When I first had my taxi licence, I was working six twelve-hour night shifts a week. I was raking in the money.

Now, it’s different. There are about twice as many cabs on Canberra’s roads and it’s rare to have the sort of peak hour frenzy or Sunday morning cab queue that I cut my taxi teeth on.

I’m also paying a lot more attention to my family.

They warned us about it in cabbie school, and I’ve seen too many cabbies run into marital difficulties. The long shifts, the fatigue, the stress.

As the old lament of the shearer’s wife goes:

Friday night too tired,
Saturday night too drunk,
Sunday too far away.

Over the years of cabbing I’ve cut back a lot. Most recently, I’ve given up the lucrative Friday and Saturday night shifts. Nor do I stay out until four in the morning to hand over to the day driver. Sure, I’m missing out on money, but I’m better off for it.

I have a family.

It wasn’t fair for my family that they should spend their weekends tip-toeing around the house so that I could get some sleep. And that when I woke up, I’d get into my taxidriver uniform and head out onto the streets, coming home at dawn and falling into bed exhausted.

It wasn’t fair on me either. Taxidriving is unhealthy enough without adding constant exhaustion to the long idle hours, the junk food, the supernormal amounts of caffeine.

So now I have a life, and I have fun.

And, to be honest, with about a bazillion cabs on the road, there isn’t the financial rewards of staying out after midnight. I often spent a couple of hours sitting on the main cab rank, slowly moving up and then getting a fare that was only a few dollars.

I could do better than that. I could spend that time tucked up in bed.

I’ve given up my Friday and Saturday night shifts in favour of doing family type things. Shopping, browsing through galleries, having a family dinner with a bottle of wine and candles on the table. My two kids live at home and now that they are grown up, they are a pleasure to be around. Not that they weren’t as children, just that nowadays we can have grown-up discussions. Set the world to rights over a good bottle of Shiraz.

There are things in life more important than money, and nowadays I’m happy, my family is happy too, and that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

They got in on the main city rank, now re-opened at a third the original size. “Can we stop at a bottle-o first?” one asked.

“Right-oh!” I replied. “But where are we going?”

“Formule 1″

“You beauty!” I thought to myself. The Formule 1 motel is one of those cheapo deals out on the highway. $59 a night for a basic room and the dining room is a vending machine.

But it’s a nice long fare.

We went through Braddon, stopping at the Bottle-O there. That’s the trade name, and it’s a good one. Well-stocked grog shop, free parking outside, off-licence to print money, it is.

One of the two young men went inside and I hit the “Pause” button on the meter. It was going to be a good fare and people who stay at cheap motels are reaching into their own pockets to count the pennies. I look after them.

The guy in the back seat, a fairly chunky sort of fella, caught sight of the “Route 66″ keyring I have bluetacked to the dashboard. It’s one I bought at the Route 66 museum in Chandler, OK last year, and I keep it there for daydreaming purposes. That half day spent exploring the old road between Tulsa and Oklahoma City was a very happy one!

“I’m going to ride Route 66 next year with my father,” he said. “We’ll pick up the Harleys in Detroit, ride them to LA, and ship them home.”

Wow! What a trip! This chap immediately had my attention.

His mate got back in, with a six pack of Jim Beams to help the night ahead go down, and we set off on Canberra’s own Mother Road. Northbourne Avenue.

We talked Route 66 and the USA all the way. The food, the cars, the motels, the people. I mentioned that I’m planning my own father-son trip along Route 66 next year. From the other side of the generation gap. Myself, my son and my daughter.

I had lusted after a rental Mustang, but looking at the reviews it sounds like it wouldn’t be as much fun for the third person, sitting in the cramped back seat, peering out through a couple of tiny side windows. I’d be doing a lot of the driving, but some of the time it would be me in the back seat, and I wanted to enjoy the experience.

So we’ll likely hire something with a bit of size and a bit of style. A Chrysler 300C would be ideal. Lots of room for people and baggage, space for extras, a bunch of buttons to press and an image that is unmistakably All-American.

Not as much fun as a Harley, to be sure, but I’m not a Harley kind of guy. I wished my passengers the best for the trip, put my foot down and whipped off in a cloud of dust for the airport, where I watched the planes climb into the night sky and sent my thoughts with them.

Earlier that day, a package from Amazon had arrived, containing a DVD: Route 66: Producer’s Picks.

Not a lot to do with Route 66 as such, but for the feeling of driving through Sixties America in a classy car, there’s nothing to beat it. The black and white scenes, the corny live-to-camera adverts, the unforgettable theme music, the guest appearances of later stars, the thought-provoking plots, and above all the lifestyle, it’s a pleasure to watch.

I’ve got a bunch of maps and guidebooks, any number of websites, and all my dreams to keep me going until next year.

So after sitting on Dickson rank for half an hour, slumping into my seat and jumping when a chap opened the door and got in beside me, I decided after dropping him off that I’d have a snooze.

But first I had to take my guy home.

“Braddon,” he says, but he couldn’t tell me the street name. “I’ll show you – just a bit this side of the football oval.”

Hmmmm. Never a good sign when a passenger doesn’t know where they are going. I had Chet Baker going and this guy had his eyes closed and was making kind of gurgling sounds in the back of his throat. He was ringing a whole lot of alarms with me, but he didn’t smell of alcohol. Maybe he was just tired. Like me.

I asked him a question and he opened his eyes. Last thing I want is someone falling asleep when I don’t know where to take them.

We found his place and I dropped him off. $11.50 on the meter, and he just wanted five dollars back. I expected a twenty proffered, but he’s got a wallet full of fifties and he hands me one.

“Ah, just give me thirty back.”

Well, of course I didn’t. I gave him back thirty five dollars, because that’s the fare and a sweet tip. He seemed surprised, but didn’t argue the point.

Next stop was one of my little parkland hideyholes, and I locked the doors, turned off the meter display, killed the sound, cranked the seat back, put my cap over my eyes, closed them and just then the despatch screen lit up with a silver job.

Naturally I hit the “Accept” button. Silver jobs are an extra eleven dollars, and generally a class of passenger who won’t run off without paying, smack you in the face or throw up in the ashtray.

Senator Brown of the Greens. Actually quite a nice bloke, and I’ve given him a lift before, years ago in a normal cab. He may well end up being quite an important party leader after the election.

He hopped into the back seat this time, along with another chap, who I assumed was a party official, and they talked party talk in low tones, Chet Baker blowing over the top.

After I delivered them safely, I looked at the airport rank, and it was reasonably empty after the stats screen showing sixty cars or so out there all evening, so I raced out there, tailed onto the line and had a family sitting in the cab fairly quickly.

“Fiji,” I thought to myself. In Canberra’s winter, Fiji is a popular, cheap and warm holiday destination. They had the international traveller feel to their bags, and they didn’t say much after a long day of travel.

Took them to Kambah, and found another favorite snooze spot nearby, where I actually got a good nap.

Woken up by a job coming in from Woden, and when I arrived at the pickup point, there was a young lady standing there with enough helium balloons to make her light on her toes. She crammed them into the back seat, completely filling my rearview with red and yellow and white and red, and directed me over the ridge to Weston.

She’d had a farewell party. Her naval officer husband was off on a four year posting, and it was goodbye to Canberra. Having been a naval wife myself, I was able to swap a few yarns with her.

And then I was empty again, cruising the winter streets of the nation’s capital, just Chet Baker and I in a silver limousine, cool as you like in the late evening.

It was open road all the way, just we two on an empty motorway speeding through the bushland of the Bush Capital, Miles Davis golden in our ears. Barely a word, just a shared joy in the experience.

I dropped him off, a smile on his face the only tip I needed, and headed back in. It was a quiet night and I was hoping for one or two from the bars in Kingston, before calling it a day ’round midnight.

While I was moving into a scoring position in Kingston the phone rang.

It was not my phone.

I pulled off the road and hunted it down. Not easily findable. Felt under the seat, in the back. Got out, opened the passenger door, looked under the floor mats. Finally found it in a crevice. A 32Gig iPhone down beside the passenger seat, under my computer which I stow there. Obviously been there for a while.

I rang back the “Missed Call” number and got an ecstatic young lady who had been worrying all day about her phone. I reassured her that it would be returned, and when I found she lived in Pialligo, not far from Canberra International Airport, I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

She was glad to get it back, and though I didn’t ask for any tip or reward or even a reasonable fare to return the phone, that was good, as she didn’t offer any.

No worry. Making somebody happy is a rich reward in itself.

I looked in on the taxi rank. I could see that two planes had just landed, so I tailed onto the back, with about thirty cabs ahead. Unfortunately one of the planes was a Virgin flight, and the next to land (and last for the night) was another Virgin and as every cabbie knows, Virgin passengers generally ring up their rels to come collect them at the airport!

When the passengers had all walked out and left, I was the second cab on the rank, with no more planes due.

So I dipped out. Luck of the draw.

The thought crossed my mind that I was in a great position for the first flight of the next day, but doubtless my day driver would have words to say about that!

Nowadays, fifty-fifty. Maybe it’s indicative of my state of mind to see more clouds than sun, but I doubt it. It’s just different. More people, maybe. A wider change, maybe. Possibly both.

Whatever, I love Canberra, and so long as I do it safely ruggled up or in a heated office, winter here is to be enjoyed, not endured.

We’ve got a temporary cab to drive while Betsy is off the road. It’s Silver Service, an old Statesman, and it’s a chore, that’s what it is.

That bozo who tried to overtake me in the bikelane a couple of weeks back, I’d like to sue him for the lost income, the inconvenience and the stress.

Getting into a new cab is difficult enough. The controls are different, the meter, printers, keypads and so on are all either different models or arranged differently or both, the kill switches for the various things are hidden away in different spots.

But an old cab – and TX70 has over half a million kilometres up – is an extra collection of bother. Small things are broken, or loose. The engine and suspension are no longer fresh.

Let’s see. The bootlid struts are gone. Lift the boot up to put luggage in, it falls down. You unlock the boot using either the inconvenient button in the glove box or the stud on the key, and it unlocks and stays closed because there is nothing to push it up away from the catch.

It took me an age to find the switch for the Cabcharge keypad – which no longer fits on the holder because some crucial part is broken.

I can’t change the date and time. Maybe there’s a way, but if so it isn’t intuitive amongst the hundred or so buttons forming the Statesman’s ergonomic dash. Likewise resetting the trip meter.

The thing vibrates:
a. at a certain speed
b. when idling after about fifteen minutes.

The wiper blades are worn.

The rear ashtray falls open and won’t stay closed.

One of the front park globes is gone.

Turn off the engine and the doors lock.

A hundred other things. Yeah, it drives, it works, it does the job, but it’s no joy at all.

And no petrol in the tank. The dual fuel engine starts on petrol and switches to gas a few seconds later, but it really wants that petrol.

So there I am on the airport rank. I get to the front, a lady approaches with a bag, I turn off the engine – remember, I can’t open the boot from inside the car, I have to lift it as I unlock it – and she slings her small soft bag into the back seat anyway. I crank the engine. And again, and again.

Passengers are streaming out, cabs behind are growing impatient, my passenger jumps out and gets the next cab.

Finally I get the thing going, get a passenger – no luggage – and he says “Kingston”. A short fare.

I drop him off, and that’s it. Five hours into a thirteen hour shift, I’m going home. This is NO fun.

Fill up with a bit of petrol and top up the gas, park it in the carport and have a pleasant remainder of the evening with the family watching some Montreal comedy festival. That’s fun.

Then at four in the morning I’m woken by a text from the day driver. Problem with the printer. Then – battery flat.

So I’m out in the frosty predawn, moving cars and mucking about with jumper leads and blaspheming away as I describe last night’s shift to him.

Thank goodness my day driver is a saint. Every moment with him is a joy. Talking taxis at halfpast four in the cold is a pleasure.

Well, give him joy of TX 70. Leather seats and six-stacker CD it may have, but it’s a chore to drive.

He sent me a text a bit later on. He’d gotten a VIP passenger a fair bit closer to The Lodge than the Prime Minister, who remains in her Kingston apartment.

Last October we said goodbye to Betsy, our lovely silver Holden Statesman taxi. Almost new, she was loaded down with great features, and was a pleasure to drive.

But while I was off in America, the owner managed to write her off. One design flaw is that the A-pillars are very thick, hiding oncoming traffic at intersections. He didn’t mean to hit the other car, but he did, and hard enough to do some serious damage.

But he bought her back off the insurance company and over the past half year or so, while we’ve been driving loaner a Ford Fairlane, he’s gradually put her back together in the back of the workshop.

Yes, Charles the Fairlane that I crashed a week ago.

Friday it all came together and we swapped the patched-up Charles* for renewed Betsy. I got to drive her first shift as a reborn cab, just like I drove her first shift as a new cab last year.

What a pleasure! She’s got some wonderful functions, such as automatic windscreen wipers, front and rear parking sensors, MP3 disc player. The gas tank in the boot doesn’t rattle, so I don’t have to use the “ex-girlfriend” joke any more.

On the slight downside, there’s no seat memory – a boon for a car with three regular drivers – and the transmission makes a racket. Put your foot down, and the world can count the revs.

There’s also a new taximeter, so I’ll have to upgrade my muscle memory after three years of hitting the old set of buttons. At least this one comes with a user manual, which is a lot more than ever we got with the old one.

* Charles was repaired with bits from another Fairlane that just happened to be stuffed in the back of the workshop, and – trust me on this – there’s a fair bit of duct tape hiding some of the scars.

Evenings are like that. Most of the afternoon rush is from the big offices and hotels to the airport, and once out there cabbies tend to stick around and have a chat with their mates when they see the work in town drying up.

I’d just taken a short fare from Woden to a nearby suburb, and as the hospital zone was showing only one cab logged in, with a half dozen jobs in the past hour, I parked in the taxi rank at the entrance. If I didn’t get a radio call from the surrounding residences, I might get a patient or a doctor fed up with the chronic lack of hospital parking.

Instead, nothing happened for half an hour and I checked my emails on the laptop. People would come out the hospital entrance and head towards me and then walk past to one of the other buildings, so I was always looking up and being disappointed.

Finally, the door opened and a man got in, sitting down beside me and growling.

Yeah. Growling, and if it wasn’t growling, it was snarling, his face contorted into a mask of anger. Honestly, I almost opened my own door to run away in panic.

However, I listened carefully, hoping to get some useful information out of the grunts and snorts.

I’m good that way. People tell me where to go, I take them there, and then they give me money. It’s a pleasant system, and it helps reduce stress at traffic lights and in traffic jams. I glance down at the meter, happily ticking away, and life is sunny.

No instructions were forthcoming. The man gave up, dug around in his pocket and fished out a torn piece of paper with a name printed on it.

I read the name. He looked hopeful. “Is that you?” I asked.

He nodded and pointed off down the road, with a hand that was shrunken and deformed into a claw.

“You can show me where to go?”

He nodded and gestured again.

I indicated, pulled away from the rank, turned on the meter and headed off into the winter dark.

I was pretty nervous, to be honest. Most passengers are very good, and most of my work is what you might call mind-numbingly repetitive. It’s the fares that are a bit out of the ordinary that bother me, because I’ve got to work out how to handle things on the fly, and if I make a mistake, it’s a vicious circle.

I once had a tourist with limited English, and when I drove him late at night to the Formule 1 motel out on the highway, taking the back road past the television studios and the bushland and the kangaroos, he ceased believing me when I mistakenly told him it was very close a couple of times, and he demanded I stop and let him out. He paid off and must have walked a long way back to civilisation, but I couldn’t have taken him the last two hundred metres to the (invisible from the road) motel, because he had clearly ceased to trust me and was on the verge of taking action against the obviously mad cabbie.

My bloke tonight couldn’t talk, he looked (and sounded) angry, and I had no idea where I was driving him. I was hoping for a short fare, to tell the truth. A house in one of the nearby streets, maybe.

Instead, he directed me out onto the main road and we sped up to match the traffic. He was pretty good at giving good indications of directions, and which lane I should be in, so I relaxed a bit. I’ve often said that language is not a problem with cabbies, as you can always tell the driver where to go with four hand signals. Go. Left. Right. Stop.

And heaven knows that there are often language barriers with cabbies. Immigrants arrive and get a cab licence because it’s an easy job, and they learn English on the go. If the passenger doesn’t know where to go, like because you’ve just picked up a tourist at the airport, why you simply hand them the street directory and they will tell you. And if there are any mistakes, hey, the meter’s running.

My passenger directed me off the main road, through the suburb of Curtin and north. I kept glancing at him as we approached each intersection, but he wanted me to drive on.

The last houses disappeared and then we were on the Cotter Road and soon on Lady Denman Drive, past horse paddocks, bushland, the zoo and the dam. Not quite your howling wilderness, but neither was it a busy road. I started wondering about someone scrawling a name on a bit of paper and luring an innocent cabbie out into a deserted layby.

Through a tricky intersection and on through Gridloch Interchange, heading for Belconnen. He seemed happy as we poured up Bindubi Street, tapping his hand in time with Chet Baker, the soft jazz soothing the savage breast.

We stopt at lights near the shops, and he gave some instructions, drawing a diagram with his finger on the console. Right and left and right. Right.

That took us to the hospital. Calvary Hospital instead of Canberra Hospital. My son bashes dixies at Calvary, and it’s a pleasant place, surrounded by bushland.

We were met at the main entrance. A man who seemed very pleased to see my passenger, who positively bounded out like a puppy and skipped away with him.

Um. Thirty three dollars on the meter. The man had muttered something about getting a Cabcharge, but here I was, sitting empty, passenger door open. Waiting.

Waiting.

Ten minutes and the man came back with a card, paying the fare.

“I’ll bet he has a lot of trouble with other cabbies!” I said.

“Yeah. He’s really a sweet guy. Thanks for your trouble.”

And it was no trouble, really. Sure, a bit of anxiety here and there, but once I stept into his shoes and saw cabdrivers through his eyes and imagined some of the worries he’d have with them, it was no trouble at all. No wonder he was tense and nervous to begin with. I’ll bet that he’d been taken for a drunk or a lunatic any number of times, and when he couldn’t explain, it would be even worse.

That’s one of the delights of the job. The regular fares are pleasant enough, and the money’s nice, and a couple of times a shift I’ll have a good old chat with a passenger, but you never know who is going to jump into the passenger seat and tell you where to go. Every shift is the same, but different.

They were talking about walking the dog down their street, smiling at other people, and receiving back nothing but blank stares.

You know, I don’t think people are rude. As a taxidriver, I meet a LOT of people (one of the reasons someone who doesn’t know me well suggesting that I should “get out more” totally made my day), and most are friendly and polite.

So long as I am. I greet people with a smile and a “Good Morning”, “Good Evening”, “Good Heavens” as appropriate, make eye contact and take note of their needs. Someone elderly with a walking stick, for example, and I jump out of my seat to help them in, make sure they have enough legroom, close the door, etc. Younger folk, more spry of body if not mind, get Michael Jackson on the CD and they sing along.

I think it’s a matter of everyday life being superficial. Larry McMurtry noted in his book Roads : Driving America’s Great Highways that you can drive across the nation and speak not a surplus word to another soul, with self-serve petrol pumps and fast food restaurants. “Big Mac, medium fries and a bucket of root beer” does not make for a meaningful interaction, even if you add “please” at the end and the teenager instructs you to have a nice day as she hands over the rootbeer.

When we lived in smaller communities and knew everybody’s business, we could be closer to their hearts, if I may put it that way. Nowadays, the bus driver is someone on a random shift from the other side of a great city, the cabbie comes from a different continent, the news is broadcast by an anchorman instead of a town crier, and gossip is reserved for Facebook rather than a good old natter over the back fence with the minister’s wife.

Gone are the days when you sat on your front porch and waved to your neighbours as they walked by. One town council, seeking a return to friendly neighbourhoods, decreed that every new dwelling should have a porch. And so it was- the porches were built and secured with metal grilles to keep out intruders and the world.

I don’t have any easy answers. Smile at strangers and you could attract stalkers. Move to a small town and be unemployed?

Perhaps my best advice is something I follow myself. Imagine that, following your own advice!

Become a cabbie.

Trust me on this, you’ll get to know a lot of people, you’ll be a small but essential part of the community, and the pensioners will love you as you lug their groceries up the steps.

And at night, as you put on the soft music for the couple embracing in the back seat, you can sigh happily for the spirit of romance.

Cabbies might not have all the answers, but they know a lot more than they generally let on.

“You free?” they asked.

Avoiding the obvious riposte, I indicated that I was available.

“EPIC,” they said.

I agreed. Exhibition Park in Canberra. Not on the way to the airport, but a nice fare, straight up Northbourne. The National Folk Festival is being held there in a few days, and these folk looked like early attendees.

Dropped them off at the main entrance, headed back down the road. Northbourne Avenue is as close as Canberra comes to having a main street. The Federal Highway from Sydney becomes Northbourne about where EPIC is located, and suddenly drivers are out of highway mode, sliding through suburbs and motels, the flagpole of Parliament House visible in the far distance on Capital Hill across the lake.

An odd car ahead of me. Covered in advertising, foreign numberplate, roof rack full of stuff. I pulled out my camera, but the battery pack was exhausted, so my fallback was the iPhone’s minicam.

I pulled alongside when the lights turned red at Antill Street. Quite a long change. The smiling driver noticed me beside him, wound down his window and told me he’d driven here from Switzerland.

I was astonished. I’ve heard of people doing such things, and indeed my first book was partly inspired by two such journeys (same vehicle, same people, thirty-five years apart), but here was one of these rare marvels actually driving down Northbourne Avenue!

“It took me seven months!” he said proudly. I nodded – such an epic journey over some of the most difficult territory in the world.

I could see the lights about to change. I won’t say I’m familiar with the patterns of every intersection in Canberra, but most of the major ones, you get to know them well.

“Do you have a blog?” I asked. Strange to be chatting with a driver of another vehicle. His steering wheel was on the left hand side of his Volvo, so of course he was only about a metre away.

“On the roof,” he said, indicating behind him. Sure enough, on one of the components of his roof equipment – he seemed to have an entire ecosystem up there, covered in advertising – was a web address: www.lcbdirect.ch.

The lights changed and we went our different ways. I got most of the way to the airport, before a radio job took me off to West Belconnen, and it wasn’t for some time that I had leisure to whip out the laptop to check out his adventure.

He drove from Switzerland to see the Melbourne Cup!

His blog, in a PDF format, is here.

What a story! He wisely drove with a succession of co-drivers, who wrote a lot of the blog entries, and there are some truly hair-raising adventures along the way, not least with machine-gun toting soldiers and policemen helping or hindering the journey.

More later.

– Peter Mac

Foursquare on the iPhone

We’ve got a new game, my day driver and I. A game where cabbies shine.

IPhones each, we share apps. Sometimes they are classics. Shazam is just a brilliant piece of software. You want to know who sings the song on the radio? Just Shazam it for a few seconds and it comes back with the title, the artist, a link to the lyrics and a download button from iTunes. There are currency converters, weather forecasters, games a-million.

And now Foursquare, funking off the iPhone’s GPS and social networking. It’s a scavenger hunt, it’s a map of your day, it’s a point-scoring exercise, it’s gathering facts and sharing info.

Once you download the app, create a new account with all the regular rigmarole of user name, password, icon picture etc., Foursquare checks your location, finds nearby places of interest, and asks if you want to check in. Meaning do you want the world to know that you are currently at that location.

It might be a bar or a restaurant. A museum or a supermarkt, a statue or a cab rank. If where you are isn’t listed, just add it. And then check in.

You get points for checking in. And for adding new locations. And for doing all sorts of stuff, such as checking into a location with “bar” in its title on a school night.

And for adding tips. Yeah, I know all cabbies love tips, but these are information tips. Drinks are half price on Thursdays. Ask for the Megaburger with Rickie’s special sauce. The receptionist has four breasts – she’s got a double-decker bust.

Interesting, useful titbits of trivia and advice. Invaluable as a handy guide to the traveller.

If you check-in at a place more times than any other place, you become Mayor of that place. My co-driver is Mayor of the Canberra Airport Taxi Rank. If you are Mayor of a bar, and that barkeep knows his savvy, you get a discount on your drinks. Sometimes the office of Mayor changes several times in an evening, depending on who has the quickest fingers on their iPhone!

Cabbies are good at this game, because we go lots of places and have time to check in while we are waiting for the next fare. To another place.

My Foursquare is here: Skyring.
M co-driver is here: PeskiePete.

–PeterMac

Taxi 18 at the Shine Dome