Never A Fab Cab

I was thinking about taxicabs recently, and did some quick thinking. I determined after a few moments that I have taken cabs on maybe six occasions in my life. I don't know if that's terribly few, but I suspect it might be. Growing up, I got the idea from TV and movies that in really big cities (if not my own), people took cabs all the time. It looked like it was convenient and cheap. If not, then how could it be so commonplace? Of course it's really neither convenient nor cheap. In the things I saw, people were always hailing cabs and getting them, except when the program needed to make a point about racism. What I've found to be the case is that with certain exceptions, cabs aren't even supposed to pick up people like that. Rather they are supposed to only pick up people they are told about by a dispatcher. That can take a long time. Also they seldom are the iconic makes and models I would always see. Often they are larger cars meant to accommodate luggage on trips to the airport, and frequently they are either not yellow, not checkered or are in fact neither.

Some of the places where cabs can pick people up are the subway and Greyhound stations. The logic of that escapes me. I wonder what makes a cab company think that I'm going to spend something like forty dollars to get from downtown to my home after spending less to reach town from over three hundred miles way away. It must work out if they do that, but I have no idea how. It made a whole lot more sense to see the cabs lined up outside the Hilton on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. That's a place where one can envision people hiring cabs without a thought for the expense. It should be no surprise when I say that expense is considerable. I have watched with mounting bewilderment as the meter coldly reported a sky-rocketing total for my trip. It make total sense when one considers that it includes a car, all the expenses of upkeep and a driver as well.

That's not to say I value the driver terribly highly. The ones in London are supposed to be amazing. They have to take a special test which I understand is called 'The Knowledge', if memory serves me correctly. They must know the streets of that city by heart, and it's also my understanding that a grid of thoroughfares more complicated than that can't be found in this country. I wish like hell there were any cab drivers like that here. One is fortunate if they can find your destination with the aid of a GPS device. Perhaps they can and choose not to in order to elevate the grand total. Again I don't think I'm declaring anything overly new.

If I never have to take a cab again, that will be all right. I never will do so on my own initiative except in case of emergency. For me, the definition of emergency does stretch to include the pursuit of love or money. I have taken them for both reasons, but always begrudgingly. I always calculate whether I can reach my destination in enough time by walking, and don't think that I instantly rule out walking all night if need be. That's the depth of my distaste for cabs. It could only be worse if one added the security measures that have removed any urge I ever had to fly. How any romance whatsoever came to be ascribed to this mode of transportation I don't know. I think we should re-think that.