Champagne Ruined

Without any justification, I'm a champagne snob. An ex-girlfriend introduced me to the wonders of French bubbly, a moment I shall never forget. It was non-vintage Moët et Chandon that first sip, just like the bottle in the picture. Oh, the nose; WOW, the bubbles; and OMG the taste. I'm sure Taylor, our local wine guruette, would use more technically appropriate language, but there is nothing else that compares to champagne from Champagne.

Which is why it pains me so to see this mixing of the best of France, and the best of Florida. Sacré bleu! Whatever where they thinking? The young couple were just that weekend engaged, and I was driving them to their celebratory dinner at Euphemia Haye.

Bravo, congratulations, good for you and all that. But why did they have to ruin the champagne with a Pepsi product?

It's enough to make me want a martini.

Beach Butt Bingo

With the limo trade as dead as a dodo, I have time to spend frivolously at the beach. It's a balance - my tan improves, my bank balance declines. That's the Zen of Chauffeurdom. I hope business will pick up sometime soon, because if not, I will have to look for something more.

However, in the dying weeks of summer before the start of Season, a few lazy days on Florida's best sand won't hurt too much. Fingers crossed.

A few months ago, I noticed the above sign at my favorite local swimming spot. The City erected them adjacent to carpark paths to the beach, with receptacles for cigarette trash attached to the poles. Hooray! Few things piss me off more than lying down on my towel only to find myself in an ash heap of butts left by some inconsiderate asshole.

Now I'm not averse to people smoking should they choose to. But lazy douchebags who have neither consideration for their fellow beach-goer nor the law truly cheese me off. How difficult is it to collect the product of your habit, stick it in your sunbag, and cart that shit off the beach?

Apparently it's beyond a lot of them. Just this morning, after a few laps between the buoys, I was relaxing on Lido Beach. Groups of Girl Scouts were all over, picking up (with gloved hands) butts and other beach detritus to "...keep the world clean". So it's come to this: children now volunteer as garbage collectors to do the work of indolent, selfish adults.

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Butts are not bio-degradable.

Alzheimers

If he asked me ten times, he asked me forty. Sir, we're in Florida, and I'm driving you to your condo. The old guy whose ride didn't work out ended up with me, to our mutual discomfort. He thought he was in Connecticut, having just left Florida, but I was definitely in Florida. And I had the humidity to prove it.

Because times are slow in the limo game, being on call 24/7 is now a part of the gig. It's somewhat like begging; take what you can get, and always have your hat out. We're better dressed than most beggars, and we brush our teeth, but we're basically in the same game. If you feed at the bottom, be prepared for shit to fall on you from above.

That was how I ended up with this poor disoriented man. The trained folks who normally look after befuddled oldsters couldn't turn up, so minimum wage dozy me had to look after this man who should never, ever be left alone. The Boss is unable to say no, and I'm obliged to say yes. That's how modern business works.

Fortunately, the ride was short, and I had the son's far-away number. I called him five times in twenty minutes attempting to allay the old guy's concerns about where I was taking him, who would be there to meet him, and where are we again?

Each time, my guy said "That was Frank. He's my brother".

In reality, that was Robert. He's his son.

Get used to it. The dumbest generation in history, the baby boomers, is coming to a town near you. Decades of drugs, booze, therapy and self-indulgence are gonna land smack bang in your lap.

At least I'm getting $7.21 per hour. How much will they pay you?

Grouper Ranch

Prostitution is prohibited in Florida, not that you'd know. Driving into town along the main road from the north, the choice of short-term dates is extensive. You can have short girls, tall girls, white girls, black girls, old girls, young girls and girls who might not necessarily be girls.

Most of the action happens after sundown, but there are a suspiciously large number of ladies waiting at bus-stops during the day. I guess sexual urge is time independent. It might be my imagination, but there appear to be more ladies plying their trade lately. Presumably, tough times lead to tough decisions, with sometimes equally tough consequences.

Limousine customers ask me to find them hookers from time to time. I'm not averse to helping them out, but it's not that simple. We can't just cruise up and down pro-row in a thirty-foot long limousine all night, sidewalk shopping. In police parlance that's called cruising and my name becomes John.

What I should to is some research ahead of time, talk to some of the women, take phone numbers, check out what individual girls look like, what they charge and so on. Innocently seeking out a handful of professional contacts makes sense, but what if the cops are mounting a sting that day? If I'm booked, will they believe me that I'm negotiating for my own future customers? And will the charge then escalate from simple procuring to trafficking, or living on immoral proceeds?

I know! I should contact ACORN. Apparently they offer all kinds of advice in this area, and it's taxpayer funded. Excellent.

This keeps getting better. Community organizing takes on an entirely new flavour.

And look, a prostitution sting just days after I wrote this.

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Nocturnality

For a really big night out, locals lust after the big smoke: Tampa. Channelside, Hyde Park, the International Plaza and Ybor City all beckon from just an hour up the road. I forgot the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in that mix, rather a large oversight.

For a limousine company, this could be a gold mine. All these places cater for party-people, and have lots of variety within their precincts. Any one of them can be a great night out destination for a bunch of people, but they're too far away to drive and party. Ergo, limousine. Eight or fifteen people in a stretch can have a ball.

From our point of view, they're pretty good gigs. Although some folks have ideas about visiting two or three, the usual outcome is that they spend all night at one. Sometimes it's fun driving around, checking out different areas. Staying on the move, loading and unloading everyone reduces the boredom factor, but exponentially increases the mess factor.

Sidebar: Every ingress requires a new round of drinks, with the accompanying spillage and glass usage. As well, more street soil is introduced to the limousine's interior, which, of course, I have to clean out at the end of the night. A good night for me means as few ins-and-outs as possible, plastic cups instead of glasses and no visits to the beach. Sugar sand is a bitch in black carpet. End sidebar.

The downside of Tampa nights is the late finish. Limousines alter customers' sense of time, often leading them to stay until closing. Which is fine. But by the time the bars call last drinks at 2:00 am, close the doors at 2:30 am, my people find me and load up by 2:45 am, on the interstate at 3:00 am, drop the last person home at 5:00 am, I gas up and get to the office by 5:45 am, then spend an hour cleaning - well, it's a pretty long night.

Birds fly south for winter

Swallows fly back to Capistrano. Salmon swim upstream to the mountains. Snowbirds leave the Midwest to flee to Florida. The rhythms of nature reassure us that everything remains the same, that the cycle of life continues. As humans I think we look for such guideposts, markers of time's arrow, end-points for epochs, starting-points for others.

So you can imagine my happiness when I saw a convoy of Michigan-plated recreational vehicles punting their way south on Saturday. Early September feels too soon, but memory being an untrustworthy mammal, I disregarded it. Maybe this will be a big season, with everyone and her great-aunt visiting Florida. Perhaps Michigan's 15% unemployment rate (some workers' paradise, that one) won't affect the annual migration south, and gobs of people will come on down.

Optimism is running through my arteries you see, for no good reason other than I spotted a couple of banged up Winnebagos trundling along I-75. Snowbirds have relatives, and relatives need transport to and from airports. Work for me. When relatives get together, they go out for dinner, and sometimes rent a limo. Work for me. And winter means celebration, which means drinking which means no self-driving. Work for me.

Snowbirds themselves don't spend that much money. It's what they portend about their associates that's making me happy. It's a sign. They're back. I might survive.

Snooze-a-palooza

Snooze-a-palooza. It's the only word to describe the limo biz on the Suncoast in August. If chauffeurs hibernated, now would be the time. In fact, if you peek under any parked town car, you might find one there, soulfully dozing away the summer. Or look around at the beach. The guy in boardies and black suit vest reading 'Driving Miss Daisy' is a likely candidate.

I imagine everyone in service industries would prefer to hibernate around about now. There are no snowbirds with feathers to preen and spring breakers are yet to turn their mind to Pabst Blue Ribbon. Speaking of cerveza, last spring break I heard that fine product of Wisconsin described as "PBRona".

I am unsure what that says about Mexican beer.

Summer then is nature's way of rejuvenating folks who smile and are polite for a living. Few can keep up a seamless facade of calm obsequiousness forever, and if they can, don't lend them money. They're crazy.

But enough already. A few weeks of sleeping long and flouching days is enough. Get me back to work before I start opening car doors for people who aren't paying. The patrons at Wal-Mart might look at me sideways.

Clouds of Horror

For years I lived under the impression that Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to England. The story went that he was in the colony of Virginia around 1586, and returned home with a shipload of leaves. Being a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, she indulged his interest in burning the dried plant, and so the first nicotine delivery system found royal approval.

The truth is that Jean Nicot, a Frenchman, brought tobacco from the New World to Europe, and from there it was introduced to England. From Monsieur Nicot's name we have nicotine, and another fabulation is replaced by the truth. Sadly we all still live in a propaganda cloud.

Fortunately, a weekend customer didn't envelope me in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Instead, as I drove the town car, he made me queasy in that other way nicotine addicts have, which is to chew that shit. As if it isn't disgusting enough to hook great piles of fermented plant litter into your jaw, there is yet more horror; they spit.

You can tell the dippers from the used plastic orange juice containers they carry around. Like infants unable to wean themselves from mother's breast, these guys cannot be without their fix, meaning that the rest of us have to put up with the gallons of juice they produce. I am always hopeful they dispose of that gunk carefully, but we all know that a lot of it ends up in the soles of our shoes.

For an hour he sat and chewed, and sat and spat, and sat and chewed. All the way to Tampa airport.

If one day you read about a limousine driver 'Going Limo' on the side of I-275, spare a thought for me. I just couldn't take another expectoration.

Don't toucha my car

At 1:00 am I am shredded. My customers have partied for hours, and it looks like they're going to stay until closing. That's good because it means an extra two or three hours pay by the time everyone's dropped home. That's bad because I have at least another hour to wait here, bored and grumpy.

Waiting is the name of the limo game. We wait at airports, we wait at ship ports. We wait for the phone to ring, we wait for parties to end. We even wait for The Boss, when he calls doling out the jobs for the following day.

If you have itchy feet, this isn't the gig for you. We're unable to leave the limousine, so it's not like we can park and head off for a walk. Instead, I equip myself for big nights out with books, newspapers, magazines, a fully charged phone, CDs and a pillow. Colleagues often sit in the back and watch DVDs.

I'll do anything to stave off the boredom. Parking close to the bar or restaurant my folks are in can often be fun. Just hanging around looking mean (the don't toucha my car or I'll breaka your face, face) passes the time for a while. Sometimes cuties will want to talk - always good - or offer you ten bucks for a lift home.

Sorry, Miss. I'm not for hire.

But even that's a snore after a while. Sober observation of drunkenness, even if it's in stilettos, isn't distracting forever. Then it's back to boredom, brain in neutral, thumb up arse.

Emergency!

The Boss called with a rush-job on Saturday, today - a rival limo company's car was in trouble, and they needed our biggest stretch to complete the run. No time for showering or dressing, the quicker I could pick up the stranded passengers, the better.

Grabbing my work bag, I headed out, mentally figuring how long it would take to pick up the limo from the depot, drive to the scene of the emergency, take them the forty or so miles to their destination, drive back to the depot, gas up, clean up, and do the paperwork. This is the way (I guess) every limo driver's brain works; we're figuring out the time we'll arrive home, or be drinking our first beer.

The stranded limo driver called me, sounding desperate.

"How long for you to get here?" he asked plaintively.

"About twenty-five or thirty minutes" I replied.

"Oh God", he breathed. "I hope I'm still alive by then."

Grim times ensue for the chauffeur when his steed fails him, for people can get mighty antsy mighty quickly. When things go awry the only refuge is the truth and apology. If customers think that being late to dinner is worth blowing an aorta, then that's their problem. From the reactions I have witnessed, you would think that we purposely orchestrate mechanical failure.

But none of that was my problem in this case; I was the knight in shining armor, the humble rescuer saving the day. They were grudgingly thankful for me being there, but still not overly happy. But I don't care. I'm having a beer.