Graduation Day

The last days of our stay in NYC were coming up quickly. The apartment had the perimeter lined with boxes to be shipped ahead and luggage to take on the flight to Toronto. We quickly realized that all of this luggage would not fit in a regular Crown Vic cab and it wouldn’t even work with one of the newer SUVs that are now pretty common. In NYC you cannot call ahead for a Yellow Cab. You can only reserve a limo or black cab. We looked into that but found that it was more than four times the cost of a flagged cab. Then I smacked my forehead as the solution came to me. We would simply go in two regular cabs. Duh.

Midday on Wednesday we rounded up our luggage at the apartment door. Jimmy, one of the building’s porters, came right up and put everything on their luggage rack and we headed for the taxi stand queue. This line of cabs extends from the door of the Sheraton Hotel on 7th Avenue, across 53rd Street, and up a quarter block or so. I went on ahead to secure my cab and start loading. When I got to the corner I could not believe my eyes. There was before me a yellow cab van! I have never seen such a thing in New York. If this were a scene from a movie this would be where you would the angelic chorus and a beam of light shining down. I would later find out this was one van of a new roll out, so new it wasn’t even announced until today. What luck.

I made a beeline for him and approached the driver to explain our needs and situation. I told him how many bags we had and detailed the sizes and two passengers going to Laguardia. He responded in a thick Russian accent that he was already reserved and motioned toward the hotel. Now, you are not supposed to approach a car in the queue. I think it is some unwritten code that they wait their turn in line. Okay, so figured I needed to convince him and perhaps he didn’t quite understand. I repeated our needs and our ‘inventory’ and our destination. He seemed a bit agitated now and told me he just couldn’t take us. By this time Toni had caught up with the bags in tow. The driver and I were still going around and around when he suddenly flipped on his “off duty” lights. Okay, now I was agitated. I asked “What’s going on? You had your lights off a second ago!” He just shrugged his shoulders. Toni was of course puzzled and asking tons of questions. I simply waved my hand at the driver in disgust and said, “Ah, forget it, he just doesn’t want to take us to the airport!” I started to turn away and regroup for the original plan. Suddenly, the driver’s demeanor changed totally. “Okay, I’ll take you to the airport”, he said as he jumped out and started loading us up. I was completely puzzled but said nothing.

Finally, we got underway and as we did we instantly became fast friends, talking about each other’s lives past and present and all manner of happy talk. As I talked I was still pondering what had just transpired. Did I suddenly learn to talk Jedi? Had I become a pushy New Yorker? I can’t confirm this and the driver would have never admitted this but I think I had simply stumbled on a key phrase. You see it is illegal for a driver to refuse any fare to any of the boroughs, ever. They can be subject to substantial fines and repeat offenses can lead to losing their medallion. Many drivers will refuse an airport fare because once they drop you off they have to either wait in a very long queue or come back empty. Usually the queue is so long that they prefer to come back empty. I believe he might have started thinking he was in a sting situation when he suddenly agreed to take us.

If I think of the past year as a crash course in urban living then I felt as I left the city for the last time that I had just passed the final exam.