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Some of the back stories I have missed...

September 26, 2015

I picked up an elderly lady outside of a grocery store.  We chatted all the way to her place in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco.  She said she does most of her shopping during the week but she actually forgot to buy meat when she had gone earlier in the week.  She didn’t know that this week was Folsom Street Fair.  She said she wouldn’t have gone out if she knew it was.  When we got to her place there was a bunch of fireman outside of her apartment.  She said they are there often, way too often.  She said, they are not suppose to smoke in the building but many people so it sets off the smoke alarm.  She hates the smell of any kind of smoke.  She was so cute when she whispered all this to me.  Haha.

Folsom Street Fair seemed a little tame compared to the previous year.  Last year I saw so many naked buttocks it was crazy.  This year…  No so many.  

If you walk across the street not in a crosswalk, please be aware that there could be a car coming at you.  Hopefully the person driving the car is paying attention more than you are.  Also hurry across the road that you really need to get across since you cannot use the crosswalk.  Do not glare at the driver of this car trying to avoid hitting you.  Please be safe out there!

Four young men in normal jeans and t-shirts were skipping arm-in-arm along Castro Street but they were wearing shiny silver capes, tiaras and shiny high heeled shoes.  Very, very cool.  I love the Castro.

Okay, so I spend a lot of time in the Castro.  You never know who you will meet and what you will see.  

Picking up extremely drunk men you never know what they are going to say.  This guy that I picked up kept saying to me “you know girl, I love you but….”.  He told me he was out with his boyfriend tonight.  His boyfriend is married but they boyfriend’s wife loves him too.  The boyfriend pays all his bills and they all spend a lot of time together, him, boyfriend, wife and kids.  Everyone loves each other, according to my passenger.  He was a little upset tonight because his boyfriend wanted to go home and spend time with his wife.  He said his boyfriend didn’t want a divorce because he is deeply religious.  (I am not here to judge, really I am not.) The passenger kept saying that I needed to be nice to him or he would do something.  I didn’t feel threatened but I wasn't sure what he was going to do. When we got to his house he didn’t have any money in his wallet and his credit card kept getting declined.  He said he had money upstairs but I convinced him to leave me his backpack, because I wasn’t sure he would actually come back down.  He said that was okay but when he went to get out of the taxi he said, this isn’t my house or even my street.  I said, this is the address you gave me.  He kept saying I am leaving him off someplace he doesn’t know and that isn’t right.  I said we are on 27nd Ave and this is your address, right.  He said yes but he couldn’t find his house.  So I turned the taxi around and went back down the street and he said, stop this is my house!  I stopped and he tried to get in through the front door but it wouldn’t unlock for him but he was able to get the garage door to open for him.  He came back down after a few minutes and gave me the cost of the ride plus another $20 for dealing with him nicely.  He then turned around to leave the taxi and pulled his pants down to urinate into the street away from the taxi but the taxi door was still open.  I guess he really needed to pee.  Happy that was the last ride of my night!  

October 1, 2015

I picked up a very soft spoken Indian man that was hitting on me the whole ride.  He kept asking about my personal life and if I wanted to meet up sometime.  I really just brushed him off because I found out he was going home to his wife and 2 kids.  It was a little creepy.

I was flagged by a lady who was with a very upset man.  She asked me how much it would cost to go to Napa.  I gave them a quote and she asked the male if he had the money to get home.  He said yes and got into my taxi.  I asked him for his address or if he wanted to tell me how to get there.  He gave me his address but he at first wanted to drive through the Castro to see if he could find his partner.  They just had a very bad fight and his partner hit him.  He said they both had been drinking and he just really wanted to go home quickly and that his partner was so mad at him.  I drove around the Castro and trying to get this guy to calm down a little bit.  I felt so bad for him.  He had bad scratches on him and wasn’t calming down much.  He tried to call his partner but he wouldn’t pick up.  So we drove over by where he thought he left his car.  He wanted to stab the tires of his car so his partner wouldn’t be able to drive back to their home in Napa.  He finally said he wouldn’t stab his tires but he would get a few things he needed out of it.  He spent a lot of time around his tires, emptying out his glove box and backseat.  His partner came around the corner and my passenger came to my window and said he wanted to try fix what was going on between them.  I let him know I would still take him wherever he needed to go.  I didn’t want him to be hurt.  His partner called him to tell him to let the stupid taxi driver go.  My passenger said he wouldn’t go anywhere with him and just wanted to talk about what happened.   I let him go, he didn’t pay for the ride.  After I left him, I turned the corner and stopped to call the police about what had and might still happen.  While telling 911 what had occurred they asked if the partner had a purple shirt and my passenger had a pink shirt. I said yes, the operator said the police were looking for them because they had a big fight in one of the bars in the Castro.  She wanted to know if I knew where they were and I told her where I left them off.  

While I was on the phone with the police a couple got into my taxi and wanted a ride home.  I explained to them what I was doing and they were okay with me talking to the police while I drove them home, which wasn’t far.  They were happy that I wanted to stand up for the guy who was being hurt.  I have driven them home before too, so that was nice.

I did drive back by where the car was as well as where I saw them last but only the car was still there, nothing else.  I haven’t heard from him either.  I just hope he got home safe and sound.

November 7, 2015

I picked up two guys who had been on every cruise that I would consider to be “cool” and then some.  In the past 30 years they have done at least 1-2 cruises every 6 months to 2 years.  They were super nice!  Great tips on places to go on a cruise!  They are going to the Amazon next, it will be their second time doing this cruise.  It was one of their first cruises they did together.

Picked up three women who were here for a convention.  They were from a small town in Texas.  Apparently they were very impressed with a 7 floor Macy’s and a 3 floor H&M.  It was fun listening to them get so excited about so many things city people take for granted.  They made me giggle.

Two guys and a girl were talking in the back of my taxi and she said she was going to hook up one of the guys up with her hot girlfriend.  He said her friend had better be hot and asked what her name was.  It was Annie.  He asked what Annie was short for.  The other two burst out laughing saying Annie.  He said she probably wasn’t really hot since her name was just Annie.  They showed him a few pictures of Annie and he said she was hot.  He then asked if she had any diseases.  The other male said, “you cannot ask people that question!”  I wanted to laugh so badly but I remained cool and calm until they paid and got out of the taxi.  I laughed so loudly!  Haha.

Okay, I think that is enough for now.  Hope you enjoyed them all.  I know I enjoyed the experience of driving all the crazy, amazing people around this city!  

Thank you very much for reading my blog!

Blah.... then Richmond Blah

I started today with very little energy.  I really struggled to sleep last night and just had a hard time waking up.  I hate when the day starts like that.  I just cannot get moving at all.  I am normally in a great mood, which I guess most would think is a little strange.  I got a late start because my day driver got an awesome ride.  I didn’t mind.  I was able to sit in my car and read until she got back to the yard.  

Since I wasn’t feeling like really moving, I thought I would just go to the airport.  I really should have gone into the city because there is a big Gaming conference and the weather was so nice here.  Many people out and about.  Reports from other drivers said that many of the hotels and CalTrain needed taxis.  Instead I sat and read at the airport.  

My first ride from the airport was a guy who had flown into the city for a last minute business trip and he didn’t have a hotel room for the night.  He was making phone calls to hotels and finding they were all booked up.  I let him know that we had a conference in town so maybe if he looked outside of the Union Square/SOMA area he might find something.  I guess he had someone else on a computer looking for a place as well.  He was able to get into a nice big hotel in Union Square area.  He was very happy to have someplace to sleep close to where he was working.  He asked a lot of questions and we chatted about the city and fun things for him to do over his few nights he was here.  

After dropping this passenger off I drove around the city for a little bit and picked up a guy that I drove 3 blocks.  I was driving around for about an hour and heard the airport was moving nicely.  I was still not feeling like moving much so I took off empty (deadheaded) to the airport.  I was able to get in easy and only waited for about 1 ½ hour.  I picked up a guy who wanted to know how much it would cost to go to Richmond and to Petaluma.  I gave his quotes for both.  He said the last time he took a taxi from the airport to Richmond it was only $79 but the sheet that gives us a quote says $96.  I let him know it was metered and he would have to pay for the bridge toll.  He said he was okay with that.  As long as it wasn’t over $100.  He said he would get mad at that but he would still pay.  I put his address into my gps and apparently he put it in his gps as well.  That is okay.  He is welcome to be the one to give me directions anytime but he didn’t actually say anything to me.  Okay.  So he tells me there is something wrong with my taxi, something about a sealed ball bearing is bad and that is why it is so loud in the back of the taxi.  I let him know I would tell the owner.  Maybe he will fix it.  The passenger went on to tell me about all the companies he owns and how awesome he is.  He also tells me he he has to get to Petaluma to help out his sick boss.  Not sure if I owned so many businesses I would also have a job working for someone too.  I was very confused.  Most of the conversation we had was okay and pretty normal until he started to say something about the single mothers in Arizona just having babies for the money.  I was very put off by that comment.  He has never been a single parent and doesn’t know how hard it is to be a single parent.  I don’t think all the people on assistance are baby making for the money.  I think some get on assistance and cannot find a way off of it.  I would have had more babies if I had the chance.  I didn’t say too much during this time.  He quickly changed the subject to something about trains and cars.  At this time I had tuned him out.  He paid me $140 on the $96 meter.  I was happy for that!

I figured I was done for the night.  I am really sleepy now and I am hoping tomorrow will be better.  Not sure I will be any less sleepy but who knows!

Thank you again for reading my blog!  I love sharing my nights.  I will try and start sharing my “old” stories as soon as I have a few extra minutes.

Wet and Wild Weekend!

Oh my gosh!  We have gotten so much badly needed rain it is AMAZING!  Well, it would be amazing if it fell a little bit at a time but it is falling in buckets at times!  Careful where you drive because of flooded area.  I keep hearing about downed trees too!  I hope none are falling on people.  That would be horrible!  Since it doesn’t rain often in this area people do not know how to drive at all in the rain.  Please slow down and do not tailgate the person in front of you.  Sounds reasonable, right?  You would think but I don’t think all do these things.  Also in California if you need your wipers, you need to have your headlights on for safety.  Makes you more visible, makes sense.  

I do hope the rain continues to fill our reservoirs so we can be out of this drought.  I really like taking showers and seeing lots of green.

Since it was so rainy over the weekend I figured it would be very slow and I was partially correct.  On Friday night when there was the most amount of rain I was the busiest when it was downpouring.  People would run and scramble into the taxi.  It was almost funny in the way they would flag me and then run to get out of the rain.  Everyone seemed to be in a great mood too!  Love it when that happens.

On Saturday night it was also downpouring often and the same things would happen, downpour lots of passengers.  It was also the night of the Prince concert in Oakland at O.Co with the after party at the Great American Music Hall on O’Farrell and Polk.  Most of the concert goers that had taken BART back into San Francisco were looking for taxis to take them either home, parking garage or to the after party.  I picked up a lady who was desperate to get to the after party but her phone had died because at the concert, according to her, Prince had a scrambler to kill all cell phones because he didn’t want anyone recording the concert.  I don’t know if that is true or not.  I let her charge her phone for the 5 blocks to get to the after party at the AMH.  When we got to the corner of O’Farrell and Polk the line was already half way down Polk and it was raining very, very hard.  Most had no jackets and no umbrellas.  It was madness!  I know you want to look good for an after concert but in that rain, still bring a jacket and an umbrella.  I let her out close to her friends but she still didn’t know where they were and would have to run around yelling to look for them in the pouring rain.

I have had 2 Saturdays in a row with the meanest passengers.  I try and start off each ride like they will be the best ride ever and try to chat with them to make my job more exciting and to make them more comfortable.  I picked up a lady at the airport and her home was an easy ride to the city but I still asked her if she had a preferred route to take.  She said “why you not know” so I let her know the route I would take and she said it would be okay.  We chatted a little bit about her trip to LA and visiting a doctor who couldn’t help her this time but she would have to go back in about 3 days.  I really didn’t understand her very much.  We got to the corner close to her place and she started yelling, “SEE IF YOU LOOK THERE YOU CAN SEE THE NUMBER!”  I still didn’t know what she was talking about but she kept yelling the same things over and over again.  I was so happy to have her out of my taxi.  She gave me a $2.00 tip.  Great.

My next unpleasant passenger I picked her up in North Beach and she said to the transit.  I wasn’t sure what that meant.  I asked her again and she said the same thing.  I asked her if she wanted to guide me and she said “go Chinatown, you know Chinatown”.  I asked her where in Chinatown, “transit” again came the reply.  She then said to take Stockton but when we got to Powell she said go down Powell.  Powell had a lot of cars on it, she wasn’t happy it was taking so long so asked me to turn left onto Clay.  I did that.  Still it was taking too long and asked me to turn down Stockton.  After getting through the tunnel she asked me to pull over at the bus stop.  Yes, it was a $9.40 ride and she gave me $10.00.  Another happy passenger, well, I was happy she was out of my taxi.  

I did pick up a guy who reminds me of Malcolm McDowell.  I have picked up a few times and he is really nice Irishman. The last time I drove him I said I thought he looked liked an actor but I couldn’t remember at that time what the actors name was.  I also asked to take his picture and he was okay with it.  I posted his picture along side of Malcolm McDowell's and everyone said they looked alike.  I mentioned this to the passenger and he said, I don’t look anything like that, he has facial hair.  I told him he could grow facial hair and he would pass for his double.  He laughed and said he would try it!  We chatted about his construction company and how he does all the maintenance work for a bar so he can drink for free.  He also bought a new “step up” van (I am not sure I know what that is) that he seemed very proud of.  He is happy to have all the tools he needs with him at all time so he doesn’t have to go home for a forgotten tool.  Plus his guys can now ride with him instead of having to get a ride to the job site.  As he was leaving he asked me again who he reminded me of again.  He was saying the name over and over again.  He was going to share with his friends his new doppelganger.  He is such a wonderful man!

This past week has been hit and miss with passengers.  Not a whole lot has been going on in the city.  Everyone has been pleasant and fun.  We are in another El Niño heavy weather pattern so I do not think this week will be any better than last week.  A few of the other drivers were able to get some great rides out of the airport after midnight since so many flights were delayed.  I am always happy to hear of another taxi driver who gets a meter and a half ride (anything out of the city limits 15 miles or out of the airport 15 miles is a meter and a half ride.  The half is to compensate the trip back into the city or airport)

I really need to get some sleep today so I will say goodnight for now!  Thank you again for reading my blog!  I have so many stories in the wings that I will add soon.  I promise.  I have so many more things to tell you!

Thank you again!

Stupid tablet, history and age

Okay last week was crap!  I had more problems with the tablet in the taxi.  It is a place where orders for rides come to us, finish off a ride with a passenger and to see how much I have made in a night.  These tablets are new and seem to be a problem for most of us who use them.  This past week the tablet would just turn off without any notification and it would not turn back on for about ½ an hour.  I wasn’t able to work full shifts Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.  Happy it was fixed and working alright on Friday and Saturday.  I almost feel like I am a jinx with this tablet.  The very first time I used one, I had to turn the car in because I made the screen go blank.  I guess I am not as tech savy as I think I am.

All during the week I had some really nice people, all special in their own way but nothing exciting to tell you about.  Friday was the exception to my week.  I had one after another rude or impolite person of people in my taxi.  I don’t know why that happened but it did.  Plus the drivers in the city were HORRIBLE!  Pulling out in front of you then flipping you off like you were the one doing wrong.  Lot of horn beeping for no reason whatsoever.  Why do people beep so much?  Beeping should only be used in emergency.  Happy Saturday went back to being a normal day with happy nice people in my taxi.

After work on Saturday (actually Sunday morning) a few of the taxi drivers and myself had a BBQ.  It was fun getting to know a few of the other drivers.  We are planning on having lunch about once a month.  It should be fun.

I wanted to share a conversation that happened in my taxi a few weeks ago.  Two couples got into my taxi and were having a disagreement about which president was better, Quincy Adams or Zachary Taylor.  It was more about their looks and who they were as people than how they were as a President.  These were 20somethings!  It was the most interesting conversation I have ever heard in my taxi!  They also talked about Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and their womanizing lifestyle.  I don’t think the disagreement ended after they got out of the taxi!  Great that people are still interested in history.

Have you seen the new TVLand show “Younger”?  It is about a 40 year old lady who is trying to get back into the workforce but is having problems getting a job.  She comes up with an idea to pretend to be much younger (26) to land a job.  She lands the job, makes lots of young new friends and gets a new boyfriend. Such a great show!  Well written and I am actually learning things about the younger generation.  Somethings I do know, because I do not live under a rock but somethings I have no idea what they are.  I guess I like this show more than I should because people always think that I am younger than I really am.  Maybe I should go with the age they think I am.  Haha!  I love being 50 and letting people know I am 50.

Thank you again for reading!  I love you very much!  Need to sleep now.