Crazy Cabbie

I know it's not unheard of to have a crazy cab in the city. Well, I had one this morning. Oh so sweet #1199.

First, the guy shows up 10 minutes late. I am trying to call the cab company at 6:25am, but all the operators are busy. I get a call, it turns out to be one of the operators I am trying to get a hold of. He says matter of factly, "Your cab is outside." I rebut, "There is no cab outside." "Well, then he will be there in a minute cause he just called me." Hang-up. Great client service.

So I see the guy rolling down the street, I grab my bags, lock the door and head downstairs. I get into the street, through a plowed section of snow and just as I am reaching the back of the cab, he honks at me as if I am still in the house. I scared the crap out of him when I opened the back door less than a second after the honk. My question - who is he to honk at me for making him wait 4 seconds when he is the one who is late? He honks and wakes up my neighbors? Ridiculous.

It didn't take long to figure out that he was either trying to make up the time during the drive - or maybe he was just crazy. We were rocking out to Eddie and JoBo while he was slaloming through traffic doing 50 mph down Division. We get onto 90 and he floors it - the highest I saw the needle was 78 mph. Doing 78 mph at 6:30 am in Chicago on 90 is the equivalent of doing 110 mph on a standard highway. We were going left, going right, slamming on the breaks, spinning the tires from his liberal use of the accelerator.

I self-diagnosed myself as 65% of the way towards whiplash from the constant break slamming. Making matters worse was a broken down car in one of the lanes near Irving Park. #1199 was pissed about that. By the way, his window had a leak in it, so it was fricking cold - no matter how much I told him to turn the heat up.

The trip ended when he pulled up to Terminal 2 (gotta love Air Canada and their self-service tv/movie screens) and blocked in two limo taxis who proceeded to honk and cuss while my Amex ran through.

Moral of the story - whenever you raise your hand in the streets of Chicago, and you see a red cab #1199 pull up, just run away. Or at least in the winter, sit behind the driver, maybe its warmer on that side of the cab.