Three weeks after the vacation- in summary

I assure you, I'll post something soon. I suppose I have stories to tell, but I guess it drains a lot of energy for me to vent my frustrations of this job. Stories of cab life always seem to focus on the sour side of things, but I assure you these stories are only outstanding because they don't happen so often, for the most part people are really well mannered. I'm not sure if I want to divulge much info but lets see, in the last few weeks, since I have returned to the job from a vacation in L.A.: I came inches away from my mirror slapping a 5 year old child in the back of the head (the parent's weren't holding the child's hand, and they as well as 50 others were walking along side the road which happens to be a highway entrance ramp), there was just this last Tuesday when I decided to snap and shout the F word at this Russian bitch about 10 times because she asked me if I had a problem after I didn't have a problem, all I did was sigh, and I was stuck in traffic with her, and she had no idea where she was going, a Wells Fargo bank? doesn't exist, not on 57th and 3rd, not on 58th and 3rd, and not a nice thing to take a cab there from 62nd between 2nd and 1st, making me go east then south then west then north then east, and what would have been east and north and then west again, but the trip ended there, as I was fed up with her, and she couldn't make up her mind, s I wasn't sure which lane i should use to optimize my chance of being in the right lane for where I would go. She got out without paying, "good," I said, "Get the fuck out!" I explained to her the way it works on a Tuesday morning, I get a ride every 2 minutes for 5 dollars, I don't waste a half hour of my time with someone who doesn't know where they're going in the most congested area in New York City. She told me she'd report me, you know what, she was a hazard to taxi drivers, it is unsafe to drive her around because every minute you hear another demand from her, making you change lanes and fuck up traffic all around you.

Lets see, that said, I had some really nice fares of late too: I took some people from Norway down to Battery Park from Chelsea. They asked me how tall the Trade Towers were
, and because we had such a friendly banter already, they told me they saw a Jets game to see what our American brand of football was like, and also, they saw the Redbulls play too, our local professional soccer team. I told them I'm not a football fan, too violent. And the Redbulls? What's up with naming the team after a Thai beverage? Anyway,
I told them the Trade Center was 110 floors high, and immediately switched the topic over to the Empire State Building, that building is 84 floors high.

"But," I said, "The needle must be accounted for. All these buildings really have their height added by their needle. The Trade Center had a very large needle atop one of the two towers, built in the late 70's possibly as late as 78' and the Empire State building's needle is massive, that building was built back in the 30's, the depression," I continued, "Back then all the rich guys wanted to compete for the biggest tower, who could grow the tallest. It was such a competition, "I kept going, and they seemed genuinely fascinated, and so I tripped myself up and got confused, then I gained traction in my mind again. "The Chrysler Building was almost taller than the Empire State. First the Empire State Building completed itself with a bulb at the top in order for Zeppelins, you know, blimps to dock, tie themselves up, drop anchor at the top of the building. You see they thought that was gonna be the next big thing back then. But then the Chrysler had a secret needle within their building. once the Empire State building claimed completion, the Chrysler raised their needle from the inside, and for one week it was the tallest building, until the Empire state building then added on more needle to theirs, and thus, this is the skyline you see today."

So that was fun, weather it was the absolute truth, or a bit of a storied version, it was fun to drop something akin to knowledge. Oh and just yesterday I had a fantastic ride to Ridgewood from the East Village. They were bartenders, and the last one of the 3 part trip was a former cabbie, we talked about shit, I told him about my angry Russian bitch, which I brought up because he mentioned that he hates Russians, he works at a bar owned by Ukrainians and swears that all other nationalities produce fine people, but Russia, always rudeness. He told me to stop by his bar sometime and he'd give me a free drink, and you know what, I think I'm going to take him up on that, especially since this week is United Nations week, OI!!!

That was some storm we had on Thursday eh? Driving on Saturday I saw a car parked on Flatbush Avenue in Prospect Park with its roof completely caved in, windshield smashed. Beside the car lay a sawed off tree trunk of what must've been a massive tree that lay across the Avenue at one point. This tree must've been at least 130 years old. What happened in Brooklyn was the result of a few mini Tornadoes. My friend's sister had the roof above her apartment fly off. poor family, it was earlier this year that their apartment burned up, due to a neighbor's carelessness of plugging in way too many devices into the limited fuse capability of a tenement building in SoHo still somehow standing. We'll see how long that lasts. They have hired a lawyer so they'll sue if their apartment isn't ready to move back into by next year. You have to hold on to what you can, especially when you pay 600 dollars a month for a railroad flat walk up in SoHo, across the street from a new building that used to house the likes of Courtney Love and Lenny Kravitz. But in Queens? Oh My God, I tried taking the short cut through Forrest Hills around the Grand Central Parkway to get somebody to JFK who wasn't going to make his flight anyway. I ran into trees, everywhere. it reminded me of that glorious day (I apologize), that day when everyone didn't go to work 9 years ago and walked around taking pictures of the travesty around them. Big, huge trees clogged all the streets in the neighborhood, and everybody was on a tour with their point and shoots.

Well that is all, happy trails y'all.