Fire and Smoke

Picture Credit.

At a stop light recently I watched as yet another smoker took a final drag and flicked her butt onto the pavement. Judging that there was enough time, I jumped out of the Town Car, picked up the butt and offered it to its owner.

I believe this is yours?

Not so long ago, of course, cars were equipped with ash-trays and cigarette lighters. People used these conveniences for their designed purpose. At an appropriate time and place, the accumulated detritus created by this foul habit most likely ended up in a trash container somewhere, maybe at a gas station. In other words, smokers didn't consider the world one vast ash heap.

Modern manners define the kind of behaviour we non-smokers always admired: Values like not smoking indoors, not smoking while we're eating and not smoking in the car. Unfortunately, even SMOKERS have adopted these precepts, meaning that they've gone rogue, or, in the case of the car, gone on the road.

They're everywhere when you begin to look. Their car window is an eighth of the way down. With each exhalation, the owner aims her breath at the gap, polluting the universe outside instead of the universe inside their car. Every so often the lit coffin nail is held out the window, the ash flicked everywhere, again, but inside the car. And then, at the end of the nicotine hit, the butt is deposited insouciantly everywhere OTHER than the puffer's immediate environs.

It's the same act as the dog owner who refuses to collect her pooch's rancid coils. THEIR world is pristine; OUR world is a toilet.

So I offered the butt-hole litterer her butt back without success. Such language from such a pretty girl. But I think I made my point, if only for this sorry tale.

Back of the Clock

In our county, bars stop serving at 2:00 am.

Last drinks are drained at 2:30 am.

Everyone's in the limo by 2:45 am. (Fingers crossed.)

We're heading home at 3:00 am.

Someone wants food at 3:05 am.

Stop at Taco Bell at 3:20 am.

Leave Taco Bell at 3:45 am.

Last drop at 4:20 am.

Now is when I gas up, park-up, clean up, wash up, tidy up and lock up.

I might be home in bed by 06:00 am.

Another back of the clock night done.



Night shot from this excellent blog [link]

Wise Heads

Young men and their lady friends sometimes find themselves in the back of my limousine. I'm impressed by the way they do the responsible thing, and pay for one of The Boss's limos (and me) to drive them around instead of doing it themselves.

In Florida, if you blow over .08 you are off to jail for the night, no questions asked. So a few hundred bucks to prevent that is the deal of the century.

These same young men aren't quite full-bottle on some of the finer points of limousine life. For instance, there are ways to circumvent The Boss's no smoking policy. One method that does not work is to raise the divider and light up a blunt. That results in me lowering the divider and politely pointing out that smoking is not allowed in the limousine, as per the rental agreement.

Someone needs to tell these boys that a polite request beforehand, and emoluments in the form of cash go a long way towards me overlooking The Boss and his silly rules.




Pic from here [link]

Highway Karma

Miles of pounding the highway gives me plenty of time to think.

Thinking can be dangerous if you're given to flights of fancy as I am. Mostly I think about the other drivers; what kind of person is driving that Cadillac Coupe de Ville at twenty below the limit in the middle lane up ahead? Or is the driver of that Nissan Sentra drunk or texting?

Drawing up beside them, I take a surreptitious glance to confirm or deny my choice. I'm at about 90% correct for this game now.

Or I do arithmetic in my head. I like to figure out my passing time at various checkpoints along the way, and our ETA at the destination to the nearest half a minute. Figuring traffic as well (a dark art if ever there is one) I'm not bad at that game either.

My latest cogitation concerns the Karma of Driving, or Highway Karma if you prefer. The short version is that if I drive for two hours at or below the speed limit, I get points towards driving faster than the limit. Because I have been unwittingly driving like this for a while without earning a speeding ticket, I'm thinking I might be on to something. There is likely some kind of ratio involved, such that, say, two hours of legal driving entitles me to thirty minutes of illegal driving.

An extension of this is the Karma of Traffic Politeness. Allowing others to cut in front without reacting - calm, patient, no resentment - builds up the bank. I'm thinking that a full day of that gives me three cut-ins and one standing on the horn, flashing headlights hands in air verbal abuse free card.

It's not Road Rage, I'm just cashing in my Karma. Officer.





Pic from here. [link]

Also published here [link]

Coked Up

A requirement for being a limo driver is the ability to stay awake at all hours. This is such a weird business, crazy busy for a few days, and then dead as a dodo for the next few. If you like stability and a regular schedule, this game is not for you.

Weekends are the worst. Because the summer was so slow, we (the drivers) are all keen to get working. To do so, we sometimes need to minimize our sleep, which in practice can mean finishing a job at, say, 2:00 am, only to have a pickup at 6:00 am. I have done that kind of turn-around for three nights straight, which is a kind of torture. In fact isn't sleep deprivation and time-shifting specifically defined as torture?

Having worked back of the clock for much of my working life, night work can be okay, but it needs to be on a regular basis. One or two nights without sleep is way worse than five or six, because the body adapts. You're a zombie when you are awake during the day, but at least you acclimate to the wee hours.

The big danger is falling asleep when driving. I nearly did it a couple of days ago. Everyone knows that feeling when you get the nods on the road. Freeways are the worst, because the white lines become hypnotic, lulling the brain into some kind of low brainwave activity. It's deadly. [link]

If you can't stop and take a break - as I cannot with a customer who has to get somewhere - there are few choices. Coffee, of course, if you can. Pinching one's legs works for a while. Talking to the customer is good. And if all else fails, I bring out the big guns; Coca-Cola, with its giant shot of sugar and caffeine does the trick.

It has probably saved my life, it's that good.



Also published here. [link]

Welcome Sign

You have probably seen me at the airport, hanging around the arrivals area, holding a sign showing my customer's name. I might be tall or short; skinny, muscular or portly; smoothly dressed or somewhat rumpled. The likelihood is that I am older rather than young, grey-haired more than colored, measured more than peppy. I am overwhelmingly male, glued to my cellphone and almost always tired.

The driving job isn't my first choice. I might have a buddy in the business who needed some help one weekend...and I stayed. It's possible that I saw the potential in a buoyant economy and bought a limousine with a down payment and a dream. Retirement might have bored me rigid, and the idea of some extra money (and tips!) appealed to me (and my wife.) Or I could enjoy the driving, the hours, the observation of human nature, the variety, and just not being stuck indoors enough to want to make it a long-term job.

After around two years you start to think you've seen it all. That's a mistake. There will always be new ways for people to surprise you; incredible, unbelievable behaviour that will make great tales for the telling. But somewhere in there you begin to notice patterns, to recognize situations as echoes of days past - this kind of misunderstanding is best resolved in a particular way, that type of customer is actually asking for somemething different than he or she verbalizes, and we both know it. Experience begins to guide you when uncertainty looms.

Mostly I like people, and want to help them through. My temperature might rise when conflict arises, but I know that it's overwhelmingly likely to be in the customer's mind than in the way I carried their bag. I probably dream of a week of early to bed and breakfasts there too, but start to miss the road after two days of that. The money sucks, The Boss acts weird, nobody tips anymore, these cars aren't running right, the cops hate me, I'm hungry, Starbucks sucks, I miss my family....and yet I'm still here, in the monkey suit, holding up my sign, looking for Mr Smith.


Also published at The 941.