Paradise Driver: DON'T DELETE AN IMAGE

Sunday, April 22, 2007

DON'T DELETE AN IMAGE

UNLESS YOU ARE POSITIVE IT IS NO GOOD

I told you about the savage beating that occurred behind FoodLand on Thursday night/Friday morning. The above image is what the camera caught. Not very useful. Then I ran it through PhotoShop and brought out the following details (see below). These are the absolute threshold of what I can do. I contacted MPD and am waiting to hear back from them. Maybe they can glean some useful info out of what is here. Hopefully their SID has more sophisticated image processing software.

***

When I picked up ONE-NINE, the damn phone was on the front seat. I was the only cab in Wailea and had an OGG waiting for me. Now thats a mixed blessing.
Took control of the operation a bit after 7:30pm, when I cleared OGG. Hardin was supposed to be dispatching but he had been sent to Pa'ia before he could retrieve the phone. We scheduled a meet as soon as I got back to Kihei/Wailea. Then we flushed the schedule when I gave him a Wailea to Lahaina fare. As soon as I was in Wailea, I had to cover another OGG. Back-to-back OGGs is GOOD!

I was already exhausted from having the phone on Friday, it is very mentally stressing and halfway through last night that stress became physical exhaustion. Saturday was very busy and I kept running out of cabs the entire shift. Anytime I thought I had a good handle on the calls, the other drivers would pull themselves out of the lineup to handle "specials". Then the callbacks would begin as people wanted to know where the cab was that I had said would be there in 10 minutes. I was a one-armed paperhanger in a windstorm.

When you are up to your ass in alligators. It is difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

There was no slow period during the night and we all stayed actived through bar close.

It was so busy that my [click] finger stayed active. "Call waiting" was beeping behind any call I was on. If I got the "I don't know where I am" Bozos, they were instantly disconnected.

Bar close was an exaggerated cluster fuck, made more difficult by trouble in front of Bada Bings, in the "Triangle". That entire driveway was blocked by MPD, MFD and paramedics. When the bars on that side of the "Triangle" would call for a pickup I told them to send the people out to the street by Bad Ass Coffee and Serendipity. To complicate matters even more. There was a large group at Mulligans and I would get calls from there for 15-20 people at a time. Each time I sent 3 of the 4 cabs that were working down there, only 3 to 7 would actually need a cab. Of course, while those cabs were out of the Kihei loop, those Kihei requests would continue pouring in.

By 2:15am, the madness was over. The phone stopped ringing and the other drivers went home. A couple of pu-pus during my solo hours and then the first day car checked in by 4:00am.

I was home by 4:30am. Totally wiped out.

I am off to bed and will be back out tonight for my Sunday special. I won't be working all night though. Probably no later than 11:00pm. Not a hell of a lot of bar activity on Sunday evenings.

Check in tomorrow and find out if I go totally "postal".

Thanks for stopping by.

Mahalo

Aloha

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