. I’d go backwards on this fare, once I paid half the meter amount to the owner.

“Let’s get you out.”

I opened the door for her, made sure she had everything, and torch in my teeth, provided one arm to steady her and the other to carry her handbag as we tottered together along the narrow garden path. She peered about uncertainly, but when we reached the steps and she automatically latched onto the handrail, I was relieved.

It took some painful movements to get up the four cement steps, but we got there. She looked at the porch and declared, “This is not my house.”

The house in her mind was half a world and half a century away, so I suggested she try her keys in the door. We had a job finding them in her complicated handbag, but a flash of metal in the torchlight, and there they were. Naturally they fitted, and we opened the doors. I turned on her hall light, and she beamed happily as I passed in her belongings, finishing up with a gorgeous silk scarf. I’m very sorry I didn’t ask her to put it on for me, because there would have been a beautiful lady beneath it, but the thought didn’t come to me until later.

“Thank you so much!” she smiled. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” I echoed. It might have cost me four dollars and half an hour, but for a Christmas gift, no diamond ring could have given either of us as much pleasure.

Wintergarden

2008-12-22T11:36:00.004+11:00

I’ve been reading another cabbie blog, and his description of a funny incident set my memory gears working. See Somebody did a doougie in this cab?! for the full horror.

I remember my first vomit incident. I spent an hour after midnight cleaning the cab out, and I couldn't smell anything. I couldn't smell anything, full stop.

My next fare was a lady in expensive clothing, she was only going a couple of blocks, but she didn't want to walk in heels. She opens the door and instantly recoils. "Has somebody been sick in here?" she asks.

"No," I lie.

She gets in, goes the two blocks and shoots out, telling me to keep the change.

Next fare is a bloke, well sozzled, and he jumps in, gives the name of a town just over the border, and starts telling me what an awful night he's had and his mates left him, and now he's got to pay for the cab all by himself without splitting the fare.

Then he starts sniffing and looks at me, and I look at him.

"Ah, someone threw up in the car yesterday," I explained. "Bloody day driver."

The road stretched out ahead of us, long and lonely. We wound the windows down and he stuck his head out of his, and I kept mine inside, cause I couldn't smell anything but the faintest whiff if I put my mind to it, and the floral scent I'd spritzed inside the car from the dispenser at the car wash was covering that nicely. Three minutes worth, you'd hope so. That was a buck well spent.

But my passenger was gasping. He was in genuine distress. It was midwinter and he wasn't coping well with the icy blast. He was a Queenslander, and they only have a pale imitation of winter there. It was well below freezing and even though I had the cab heater cranked way up, the bits of him that were hanging outside weren't happy.

I could almost see his mental processes going. He'd had a bad night, this cab was costing him a fortune - he kept glancing at the meter - he was freezing his head off, he was likely sitting in a pile of stale vomit and the lying cabbie was taking him the wilderness route - I'd automatically gone down the back road - and nobody cared. I could see him running off without paying.

We entered town and you could smell it, above the whiff of vomit, the cloying floral and the clean blast of icy wind. He was going to run. He was fully justified.

"Ah, it's half rates for interstate," I said, looking at the meter which had forty lovely dollars on it. "A twenty will be fine."

He paid me, and I gave up for the night. Took the car home, stripped out the seats, washed everything washable, found a few puddles of recycled pizza had seeped under the back cushion, and I aired it out for a day and hung up a couple of air fresheners on full flow.

And you know, it never smelt right. Months after, I just had to open the door at the beginning of a shift, and I was instantly wearing that lady's high heels, my sweet little nose wrinkling in outrage and dismay.

Cabdriver in paradise

2008-12-21T10:56:00.006+11:00

A priest and a taxi driver both died and went to heaven. St. Peter was at the pearly gates waiting for them.

‘Come with me’, said St. Peter to the taxi driver.

The taxi driver did as he was told and followed St. Peter to a mansion. It had everything you could imagine from a bowling alley to an olympic size pool in the extensive gardens.

‘Wow, thank you’, said the taxi driver.

Next, St. Peter led the priest to a rugged old shack with a bunk bed and a little old black and white television set.

‘Wait, I think you are a little mixed up’, said the priest. ‘Shouldn’t I be the one who gets the mansion? After all I was a priest, went to church every day, and preached God’s word.’

‘Yes, that’s true. But during your sermons people slept. When the taxi driver drove, everyone prayed.’

Screen test

2008-12-20T15:00:00.000+11:00

From the Melbourne Herald-Sun:

TAXI drivers have ended a city blockade after ugly scenes today, but vow to continue their protest over safety screens.

They called on the minister to change laws introduced this year that make it compulsory for owners to purchase and install safety screens, regardless of whether drivers want them.

Earlier, about 50 drivers were behind a related wildcat action that brought the Tullamarine Freeway to a crawl, with cars three abreast across the road from Melbourne Airport soon after 8am.  Thousands of city-bound motorists were forced to crawl along behind them at just 5km/h, causing morning chaos along the airport-city link.

Full story here.

I’m with the Melbourne taxidrivers on this. The day they make me drive behind some sort of plastic shield is the day I stop driving.

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. Keep the driver safe from violent passengers. He doesn’t have to worry that someone’s going to pull a knife on him, or try to strangle him with the seatbelt.

Or kiss him.

The way to deal with crazies is to have the police deal with them. The message a safety shield sends is that it’s okay to have a go at the cabbie, we’re just going to make it more difficult to get to him.

For my part, I relish the personal contact with passengers. Sure I’ve been worried about some of them, but nobody’s ever offered me violence or threatened me. On the other hand, I’ve had a few kiss me or shake my hand, and that means the world to me. It means I’m doing my job right.

Silence and Respect

2008-12-19T03:45:00.000+11:00

Paul, my day driver, has bought an iPhone, and we share the mounting bracket. I pull my phone out at the end of a shift, he plugs his in, and the music and images continue. We're multimedia cabbies, albeit on a very small scale, and the passengers have to lean close to see the details.

Yesterday, about three in the morning, he plaid a music video that sent thrills up my spine. Trace Adkins' song "Arlington", in a moving video. A gravestone flickers onto the screen for an instant, that of Patrick Ray Nixon, for whom the bridge is named. There's a deeper message buried there.

But on the surface, the song explores a rich theme of American life, the tradition of duty and service, bearing arms for the nation. Arlington is perhaps its greatest expression - a dedicated resting place in sight of the nation's capital - and a pleasant place of grim reflection. Conceived in Civil War spite, the headstones stretching out from the very door of Robert E Lee's Virginia home, it is now an estate of majesty undreamt of in those days when the Union, like the Washington monument across the Potomac, was an unfinished stump.

I walked briefly through the rows of graves a few weeks ago, struck again by the beauty of the place. It is one of those things the Americans do so well, but also a reminder of my attitude towards the USA. Here those who gave their lives are treated with dignity and respect, the corporals and the presidents in site of each other. Yet over the river, living through the bitter winter in the snow, resting their heads on stone pillows amongst the monuments, one may find military veterans making the poorest of lives in the capital of the world's richest nation.

When death inevitably comes, those who wouldn't spit on the living man salute his dead remains when they lay him below the lawns of Arlington.

Much as I love America, there are things there to hate. Arrogance, incredible stupidity, inefficiency and ignorance on a colossal scale. And many other things. How could a nation that fought a great civil war, supposedly to free the slaves, then keep them downtrodden and humiliated for another century? Jefferson's high words of equality rang out in every American schoolhouse, but they echoed in empty heads, apparently.

And yet.

And yet, it is the words of America's founding fathers that I hold close to my heart. They stood up against tyranny and they brought forth a great modern democracy. Here the refugees from prejudice and oppression could create a new life. The sight of the Statue of Liberty greeting arrivals to New York, never fails to move me. The generosity, the friendship, the warmth of Americans and the genuine strength of each welcome keep me returning. No nation is perfect.

Last night I picked up a passenger from Civic. He'd been having Christmas drinks with friends, and he made me happy by naming a distant suburb. He spotted the iPhone, and an image on it - maybe the Iwo Jima Memorial, maybe the eternal flame above JFK's grave - set him talking of his two years posting in Washington. He was an army officer, and initially suspicious of years to be spent amongst politicians and bureaucrats, he quickly grew to delight in DC. The museums and the memorials, the people and their pleasures, it was all over too soon, and he yearns for the day he returns. We mentioned some of our favorite places. The National Building Museum, the Museum of American History, San Francisco and New York. He guided me into his street and summed it all up: "I love America".

Funny runner

2008-12-18T21:34:00.009+11:00

Wednesday night shift, winding down. I was hunting for the last few fares to put me over budget, and after I dropped a merry couple in Hackett a job came up in Dickson. I was torn between wanting to gas up at the Dickson service station where I could use the taxi’s fuel card (as opposed to paying for fuel myself and waiting several weeks for reimbursement) or earning a few dollars.

I figured any fare coming out of Dickson early Thursday morning wouldn’t be going too far, and I’d end up about as far from the Shell servo as I was now, so I hit the button and got the job.

Corey from Dickson going to the City. Well, that was fine too. There was a bit of work in the City, so I could string the jobs together and worry about gassing up later.

Corey wasn’t waiting at the address specified. He was over the other side of the street, on a corner, flagging me down. That’s a bad sign right there - he calls for a cab and then doesn’t wait a single minute, no he’s off looking for any passing cab. If I’d been any slower I might have lost my passenger to another cabbie.

But I collected him, quoted the name on the job screen and we were off to the City. He must have been a comedian in his day job, because he launches into a standup routine in my front seat, and geez he was funny. Kept me chuckling all the way down Northbourne Avenue.

“Any places still open?” he asks me, and I name Mooseheads as a possibility, and the Casino as a certainty. We pull up outside Mooseheads and he peers at it, saying that if it’s no fun, he’ll look for me at the cab rank. Then he gets out, disappears inside and that’s the last I see of him. There’s $12.90 on the meter, but I’m not about to leave my cab where the cops will pounce on me if I go inside to hunt up the money.

Funny guy.

I go around to the rank, but there’s a passenger waiting, I take him off to a distant suburb and I never get back to the city before my shift ends. Normally I’d not worry too much about thirteen dollars, but in this case, I’ve got the feeling I’ve been taken for a ride. So to speak.

Never mind. I’ve got Corey’s address to investigate, and I’ll try the polite approach first.

Sir!

2008-12-18T03:40:00.000+11:00

I wrote about last Friday’s sad queues of passengers waiting after midnight in rain-soaked lines for rare taxis. I worked long and hard that night, but eventually the stress, difficulty and danger of driving on wet roads got to me. I like getting people home safely, but one of those people is myself, and at some stage fatigue is going to end my shift one way or another. I prefer ending the night flat out in bed, not laid out on a slab.

A letter to the editor in The Canberra Times begins by asking, “Why aren’t holders of taxi licences fined heavily any time taxi queues of more than 100 people form?” In what is becoming a bad habit of mine, I responded:

Fran Emerson (letters, 17 December) speaks from the heart against taxi drivers for not being available when needed, and the government for not making more licences available, citing the long queues in Civic on a very wet Friday night. She calls for heavy fines to be levied against taxi owners whenever queues form beyond 100 people.

Well, okay, if she likewise comes out in support of taxi drivers being compensated whenever the numbers of cabs waiting at empty ranks builds up. The fact is that most of the time, there are cabs standing idle at ranks. Even on a busy drinking night, there will often be dozens of cabs lined up after midnight on the main Civic rank. Likewise at the airport: the cabyard is usually choked with taxis waiting to pass through the boomgates.

The reality of a cabbie’s life is that most of the long work days and nights are spent lining up for the chance of a passenger. We cabbies read books, fill out the puzzles in the paper, drink coffee, listen to the radio and dream of the rare times when we don’t have to wait.

During the busy periods, we cabbies are flat out. We live for such times. We’re not parked around a corner asleep, we’re on the road earning a living. We’re doing our very best to supply a service, and calls for cabbies to be heavily fined for doing their best aren’t helping.

And the paper published it, slightly modified.

I guess I shouldn’t really complain about people being unable to see things from a cabbie’s perspective. They see dozens of taxis around, a natural part of the urban landscape during slack times, and then at other times there are long queues for the cabs which have mysteriously vanished. Why aren’t all those cabs busy servicing the people who need them? Would it help if they were forced into line?

The answer is that mostly, we’re busy doing our jobs and carrying as many passengers as we can. Once we pick up a passenger, it’s an average of half an hour before we can return to the main cab rank to pick up the next, and we are as constrained by speed and distance as any other driver. We simply cannot be everywhere at once, If there are more people in the queue than cabs on the road, then there is naturally going to be a delay.

All the fines in the world aren’t going to create more cabs and cab drivers out of empty air. More likely, the sort of punitive fines envisaged by the original letter writer would push some operators out of business, and the situation would become worse, not better.

Spinning out

2008-12-17T21:05:00.000+11:00

Last Friday night I went home early, worn out by a shift of driving in pouring rain. I didn’t bother washing the car, parked it, went to bed. That was around three in the morning.

At 0420 - I remember the display on the bedside clock - I got a phone call from Tiny, who drives another Silver Service cab in the same mini fleet. They call him Tiny because he’s the tallest driver in Canberra. He’s been having a rough trot with health issues and car problems, and I wasn’t at all surprised to hear him say, “I’ve spun out near Cook, can you do a silver job for me?”

This was exactly what I’d been fearing for myself and I felt sorry for Tiny that he’d had an accident on wet roads added to all his other troubles, but I’d finished my shift, I was fast asleep, and for all I knew the Saturday day driver had already collected the car and driven off, so I declined with thanks.

Now, I might have gone straight from dreaming to answering the phone, but I remembered the incident in the morning. Next time I saw my day driver, Paul, I mentioned that Tiny had spun out and I was very glad that it hadn’t been me. Paul passed this on to Geoff, who is Tiny’s day driver, and of course he gave Tiny a ribbing next time he saw him.

Wednesday night, and I pulled into the Shell servo in Tuggeranong. On the other side of the gas pump was Tiny, his Holden Statesman with the filler cap on the driver’s side.

“Listen, mate,” he said, “What did you think I said when I rang you?”

“That you’d spun out near Cook,” I replied, kind of puzzled.

“No, I said that I was wrung out, feeling crook, and going home.”

“Ah.”

Still, I was glad that the joke was on me, after all, and that Tiny hadn’t had an accident. The shark bite on his leg is healing up nicely, too - he posted some gruesome looking photographs on his Facebook page.

I gassed up and went into Civic to collect a cabload of young nightclubbers. There was a queue already, young women in scanty clothing feeling the unseasonal chill in the air. It’s almost midsummer, but you wouldn’t know it. It’s cold and windy, with occasional showers, and putting a real damper on the Christmas festivities here.

They guy in the yellow jacket is a marshal, keeping control over the line, making sure that the cabbies pick up the passengers from the right end. Just a little bit of organisation works wonders. If left to themselves, the tired and emotional young folk can get competitive, battling for cabs, trying to jump the queue, scuffles breaking out...

But have someone guiding the cabs in, making sure they collect from the head of the line, it all flows smoothly, everyone confident that they’ll get a ride or a fare if they are patient. It’s good when the system works.

Cabbies chase down fares

2008-12-15T12:12:00.002+11:00

The Australian newspaper has a story about the lethal nature of cabbies:

SYDNEY'S taxis are knocking down pedestrians as fierce competition for passengers intensifies during the busy festive season.  Latest figures from the CBD's busiest hospital emergency department reveals about one in five pedestrians involved in road accidents are being hit by cabs.

To reduce the number of victims, doctors are issuing an alert to cab drivers, Christmas shoppers and revellers to take extra precautions on roadways.

The research, to be published in the next edition of the Australian Health Review, found 17.8 per cent of pedestrian victims admitted to St Vincent's Hospital last year had been hit by taxis.

One in six - or 16.3 per cent - of motorcyclist patients had also been hit by cabs.

Full story here.

Two points to note before assuming that Sydney’s cabbies are incompetent or homicidal. First, this is the central city we’re talking about, and naturally there will be a high concentration of cabs in the CBD. Secondly, cabs are on the road twenty-four hours a day, far more than normal vehicles.

Put these two facts together and it may well be that cabs are actually safer than other vehicles.

A common complaint amongst cabbies is that they drive so much more than other road users, but they still have the same number of points on their licence, and they have to pay the same fines as everybody else.

Thank goodness I’ve largely managed to avoid losing much in the way of points or fines, with the two marginal instances down to those evil speed and red light cameras at intersections.

But in the two years I’ve been driving cabs, I’ve had more and worse accidents than in the preceding thirty.

Two kangaroos - they just jumped out at me from roadside vegetation at night and there was nothing I could do except wrench off the mangled bumper, stow it in the boot for the day driver, and haul the body off the road. Both times I lost lights and cables and damaged the underneaths of the car.

One hare. Almost missed this one, but he doubled back and took out a turning light.

One possum. He was crossing the road, low and slow, at the same time I was peering at the navigation display and wondering about my passenger, who subsequently ran off without paying the fare.

One car I rear-ended, when they stopped suddenly.

One car rear-ended me when I stopped suddenly. The very next shift.

One tree I backed into when using the side mirrors to reverse straight down a curving driveway.

One cyclist. Luckily there was only a slight dent in the panel and I was able to haul the carcass off the road.

No, only joking. I moved across the bikelane into the parking lane outside the bus terminal at rush hour, and this fast-moving cyclist, head down, elbows out, glanced off my door and rammed my side mirror. I was able to pick him up, brush him down, give him my details including the number of the car I used to drive and warn him against mixing it with cabs or semi-trailers. He wobbled off and I heard no more, so presumably a bus got him on the way home.

And I bruised my knee leaving JFK when some goose got off an international flight, hired a car and crossed two lanes to make the exit my cabbie was using.

No lasting damage, though it’s been expensive.

And now I drive more carefully than I ever used to before I was a cabbie.

Please excuse the shaky photograph of Taxi 911 above, bearing down on me. The driver got out and asked what the hell I thought I was doing, but I just wanted a good photo for the story, and the rego number tickled my humour.

Sunday Morning Coming Down and Letting Go

2008-12-14T21:29:00.004+11:00

After service this morning we lingered, we three:
The reverend Golightly, my dear wife and me.
The sun streamed in as we talked at the door;
The stained glass tinting the old wooden floor.
I relaxed for a moment, and then with a sigh
My breakfast beans blew quietly by.

I thought I’d escaped, and I would have if
It hadn’t been quite so much of a whiff.
My wife ceased her chatter, sniffed and said “Pooh!”
Then gazed at me sternly. “Was that awful smell you?”
She gave me a Look and my heart gave a lurch,
What, admit before God that I’d farted in church?

“Me, dear? Of course not!” I said without thinking,
Holding my ground as they both stood there blinking.
A moment of hush and the reverend mused,
“Oh it must have been me, then. Please do excuse!”

So long, Blank Top?

2008-12-13T21:10:00.004+11:00

I’ve been looking around for other taxi blogs. There are some crackers around and I get tingles running up my spine at the way that people in distant places share my life, unknowingly.

One of my long time favorites is “Blank Top Chronicles”, the blog of a taxi despatcher from Arlington, Virginia. Between the endless tedium of answering phonecalls from people wanting cabs and sending cabs to collect them, he keeps a blog of some of the more ridiculous examples of stupidity, ignorance and malevolence.

ME: What's the address you need to be picked up from?
GUY: I'm at Arlington Cemetery.
ME: Okay, the only place there where we pick up is the taxi stand inside the main gate. Is that where you are?
GUY: I'm not sure where that is.
ME: You can ask one of the guards, they'll direct you there.
GUY: Okay, hold on a second. . . Sir? SIR! EXCUSE ME, SIR! SIR?!?! EXCUSE ME!!! SIR!!! . . . I'm here at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the guards aren't paying any attention to me . . . SIR!!! HEY, EXCUSE ME. . .
ME: WAIT, STOP!!! You're at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? That's a CEREMONIAL GUARD! They aren't allowed to break routine!
GUY: Oh, I was wondering why they were being so serious.
ME: Good God. Just find a regular guard.
GUY: I don't see any around . . . Oh wait, here comes one.
ME: I'll bet.

These sorts of incidents, gleefully recounted, kept me limp with laughter for days while I scrolled back through the archives. But of late, the entries and updates have become increasingly sparse, and when I went to the site, there was a message saying Sorry, the blog at blanktop.blogspot.com has been removed.

However, all is not lost, and Google has cached some of the entries. The most recent pages are here.

It was raining hard in Fyshwick

2008-12-12T21:07:00.005+11:00

I’ve lived in Canberra for twenty years, give or take a day, and in all that time a day and night of solid rain is still a wonder. It just doesn’t happen. We’ve had full years go by with no rain at all.

Usually what happens is that it’s dry for a month and then we get a shower. Instantly all the oil and gunk that has seeped into the surface of the road rises on the water and turns our grand boulevards into skating rinks. Roundabouts, of which Canberra has about a bazillion, become even more hazardous than usual.

I remember going around Parliament House (enclosed by not one, but two giant roundabouts) and a young driver one lane over took the curve just a bit too fast. He spun around a couple of times, remaining in place, looking terribly embarrassed, and then, get this, he found he was pointing the right way so he took off again. Last I saw of him he was red tail-lights going down Commonwealth Avenue.

But there’s always a slew of drivers who aren’t so lucky. Half an hour after the first raindrops fall, and there are flashing lights, towtrucks and police all over. Messages come over the despatch system to avoid certain intersections “due to MVA”.

I’ve learnt to slow down in the rain, take it easy on the corners, and be prepared for idiot drivers. I drive a good car with excellent tyres, but I still pull back one or two notches from my usual speed.

Thursday night the rain began on Friday morning, just as my shift was ending. It had been a beautiful day and night, a few light showers here and there, just enough to get the car dirty from road spray. I ran it through the carwash and boy, was that five bucks down the drain!

Paul, my day driver, had twelve hours of solid rain, and rose to the occasion magnificently, sheltering little old ladies with the umbrella we keep in the boot, driving well under hotel porticoes, positioning the car to avoid puddles and so on. The highlight came, he recounted with relish, when he dropped a lady off at the airport, telling her “when you get out, stand over there out of the rain, and I’ll bring your bags over to you.” He did just this, and she handed him a twenty dollar note as a tip.

I was inspired by this, so when I took a trio of lady public servants to the airport I used Paul’s line and as I hauled their bags to them through the rain, I got three big smiles.

It was wet. Twelve hours of rain and the city was soaked. Drains were beginning to back up. Here and there puddles at low points on the road were turning into lakes and oceans. I know the places to avoid on the major routes, where I’ll slow down and change lanes while less cautious drivers throw up huge sheets of dirty brown water. But when one passenger asked to be delivered to the university, I took the off ramp and discovered too late, at seventy kilometres an hour, that there was half a metre of water on the road, gathered invisible in a little dip.

For a second the world turned into spray, and I wished that I was outside the cab taking photographs of the spectacle, rather than inside wondering if we were going to stay in one piece.

“Route!” I said, startled. “I might go a different way, next time.”

“Lucky we didn’t go sideways,” he agreed. No tip from him, neither.

I worked out of the airport during the evening, and the roadworks soon showed their weak spots. The small potholes here and there expanded under the traffic, linked up, and disappeared under deceptive sheets of muddy water. I went through the puddles at a walking pace, choosing my line very carefully indeed, but other drivers weren’t quite so wary, and you could almost hear the shouts of outrage and alarm as their cars bucked and dived through the hidden trenches, each impact crumbling the holes just a little bit further.

All in all, it was just a miserable night. I had the wipers going continuously, moving from intermittent to double speed as required. At one stage I took a few minutes out to gas up, taking the outside pump through force of habit and the placement of the fuel cap. Big mistake, as this placed me directly under the edge of the driveway canopy, a line of drops splattering down on my bald spot. Worse, the rain suddenly intensified, and I crouched miserably back against the bowser, holding the filling lever down at arm’s length. When I went inside to pay, the counter attendant was barely able to speak through his laughter.

Glad I brightened his night, because it was just dismal out on the roads. I contemplated going home early, but there was just too much work around. I’d drop a passenger off and immediately I’d be offered a new radio job. At one point in the evening, I was given jobs that were an hour or so old. No passengers waiting outside for me, and no flicker of interest from darkened houses. After a few “no-shows”, I gave up on radio work, instead choosing ranks, street hails, and my own regular passengers ringing for a cab.

Friday night with Christmas parties and school formals in full swing. Young women in scanty wisps of evening dresses nervous under umbrellas. Cheerful drunks stomping through puddles. Bare-chested men striding through the rain.

The cabline on the main rank was a sight to behold. A lot of cabbies had given up driving through the rain and gone home early, and a lot more were attending to calls out in the suburbs. So there weren’t as many cabs in Civic as there would normally be, and the nightclubbers were facing an hour or two standing in the rain for a cab. This was misery made flesh, but I never got close enough to rescue anybody. I’d drop off a passenger at a hotel or club, and instantly there would be several people scrambling to get in.

“My knight in shining armour!” exclaimed one young lady, hopping in beside me, three soaked companions bundling damply into the back.

All told, it was a dreadful night to be needing a cab. There were delays at the airport, and planes were still arriving after midnight. Passengers waiting patiently in line with their luggage, cheering each rare set of cab headlights. At least they had a scrap of shelter.

Somewhere around two in the morning I gave up. I wasn’t sure if I had a Saturday driver to take over at three, but I couldn’t stand another hour of dark and dismal rain to hand over in person.

Driving up Canberra Avenue and there was Parliament House ahead of me, the floodlights atop the flagpole lighting up low cloud and drizzle. It looked spectacular, and I decided to brave the rain for a quick time exposure shot. Parliament House is a dramatic sight normally; tonight it was surreal.

I parked in the underground car park and rummaged around for my camera. Got out and felt in my bag. Drat. I had my little folding tripod, necessary for a time exposure, but I’d left the camera itself at home after uploading a few recent shots. All I had was my iPhone, and much as I love it, it isn’t my first choice for fine photography.

Nevertheless, I climbed the stairs out into the drizzle and trudged along to a good spot. A disbelieving patrol car loitered nearby as I clicked off a couple, turned and disappeared back underground.

And that was my night. I gave one last sad look at the dismal cabline in Civic before I gassed up and headed home.

Cadet driver

2008-12-11T20:46:00.001+11:00

Canberra is home to two of our military academies. Oldest is Duntroon, the Royal Military College built around the homestead of the region’s first land owner, Robert Campbell. The first intake of cadets predates Word War One, at a time when Canberra consisted of the Campbell property, a church, a few workers cottages and the bleak Limestone Plains. There’s real tradition here.

The second establishment is more recent. The Australian Defence Force Academy opened in 1986, the year I came to Canberra. It’s softened into the environment now, but in those days it was raw white against the dry brown landscape and it really stood out. It’s a tri-service acadamy, giving officer cadets a three year degree and a lot of military training before they attend the Army, Navy or Air Force college for a year to complete.

Duntroon’s for the Army cadets, and their graduation and ball was Wednesday night. They held the ball at the Old Bus Depot, and after pinning on their pips at midnight, there was a run for taxis. Typical army efficiency, they organised marshals to keep everything flowing and the queue disappeared in short order.

Thursday evening, and I got a call to the ADFA roundabout for a Silver Service job. The place was loaded up with cadets, all in formal mess dress, ready for the big night. One cadet approached me and he gave the name of the booking, so he was in, and most of the others looked downcast.

Usual story: three other cadets joined the one who’d booked the cab and we set off for the ball at the National Convention Centre.

The reason why it’s difficult to get a cab to pick up at ADFA, or Duntroon for that matter, is that if several different cadets order a cab, they’ll meet at the pickup location at the roundabout, and being good team players, they’ll share the first cab to show up. Which means that the other cabs booked there find no passengers, unless they hang around and steal another cabbie’s fare.

So I don’t pick up from the defence academies unless I’m really scratching for work.

But, having said that, cadets are excellent passengers. Well-behaved, law-abiding, a fine sense of discipline and generally intelligent and well-rounded characters, I love having them in the cab. No trouble at all, and frequently entertaining.

Force of habit almost kept me going along Constitution Avenue to Mooseheads, the regular cadet pub, but at the last moment I remembered and pulled into the drop-off point outside the convention centre. The place was alive with cadets, their parents, their girlfriends, their brothers. All dressed up in their finest.

“Don’t you move,” I warned the young lady cadet in the back, “until I get out and open the door for you.”

A special occasion for her - and her male classmates, of course - and having a uniformed chauffeur open the door helps the evening swing.

I then ignored the convention centre until midnight, when I knew there’d be a flood of passengers. Some of the cadets would walk down to Mooseheads - the only night when they were allowed out at night in uniform - but others would need taking back to the academy, and their guests would want rides to their hotels.

Come midnight and I lined up with the other cabbies. It was full-on for about an hour, and I had passengers going in all directions. One party stuck in my mind. He was an Air Commodore, proud of his son graduating. He opened the door for his wife, and his daughter got in on the other side. Mother was a little tipsy, and she exclaimed over my slide show of “happy holiday snaps” on the iPhone. I liked her.

Daughter was a little miffed that she hadn’t been allowed to go out clubbing with her brother. “But you’re not old enough,” her father said, “wait until next year and the Duntroon graduation.”

“I could get in,” she pouted. “I look eighteen.”

“Ooh, there’s Tower Bridge!” exclaimed her mother. “Can you take us to London, driver?”

“Mum!!!”

We got to their hotel, and Father helped his ladies out. “I could drive around with you all night,” I told Mother.

Father leaned in the window and paid up, adding a generous tip. I thought he was pretty cool, too.

For the remaining hours of the morning, Civic was full of happy cadets, exhilarating in the completion of three hard years. I drove a few home, enjoying their company. I love having happy people in the car.

Just follow the road

2008-12-10T20:27:00.001+11:00

We got a new computer screen installed recently. Along with new GPS software.

I hate it. First off, few of the streets are labelled with their names at any sort of usable zoom level. That means if I don’t know the precise location of one of the several thousand streets in Canberra, I can no longer navigate the map to centre on the suburb and hunt around until I find the street. I can zoom to the highest magnification (when most (but not all) of the street names are displayed) but that takes a lot of scrolling, kind of like viewing an art gallery in postage stamp sized chunks.

Or I can stop under a streetlight and check the street directory.

The only good feature of the new system is that house numbers and block boundaries are displayed on the map. I no longer have to get out of the cab and hunt around with a torch to find house numbers obscured by foliage, rotted away or eaten by possums - I can glance at the map and find my exact destination.

The big selling point of the new system is that it includes driving directions. The old system was just a map, and drivers had to find their own route. No great problem - any driver with a bit of experience soon gets to know where all the suburbs are and the best ways between them.

When the new system was installed, I gave the routing software a try, and quickly discovered that, although it would get me to the destination, it must have been optimised for taxidrivers, because it would choose the longest plausible route between two destinations.

Or worse. The screenshot above is a good example of the idiot system. My car is marked by the red dot, and I’m coming up to a T intersection on Marconi Crescent. I’m instructed to turn left, follow Marconi Crescent looping north, turn left down Drakeford Drive and then right onto the cross street (which is O’Halloran Circuit, by the way).

A child could spot the best and shortest route. Go to Marconi Crescent, turn right, and right again onto the cross street, eliminating that wasteful loop north.

So no, I’m not a fan of the new system.

I follow the Eagle

2008-12-09T20:10:00.001+11:00

OK, this bit of netlore is a little corny, but oh, so close to home!

No one can make you serve customers well. That’s because great service is a choice.

Years ago, motivational speaker, Harvey Mackay, told a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this point. He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey. He handed my friend a laminated card and said:

‘I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags in the trunk I’d like you to read my mission statement.’

Taken aback, Harvey read the card. It said:

Wally’s Mission Statement:

To get my customers to their destination in the quickest,

safest and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment.

This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean!

As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.’

My friend said jokingly, ‘No, I’d prefer a soft drink.’

Wally smiled and said, ‘No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice.’

Almost stuttering, Harvey said, ‘I’ll take a Diet Coke.’

Handing him his drink, Wally said, ‘If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.’

As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card. ‘These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you’d like to listen to the radio.’

And as if that weren’t enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him. Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of day. He also let him know that he’d be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or, if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.

‘Tell me, Wally,’ my amazed friend asked the driver, ‘have you always served customers like this?’

Wally smiled into the rearview mirror. ‘No, not always. In fact, it’s only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer, on the radio one day.
He had just written a book called You’ll See It When You Believe It. Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, ‘Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd.”

‘That hit me right between the eyes,’ said Wally. ‘Dyer was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.’

‘I take it that has paid off for you,’ Harvey said.

‘It sure has,’ Wally replied. ‘My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I’ll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I don’t sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.’

Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I’ve probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two took the idea and ran with it. Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn’t do any of what I was suggesting.

Wally the Cab Driver made a different choice. He decided to stop quacking like ducks and start soaring like eagles. How about you?

Wally’s mission statement is mine, word for word. I don’t do the drinks service - though it’s a good idea - but I like looking sharp and having a sparkling clean car. Perhaps my greatest blessing is that my day driver Paul thinks the same way but more so, and gives me an example to follow.

Fat Monday

2008-12-08T20:00:00.001+11:00

I’m not much of a one for religion, but sweet Lord, what a night it was! I smashed my all-time best record for a Monday night by a good hundred and fifty dollars.

From the moment I signed on, the work just flowed. There was nothing special. No Parliament sitting. No Floriade. No big exhibition. No sports events. Maybe a few high school and college formals, but any work from them usually doesn’t appear until around midnight.

But this was the golden shift. Job after job. I’d pull into the airport and instead of a packed cabyard, the red tail lights of the only other taxi disappearing through the boomgate to collect another passenger from the queue. I had long jobs, I had short jobs and the only way I could get some time out to have a meal or gas up was if I deliberately ignored the system.

It was odd, though. Usually when we cabbies are flat out, bookings pile up in the system until the busy areas have long listings of stale bookings. Bookings that are more than fifteen minutes old often spell trouble for the cabbie: either the passenger is tense after waiting so long, or they have given up, called another cab, flagged one down or just walked home.

But it wasn’t like that - bookings were handled promptly, drivers and passengers were happy and it was just a great shift.

Towards the end, I picked up a lady from a Christmas party. She was well sozzled and I kept a wary eye on her all the way down to Gordon at the bottom of Canberra. But she was OK. We talked about our children, the pains or pleasures of parenthood, and how the balance was positive.

After I dropped her off, there were a few jobs here and there, and about quarter past two I gave up for the night, facing a long drive back to the city to run the cab through the carwash and hand over to the day driver.

I found a service station that matched the fuel card the owner gives us - this time of night there’s only three remaining open in Canberra - and gassed up. As I got back into the car, I was offered a job on the despatch system. I looked at it as the seconds counted down. Chances were that it would be something local, something short. I had a bit of time left up my sleeve.

I hit the “Accept” button just as the counter hit zero. The details screen came up. “Town Centre Sports Club”. That was only a couple of blocks away. “Destination: City” - Woot! Jackpot!

I was going to drive back to the city anyway. Far better to do it with a passenger paying the fare than driving empty.

Turned out that the job involved three very drunken young cooks, and they sang along with my music videos all the way into the city. I dropped them outside Mooseheads nightclub with a few minutes to spare before three.

I topped up at the Braddon servo and asked for a “taxi wash”.

“How was your night?” asked the young chap running the night counter.

“Flat out!” I said happily. “I’ve had a fantastic night!”

“That’s because of Eid ul-Adha,”

“Ummm?” I looked blank.

“All the Muslim drivers are staying home. It’s a religious holiday.”

And that would be about half of Canberra’s taxi fleet. No wonder I’d had a great shift. On a slow Monday, when normally I’d be scratching for work, there was just the right number of cabbies on the road.

Praise Allah!

New York, New Job

2008-12-07T16:40:00.005+11:00

Or a return to an old job. Here’s a tale of an old cabbie, who has found a way to beat the recession:

A Cabbie Returns to a 'Recession-Proof' Field

BY MINJI REEM

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 05, 2008

According to Cesar Cascello, there’s one profession that will remain fundamentally recession proof—his own.

“Thank God for us. One thing about Manhattan is that people got to get where they got to get to,” Cascello says.

Cascello is a full-time taxi driver in New York City. His day starts at 3 a.m., when he gets out of bed just in time to punch in an hour later. He drives from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. and most days, he works straight through for 12 hours without stopping to eat. For him, eating just slows him down. “I’m gung-ho,” he says. “I just drive. I’ll just waste half an hour if I go somewhere to eat.”

Full story, here.

I can wholeheartedly endorse his comment: “You meet a lot of people if you’re driving all the time. I can never get bored of my job,” he says.

Tired after a twelve-hour shift, yes. Bored, no!

Three smiles

2008-12-05T12:13:00.004+11:00

I picked up a lady on the airport rank this evening. Smartly dressed, small carryon bag. She got into the back seat and said “High Court”.

Not the usual destination for an airport passenger in the early evening, so I guessed that she was a lawyer or senior staff, possibly delivering or collecting some important papers.

I headed out over the jumble of construction barriers and uneven pavement that marks the airport road system nowadays, glanced out at the main road, and swung round to go the back way along Nomad Road. It’s got a 40 km/h limit on it, and a trio of speed bumps to keep cabbies honest, but when the main road is choked at peak hours, it’s the way to go.

“Has it changed this much?” my passenger asked. “I don’t remember going along here before.”

I explained that no, the roadworks hadn’t turned this road into the main exit, just that it was a good way to bypass the congestion, and I gestured over at the main road a few metres away, where the cars were crawling along.

And that got us started on the subject of roadworks and how Canberra does a poor job of implementing and upgrading roads. I rattled on, a subject close to my heart, and she murmured in agreement now and then.

Had a grand old natter, the two of us, and as we pulled into the High Court, we talked about the new National Portrait Gallery, just opened next door. I nodded over at the new entrance, commenting that it didn’t feel right to drive across the High Court’s grand entrance ramp, just in front of the fountain. “It’s not fitting,” I said, and it isn’t.

We pulled up at the practitioner’s entrance, and she paid with a card. I glanced at the name on it, and my jaw dropped a little. I handed her a receipt, and made my usual joke, “I’ll just drive off with your baggage now.”

She smiled, and I leapt out, popped the boot up, hauled out her bag, extended the handle and opened her door in one fluid motion.

“Thank you very much,” she twinkled, “You’re a doll.”

And that made my day. Not every shift that a High Court Justice calls this cabbie a doll.

Next job from the airport was at the other end of the market. A young Asian lady, carrying two cloth bags, asking how much the fare to the city was. I picked her for a student.

“Oh, fifteen, twenty dollars,” I replied.

I packed her bags into the boot and she got into the front seat. I asked her for a destination, but she was a bit uncertain, asking if there were any backpackers hostels in town.

“Just one,” I said, “the YHA in the city centre.”

Had a quartet of cheery Christians from the hostel the previous day. They’d rated it highly. I’m a big consumer of hostels in my travels, though naturally I haven’t staid at the Canberra YHA, and I always find YHA or HI establishments very well kept, so I had no hesitation in recommending this one to her. Cheap and cheerful, excellent value, clean, tidy, comfortable and safe.

We made our way into the city centre. She’d been here before, and noted some landmarks as we got closer. I took the back way down the lane into Akuna Street, driving underneath an office building, and her eyes widened in alarm, but a few seconds later we were back in the open air, the hostel in front of us.

The meter read $17.60, but I stuck by my low estimate. “That’s exactly fifteen dollars,” I told her.

She pulled out a twenty and wanted to give me a tip, but I insisted on the five dollars change. Generally when people are anxious about the cab fare, they don’t have a real lot of money to splash around, and I wasn’t about to dig into the limited funds of a travelling student.

I pulled her bags out, and looking at the flight of steps up to the entrance, hoisted the heavier of the two. She wasn’t keen on this. “It’s too heavy!” she protested.

I laughed. She was a tiny thing, and if she thought the bag too heavy for me, it was definitely a load for her. We went up the steps, I set the bag down, and here she was, fumbling with her purse again. “Let me give you a tip,” she started, but I shushed her.

“I don’t need a tip, just a smile!”

And I got a smile from her. A big smile and a cheerful wave as I reversed the cab back into the evening traffic.

I love my job.

Cycle taxi

2008-12-05T11:25:00.000+11:00

She hailed me down, standing on King Edward Terrace outside the brand new National Portrait Gallery.

I’ve been watching the new building from close up over the past year, from the time when the site office was the only structure, and I’d park outside for the engineers to come out for their ride to the airport. Through the autumn and winter months as the walls rose and the site was so crowded with construction materials that it was a wonder anyone could move at all, and finally to the spring days as the landscapers moved in. On my final trip the engineer asked me to detour via the High Court so that he could check the appearance of the completed main entrance from a distance.

And now the building is open, a fresh part of Canberra’s permanent collection of grand national institutions. She was standing outside in the new drop off/pick up zone, a lady in the prime of her life (i.e. my age) and she must have been getting anxious about her taxi’s arrival.

But here I was. She got into the back seat, gave me directions for a nearby hotel, and commenced a phone call. I turned down the music and listened with one ear in case instructions to the cabbie emerged.

“I’ll hold the taxi at the hotel, collect my luggage, and go to the airport,” she was saying to someone on the other end. Fair enough. It would work out a lot cheaper and quicker than paying me off and waiting for another taxi in the rush hour.

She hung up. “Driver, can I ask you something? It might seem a little unusual.”

“Sure.” I’ve stopped at hotels on the way to the airport to pick up luggage before.

“Could we go via Joyville Crescent? It’s not far.”

I recalculated the route in my head. “We’ll collect your bags from the hotel first, yeah?”

We pulled up at the hotel, and I followed her into reception. Always happy to carry a lady’s bags, and I stowed them in the boot and moved off, crossing one of Canberra’s main avenues into a suburban street.

“I used to live here in the Sixties,” she said, “and I haven’t been back since, apart from a quick trip in 1974. I’d like to see if the house where I lived is still there.”

I looked around. Most of the buildings in this part of the city, close to the Parliamentary Triangle, were modern or post-modern blah. Slab sides and lots of exposed cement. But here and there some of the older houses settled comfortably in mature gardens.

Canberra itself isn’t that old. A lifetime ago and there was nothing here but a church and the cottages of the construction crews as they worked on what is now Old Parliament House. People used to talk of Canberra as “a good sheep station spoilt”, and the black and white photographs show open plains, with the few scattered gum trees outnumbering the lonely buildings.

“There’s my old school! Can we drive past it?”

Of course we could. My passenger gazed hungrily out at the brick buildings.

“It’s all changed. I don’t remember any of that.”

Canberra was a sleepy town for the first fifty years. Dirt roads, open fields, cows grazing on the slopes of Red Hill. Then in the Sixties the government departments were pulled in from their temporary homes in the state capitals, office buildings sprang up and the residential suburbs ballooned out, arterial roads following them in the freeway frenzy of the Seventies.

“I used to ride my bike along here.”

We turned into another avenue, leading up to the bushland slopes of a hill, a few older houses left, open nature strips unchanged for decades. The modern buildings faded out as we looked at the remaining houses of an earlier Canberra.

Together we swung right, past parkland.

“This is looking familiar now.”

We pedalled along the crescent, my bike a blue Malvern Star freewheeler, hers a girl’s model in pink, maybe a basket on the handlebars. I couldn’t see the details clearly, but she could, and her hair streamed out as we sped along, smiling happy on the afternoon ride home from school through the golden summer.

I looked at the street numbers. “There it is!”

We pulled into the driveway, putting feet down to steady ourselves as we looked at the white-painted house.

“Oh, it’s just the same. But smaller.”

A moment more, and then we swung our bikes around, leaning on the pedals as we gained speed past more houses and the small shopping strip.

Late Sixties construction, but no memories for my companion. A motel that had once been a space-age wonder in a bold new Canberra, but it had just been an empty lot before the freeway came through.

The dusty streets firmed out as we accelerated up the ramp, the stark outlines of the new Parliament House ahead. It, too was just a construction site when I arrived here as a public servant in 1986. The great angled legs of the flagpole were lying in the dust, and there were huge stacks of blue fibreglass concrete moulds.

Now, it’s a spectacular landmark, looking down the hill to the lake that defines Canberra. Long ago there were two grand new bridges spanning the miserable trickle of the droughtshrunken Molonglo River, but after they closed the floodgates of the Scrivener Dam, the band playing as the VIPs leaned over the side, the water level slowly rose, until one morning after flooding rains in the mountains, suddenly Lake Burley Griffin was there, muddy and raw.

It’s parkland and carefully tended foreshores now. The modern world came flooding back as we passed Russell Offices. Roadworks on the way into the airport, and I handed her my card along with a receipt for the fare.

“I’ll go back, take a few pictures, and put them up on my website.”

She smiled her thanks, but I’d enjoyed our bike ride through old Canberra every bit as much as she had.

More photographs at my Flickr page.

Brain surgery

2008-12-04T12:46:00.000+11:00

I had a bad start to the day. The computer system wouldn’t turn on. Pressed all the buttons, jiggled all the cables, checked all the fuses. Nothing.

Blast. Just as the busy period began. Drove to the workshop out at Fyshwick and the mechanic pressed all the buttons, jiggled all the cables, checked all the fuses, popped his head under the dashboard. “Fifty dollar fee for soiling the cab,” I told him. “Wires are frayed,” he said, and so they were.

“You’ll have to take it out to the electricians,” he said, so off I went to Premier Instruments in Dickson, where the mechanic pressed all the buttons, jiggled all the cables, checked all the fuses. “The wires are frayed,” I said, pointing out the place.

“So they are,” he said, pulled down the back seat and checked the computer boxes tucked away there. “Not good. I think that’s cooked the brain. You’ll have to take it to the base.”

Back to the taxi company base in Fyshwick, steering my empty way through the streams of cabs, all of them full of passengers.

The technician didn’t bother with all the jiggling. “Think we’ve worked out what happened,” he said. Apparently the software had been updated remotely and it had gone to the wrong cabs. Logging out forced a software update, so after my day driver signed out, the system loaded an update, failed and went to sleep.

He pulled down the back seat, unscrewed the brain box, installed a fresh one, and got me on the air again. Off I went, just as another cabbie came in to have his brain replaced.

First Post

2008-11-30T03:48:00.000+11:00

This blog is a continuation of my main site at Skyring.com.au where I have additional material and a truckload of earlier posts. This in turn is a continuation of my now comatose taxi blog at Livejournal.

Be warned, some of these early posts are long!