Tag Archives: freeway

Seen on the freeway this morning

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Do you think that the guy in the Hyundai noticed the plow next to him?  That plow was huge! It’s bigger than the car.  I think it’s for one of those caterpillar earth moving machines or whatever.  Check it out:

Anyway, I thought it was a funny scene and thought I’d share it with y’all.

Sucky Wednesday

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So, yesterday was another sucky Wednesday. Not so much because of the money that I did make, but because of the money I didn’t make.

  • I took this woman from south Austin out to San Marcos to a woman’s shelter of some kind. She had 2 little kids and a ton of luggage. I helped her with the luggage, I helped her get the car seats in the car, I even stopped at a convenience store for her along the way so she could get the kids some candy. I was polite, cordial and amenable the whole way out there, and once we got to San Marcos, I helped her unload etc. Since I was so far south, the computer wasn’t picking up the signal and I couldn’t charge her credit card. Once I left her and started coming in closer to town, I ran her card and it got declined. I called the woman back, and she didn’t answer the phone. I called her back several times, and she’s not answering. So basically, I’m out the $65 that the fare cost, plus the gas I used, plus the time. So, there you have it.

But wait, there’s more!

  • I was waiting at the cab stand off of 6th street and San Jacinto. This guy comes up and asks me if I know where this club “Glass” used to be. I do know where that is and it’s only a few blocks away. I tell them this, and they ask me to take them there. We get to their destination, and the fare is $2.35, the guy wants to pay me with a $50. Bastard. Neither he nor his woman claim to have any dollar bills, yet he offers to get some change and come back. Yeah, right. So I kick them out.
  • This other guy, wanted to go from the Austin Inn Motel to the Super 8 down the freeway. It’s a $12 ride.  After we get to his destination he claims to only have $6. I took his $6 and felt like just ripping into him but he says: “God bless you sir, thank for helping me.” Dunno why that disarmed me, but it did. I seriously was gonna tear this guy a new one.
  • I picked up this guy from the northernmost gay bar in town called “Bout Time”. He tells me that the bar was dead and he wants to go to a gay bar downtown. I’m thinking cool, that’s about $25, but as soon as we get on the freeway, he decides he wants to go to Denny’s instead, so I drop him off at Denny’s for a grand total of $7.
  • Then, I picked up this woman from Pflugerville, which is a suburb of Austin to the north. I get there, and start to take this woman to her booty call which was off of McNiell and 183, but the booty call canceled. So, we turn around at the exit/entrance to her apartment complex and I take her back to her building. Instead of making about $30 for the trip, I end up with $5.

All in all, yesterday ended up costing me money, instead of me making any money. Another bad Wednesday like this one and I’ll have to stop driving on Wednesdays. I was really pissed off about all these idiots not paying me, but then I realized that I was doing the same thing to other people. So, I can’t really be all that angry about it. Karma is a bitch, so this morning I started executing on my plan to fix things and hopefully good karma will come back to me. We’ll see.

Oh, what a night

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Friday night, I had a pickup from an accident scene. The dispatch came at the request of APD. Not really sure what to expect, it took me a bit to find the actual site which was just east of I-35 on Slaughter lane.

When I pull up to the scene, I could sense the relief from the officers at my arrival. They all tell me to go to the front cruiser.  As I pull up to the cruiser, I see the cause of the commotion. I cannot tell you what kind of car it was. It looked like an accordion. The driver’s door was off, the airbags had deployed. There were all kinds of fluids everywhere and a door was a few feet away from the frame of the car.

When the officer in the lead cruiser sees me, she gets out and opens the back passenger door. This guy gets out and casually strolls over to my cab.  Now, I’m really not sure what to think.  The officer comes over to my side, asks me if I speak Spanish (I do) because my passenger only speaks Spanish and whether I know where_______ street is because that’s where this guy is going.  As we pull away from the scene, I ask the guy what happened, and he tells me.

Turns out, he was at home, on his phone when his cousin pulls up in his car with a friend of his and tells him to get in.  Not really sure of where they’re going, he gets in the back seat of the car and keeps talking on the phone.  At some point, he realizes that his cousin is drunk, almost at the same time, he asks his cousin to slow down  since he’s driving “kinda fast.”  He tells me that they are going well over 100 miles an hour when they go through the traffic light eastbound under the freeway.  Just so you know, the posted speed limit is 35 mph in this area.  He tells me that as they started to go around the uphill turn just after the intersection his cousin lost control of the car.  They flipped over several times, took down 7 trees (they were small trees) and came to a stop where I found him.  He says his cousin was unconscious, as was the passenger in the front seat.  He says he got checked out by EMS and refused medical service, the front seat passenger regained consciousness and was taken away by EMS.  His cousin, the driver, was pronounced dead at the scene.

I was flabbergasted.  I was also amazed that this guy walked away from the accident.  The car was unrecognizable, all the tires were flat and not a single body panel was undamaged.  Simply amazing.  This guy was so deadpan about what happened, I think he was in shock.

I think the lesson is: “don’t drink and drive”.  Followed by the equally poignant “don’t get in a car with a driver that has been drinking”.