White-knuckle taxi driver fever

Lately I've been having a bit of fun quietly comparing and contrasting the sorts of taxi drivers I get who pick me up on workday mornings.

But first, a bit of backstory – since losing the second (my left) leg to amputation a year ago July, my mobility has dropped drastically. When I was just one leg down and living up here on the wild aerie-cliffs of the Valley they call Aro, I was easily managing the walk down the hill and then along the flat streets to my job in Welly's CBD.

Then off came the second leg. And that took a serious chunk of wind out of my sails. I couldn't walk far at all, at first. And for some time after.

So, I quickly got used to catching a cab from my house, down to the closest bus stop. This isn't an extremely far distance, but, it is downhill, at a fevered pitch, which I suddenly realised was an impossible traverse. (Until just recently! I've been doing the walk! More on this in a future Blog).

Walking on the flat ground is challenging enough when you're missing both legs below the knee ... inclines and declines are really no fun whatsoever. And nigh-on impossible just after a big op. And ... TRULY impossible, but hilarious, with 7 or possibly 14 beers on board ...

Now, after catching many such cabs (five days a week) I've noticed my cabbies fall into a one of a few distinct categories.

The Combined cabs are sometimes festively painted with "green" icons
like this Tui bird, denoting how green the cabs are. And many are
hybrids – petrol and battery things.  The newest ones are quite
tiny, however, and folding my lanky self into such a cramped thing
(with legs that don't really bend all that easily) can be an amusing sight.

I stick to one taxi company in town – Wellington Combined – primarily because they're the only ones who accept my half-price Gimp Special taxi card. (It's one of the MANY bonuses of being a double amputee!) They are also the best taxi company in town, for the high percentage of drivers who speak English, who are presentably dressed, and, who know their way around the city really well.

However – not every driver can handle my super-narrow, super-steep, winding, crazy street.

Some can. These are the folks who confidently zoom up and down my narrow street without a care. They can also reverse and turn a cab around on a dime (if we had such things as dimes here). These cool cats are obviously the best of the lot – they're usually fun to chat with too.

There are a good number of drivers who lack some – or all – of these basic skills, however. Reversing seems to not be a requirement of this company (or they faked it really well in a large, flat, empty parking lot when they did their tests).  But the best one not to have (for my purposes of noticing absurd behaviour) is the one about being comfortable driving on a narrow road.

A lot of these wanna-be pilots are of the white-knuckle variety, too – with zero (or perhaps even negative) confidence on narrow roads. They demonstrate this instantly, with two hands in a firm death-grip on the wheel, one extremely tense foot planted mercilessly on the brakes, barely inching down the road. And they look like owls, staring grimly head, NOT blinking.

Now my road isn't anywhere near as death-defying as this. But
watching some of these cabbies drive ... you would think it was!

Now when I say my road is narrow, it's not like an Incan pathway through a forest. Nor is it an insanely high rocky cliff miles above the earth. It is high though. And the road is a fair bit narrower than your standard city street.

There is ample space between the cliffside/parked cars, and the guard-rail side overlooking a potential death plunge into the valley hundreds of metres below.

This aspect of the drive is clearly demonstrated by the confident, good drivers when I ride with them.

None of these people have ever dinged a parked car, nicked a guard rail, or driven us off over the edge, to die in a fireball of calamity, down in the gaping maw of the jungle far below.

Yet.

No, Marvin Martian isn't
aiming to disintegrate us,
you panicky cabbie you!

But the non-confident ones approach this descent like it's a blazing Space Shuttle ride into an unforgiving atmosphere, while dodging space junk and flaming meteorites.

Or while being pursued and shot at by evil marauding space aliens.

While this isn't precisely what a Welly cab's dash looks like, they do
have most of these toys and implements. There's the 'next job'
dash computer, a stereo/radio/iPod player, doo-dads for climate
control, receipt printer, and credit card machine.  Now if YOU
were in mortal fear of dying by death-plunge down a steep ravine,
would YOU be monkeying with this stuff, while also trying
to drive and avoid dying in a flaming wreck? No. No you would NOT.

While this makes me grin (and secretly hope their over-compensating won't result in the above-mentioned careening plunge into the valley below) ... what REALLY rustles my jimmies are the scaredy-cat ones who start out with both hands white-knuckled on the wheel ... then seconds later, they decide to remove one hand, and start punching buttons on their dashboard computer (or the stereo, or the air/con...), like the magic buttons are going to fire off stabilising rockets, or training wheels out the sides.

This is classic cabbie behaviour, most times. When they're on a flat road, with no immediate or imminent death threats from cliffs, parked cars, space aliens, astroid fields, dinosaurs, moose, or long sudden drops into a rocky abyss nearby ... they monkey with the dash computer, looking for the next trip they might be able to pick up after they drop me off. In these benign conditions, this makes sense.

But when they do this manic fumbling around, rapidly jabbing at the computer buttons WHILE they look like they're about to soil themselves in abject fear of the mayhem and doom my road may spring on them ... I have to wonder, what is going through their minds?

The less-than-good drivers are also guaranteed make comments about the road while attempting all this. My street's name is Mt. Pleasant Road, and they almost always make a jape about how it "ain't so pleasant". Ha ha.

Moo. A beef bovine of the type that once was
farmed up on the cliffs where I live. 

I love trying to get them to laugh, as I explain that the road is simply the old cattle path from the days of yore, when cows were led down the cliff to the slaughter houses below (this is TRUE!**) ... and when it came time to make an actual road, they didn't make the cow path any wider. They just paved over it.

This rarely gets a laugh (well, I chuckle), as the drivers are, as mentioned, practically blind with panic. More often, though, my jests (but TRUE STORIES!) seem to encourage more frantic button-pushing on the dashboard screens.

** Bit of historical background on my 'hood – There was at one time, in Welly's early days, a large cattle ranching operation here. Yes, up on the very cliff-tops I live on. Beef cattle. 

I am in fact living in a turn-of-the-20th century house (it has since been modernised) which got its start as a ranch-hands' lodgings. Every so often the ranchers would march these steers down the cliff-side, to the slaughter houses below ... along the very pathway that would eventually become my paved street.

This is not an isolated incident here in Welly. One 'hood over from me, in Brooklyn, there was once the largest dairy-farming operation in all of Wellington, on a cliff-face just as precarious as mine. 

For some absurd reason, the invading English thought cows of all kinds would prefer living atop cliffs

While cows are a thing of the past up on the Aro Valley
cliffs, there are some roosters and chooks nearby! I hear
them in the mornings ... along with a few goats.

and mountains, rather than in the grassy fields from whence they came, before getting shoved onto a boat to come to New Zealand. 

As well, there are many modern suburbs up the sides of the myriad cliff-sides that surround Wellington. These started out life at the same time as the cattle and dairy ranches, by being established way up the sides of mountains. Just like how they situated their cattle operations, these merry seagoing Brits also seemed to think that blazing up hill, through jungle, to make narrow trails to live on perilous cliffs was the proper thing to do. 

Do long ocean voyages make people completely lose their marbles? The evidence seems to indicate this is so. Hey, look at me. I'm a guy with two missing legs living up here. The usually-simple act of just leaving home to go to work is a pretty huge challenge. So while I have no urge to go "full retard", and obtain and manage livestock up here ... maybe my marbles got temporarily misplaced when it came time for me to pick a place to live?

Maybe.

On the non-absurd side of the taxi coin, I do get plenty of cabbies who are good drivers (as mentioned), and who like to chat and have loads of great stories. Lots are from other countries, and their backstories are cool and enthralling. I've toyed with the idea of doing a "Cabbies of Wellington" blog at some point.

Maybe, Part II.

Anyway, let's post this puppy.  In this blog, I haven't yet mentioned beer, IPA beer, beer fests, craft beer, craft beer pubs, or the many fine craft beer breweries of Wellington in this blog (oops, but it appears I have just now!) I add these words now, shamelessly, in hopes to inspire more 'hits' on this Blog today ... as all these topical and beery things are popular searches on the net.

Taxi drivers? Not so much.

Now, IPA-swilling, craft-beer-brewing cabbies ... I bet THAT'S a topic that's just WAITING to bust wide open!

I remain

And don't forget your supplemental reading for extra points!

Tune on in to Brew-Ha-Ha to see what zany beer antics Don has been up to! There have been some trips to local crafty breweries in and around Toronto ...
Then crank the dial on over to Glenn's new blog, The Pizza Dude's IPA tales! Glenn is really, really hooked on IPAs now ...
And finally, fine-tune your internet box for fun and enjoyment with Cat over at The Cat Came Back ....