Pedicabbing Tales - A Great Saturday Night
My night started out rough - the (hopefully) annual Rickshaw Races were taking place… It’s a big pub crawl race where the participants have a bingo card of drinks they have to drink and a list of rules. Included on their bingo card is “Give your Driver some Water” and “Drink Water” and on their list of rules is “Tip your driver $25 - no skimping!”. Two participants per cab - you run them to the pub as hard as you can, they run in and drink their drink, then run out and onto the next. You ride your butt off, but you make $50. This year they called for 7 bikes and we were all excited as heck. Unfortunately… Well, there’s another cab company that just opened up in town and competition is fierce. We aren’t allowed to ride with them because of liability issues… and therein messed everything up. Half the riders got into the other company’s cab and… then we had issues. Our boss was right there and tried to convince everyone to ride in our cabs, but they were already in the spirit of their race and not able to listen… so… none of us got to ride them. It really sucked for everyone - we’d waited around for them for about 45 minutes so we’d all lost out on a lot of shift time, plus the other cab company doesn’t have enough cabs for them, so their event was ruined. It was.. a really awful start to the night. Everyone was pretty down about it. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to have a good day until I got it out of my system so I pulled my shift leader aside and bitched at him.
And then proceeded to have an AWESOME night. The streets were busy, I rode repeatedly, but nothing that really made me feel worn out and the tips were all pretty good.But a few highlights of the evening:
- The soon to be married couple who tipped me a $20 and a can of mace, telling me to be safe out there. I have MACE! Tremble before me. ^_^
- The drunk fellow and his sober friend who I picked up on Glenwood who were both charming and a ton of fun. The sober friend tipped me comfortably for the ride and then the drunk fellow pushed a pocketful of crumpled dollars into my hand for being awesome.
- The extremely attractive girls who kept asking if they could ring my bell…
- The chimney sweep who I hung out with for about half an hour who might’ve been hitting on me. Chimney sweep! Hah!
- The young lady who got a beer tossed onto her leg and then insisted on tipping me when I chased her down with wet wipes.
- The fellow who insisted on tipping me for letting pretty girls sit in my cab while I was hanging out resting my legs and then periodically asked, “Do you need more tip yet?”
Thanks to all of you, my evening was both profitable and a ton of fun. Much love!