Paradise Driver: WHY DOESN'T MY GIRLFRIEND'S

Saturday, November 11, 2006

WHY DOESN'T MY GIRLFRIEND'S

HUSBAND LIKE ME?

Waiting At The Kea Lani For My First Trip To OGG

That was last night's most outstanding statement. Pickup was at 0250 hrs from central Kihei to the north end of town. The trip only lasted 8 minutes and he was on his cellphone with the "girlfriend" almost the entire trip. He had her on speaker-phone and I was able to hear both ends of the conversation. B O R I N G ! The above line was his rhetorical question as he departed the cab.

Another fantastic night. The highlights of the shift were:

Two trips from Wailea to OGG.
A luggage run from The Grand to a condo on Sugar Beach
A fare from Ma'alaea to the Kea Lani
A fare from the Maui Prince to north central Kihei.

The most stunning run was actually two fares that dovetailed into a round trip to Pa'ia. I was sitting at the FoodLand bus stop (the buses quit running at 9:00pm). It was bar close and a guy walked up to me, wanting to go to the harbor in Kahului. Thats a nice trip. #27 (TMR) was having a rough night. Four 10-13s (no load/no show) in a row. I radioed him over to take the fare. I was having a good shift and thought he could use a break in his luck. He loaded the one male and then they drove over to LAB to get a second person. While waiting, he was approached by a man wanting to go to Pa'ia. I was next up in the rotation, so that call was mine. I took a $75 deposit, and off we went across the island. A nice young man from Redondo Beach, California. The fare was $57 and he let me keep the change. I dropped him about 2 miles up the hill from the center of Pa'ia. I had to stop at the only traffic light in town on my way back and a guy walks up to the passenger door and asks if I am available. He wants to go the south end of Kihei. Now what are the odds of that? Pa'ia is small. Very small. When the bars close they don't roll up the sidewalks. They just pack the town away and leave the sidewalks out as a template for the next day. He was from Yap, Micronesia and told me how the taxi business worked in his part of the Pacific. He spoke in a version of pidgin that was difficult for me to understand. All I could really get the gist of was that taking a ride in a cab involved a social negotiation that concluded with the driver suddenly discovering that he had a need to go to another part of town and if the passenger was interested, he could ride along. The passenger would discover that an unspecified amount of money in his possession was more than he needed and would the driver please relieve him of the stress of having unneeded funds.

Every part of the world has a strict set of social mores that must be adhered to for their society to function in peace. Some are difficult for "1st World" people to grasp.

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Bird Of Paradise