After the chaos of the prior two weeks blogged about previously, I was now dreading NYE. First up this is my first New Years driving a taxi, and I’d heard horror stories from others about it, as well as reading blogs from other drivers around the country that indicated the holiday was the “suck”.

That and I still felt pretty sore from the wreck the prior week.

The most interesting bit about the holiday that I can come up with is…it was the busiest holiday I’ve EVER seen, and it made the July 4th weekend seem like a picnic.

The call boards started lighting up about 5pm and by the time I was in my ride, we literally had pages of jobs to bid on.

I had set up several “pre-books” with my regular customers, a few of whom had reserved the car a couple weeks in advance, so I was only taking the open bids until about 9:30pm.

Then after I started picking up the regulars, my phone melted down. It seems that every person who EVER got my business card needed a ride…right the frack now.
Apparently metro’s phone switchboard was having the same problem. By 11pm we were three hours behind on the calls and at about 3am from what I heard it actually went down. Yellow cab’s switchboard had the same problem from what some of my customers told me in the wee hours of the morning after going back to “bell” calls.

It was the first time I’ve had to tell people flat out, “no, can’t do it” since I’ve been cabbin’.

Oh, and it was slickern’ snot as the temps were in the single digits, and the roads were a frozen mess from the snow the prior day. It was an absolute skating rink downtown, with the Auraria Parkway being the worst…a solid lake of black ice. I don’t blame the road maintenance folks though. They were out in force, but it was so blasted cold out that the deice stuff worked…and then the water just refroze again.

I was/am thinking about ditching the Prius as the weekly lease on the car doesn’t make economic sense, but I will say I was damned glad to have a front wheel drive vehicle on this night.

I drove from 6pm until 7am and by the time exhaustion set in and I had to pack it in, there were still enough backlogged jobs on the board to work another 4-5 hours.

Yeah, sure. Not.

A big thanks to all who were in my car that night though. For all the delays and issues getting a ride, everyone I took from one place to another were understanding and cool about it.

My fears, at least from the horror stories I’d read…didn’t happen, and for that I’m truly thankful.

So happy new year to any who happen to be checking this little blog-o-rama corner o’ the universe!

Time to roll!