San Antonio Stories, Part III: Crazy Cab Ride

The second to the last night of our San Antonio trip, one of my colleagues got extremely sick.  He had to go to the hospital and everything.  There’s nothing worse than being sick when you’re away from home, so I offered to help out.

He needed some prescriptions filled, so I called down to the front desk and asked for the closest 24 hour pharmacy.  They gave me the address, I went to pick up the prescriptions from my friend and headed out.  

There was a cab sitting outside the hotel, so I asked the cab driver if he could drive me to the pharmacy and wait while I filled the prescription.  He said sure.

So I hop in the cab. It’s a van cab, but the first thing I notice is that the front row of seats has been removed.  In its place, there is a computer with a flat screen monitor and a keyboard.  Pretty odd, I thought, so I asked the cabbie about it.  He tells me it’s for his customers, so that they can check their email or look things up online. Weird.

I ask him if removing the extra seat affects his business, since he can’t haul as many people.  He tells me that, no, his customers appreciate him because he does everything to help them feel comfortable and safe.

At this point, I notice that I can see the road on the monitor of the computer.  I can also see MYSELF. 

As I start to freak out, the cab driver keeps talking… and talking… and talking.  And then I notice that he’s going down a bunch of dark, empty roads.   I look around the cab:  he has his cab certificate on the dashboard.  His dry cleaning in the back.   And then there’s my image on the screen.  Freaky.

All these crazy thoughts start going through my head. I kept thinking: “This is how I’m going to die. I’m going to get raped and murdered in this cab and it’s going to be broadcast all over the internet for everyone to see.”   It was after 10:00. I was a woman alone in a strange city in a car with a guy who was talking a mile a minute about how “safe” he’s trying to make me feel.  Something was not right.

I’m either on a messed up version of Cash Cab or I’m about to be murdered.

I tell the driver I’m getting a little scared and ask to talk to the cab company.  He calls them and they tell me that they don’t have records of ALL the cabs, but that if he has the license and a cab number he should be legit. SHOULD BE?  Seriously??

So, after talking to the cab company for a while and passing a few closed Walgreen’s, the cab driver apologized profusely and told me that no one had ever been afraid before.  We FINALLY made it to the all night pharmacy and I felt a little better.

I went in to fill the prescription and the guy behind the counter told me it would be 25 minutes. I went out to the cab driver and told him how long it would be.  He said he would wait for me with the meter off, so I knew I’d be safe.

I’m  not the kind of person who usually gets afraid of stuff like that, but for a brief while I was convinced I was going to die in San Antonio in the back of a cab while the whole world watched.  And, no, there were no trivia questions, either.

Smells Like Peaches

I made it to New Orleans about 10:45 last night–yay!   After getting our bags, we hailed a cab and were on our way.  As I was sitting in the back of an old-school minivan cab (think wood paneling, adjustable can lights), I noticed a familiar smell. I thought it was probably one of those car air fresheners they keep in cabs to try to mask the odor of a thousand different asses on the upholstery.

Anyway, it was taking me a really hard time to place the smell when finally it dawned on me–PEACHES!  They say that smell is one of the best memory triggers and this brought me right back to Jr. High.  Apparently, once girls get a “certain age” people start giving them candles, lotions, body wash, etc. as gifts.  And invariably those gifts always smelled like either peaches or vanilla.  To the point where I can’t stand either one of those anymore (the irony of that just dawned on me… I hate vanilla yet I named my blog after it…. hmmmm)

We made it to the hotel about midnight, checked into our rooms and I started a lil unpacking.  What do I find?  Well, the faint smell of peaches was not from the cabbie’s air freshener after all… it was coming from my very own suitcase!  Apparently one of my hair products had leaked during flight and now all my clothes have the faint smell of V05 iron spray…. which, incidentally, doesn’t smell like peaches at all.

That was the start of my New Orleans adventure…. I have to be at work in less than 1/2 and hour, I’ve had about 6 hours of sleep and I’ll smell like iron spray all week…. and probably have fried hair.  Fabulous!!