The longest cab ride ever

Here is a story that will make you laugh.

Yesterday we were going to a friend’s house for a dinner party. Now you have to understand that we have a great policy of always taking a cab when we expect to be having a glass or two of wine. Usually that means less than ten dollars and a trip across town. Sometimes it’s more if we are going to the burbs for dinner and we can’t take the light rail. Either way, taking a cab is the right thing to do.

However this dinner party was in Evergreen. But we stayed with the same plan. The farther away it is, the worse it would be to drive. And since I lived in Vail for all those years and we took cabs across town all the time, I didn’t think there would be a problem.

I was wrong.

It took quite some time to get there, which we expected. But then when we started climbing some of those mountain roads I learned that the city cabs are just not cut out for this. These are not my Vail cabs, and these cab drivers are not familiar with mountain snowy driving. It has been so long since I was in a rear wheel drive car I forgot how bad they are on even the smallest patch of ice. And you can exponentially increase how bad this is when you add an uphill grade to the problem.

it was truly a hilarious situation. While trying to find the turn off the cab lost traction on the uphill climb and we came to a halt. The we realized we lost all cell signal and couldn’t call for directions. We slowed down to look for street signs and started sliding backwards down the hill. As the driver tried to move forward we slide sideways, we fishtailed, we spun our tires, but we could not gain any progress forward. Our cab driver was about to have a heart attack. But he was a great sport for most of it with a very nervous laugh that let me know he was not at all comfortable in the situation.

Finally we found ourselves completely unable to move up the hill to find the party, unable to get any cell phone signal on all three of our phones, and rapidly wearing down the patience of our cab driver. So we did the only thing we could do, we went down the hill backwards, inch by inch, in the cab until we could turn around. Then of course we had to drive almost entirely down the hill and away from the party just to get a cell signal.

When we finally did get a signal we called our host immediately to apologize. They were kind enough to offer to come and pick us up, but the last thing we wanted to do was have them leave their party to pick our urban butts up. There was also the fact that our cab driver, who was laughing too at this time, said there was no way in heck that any cab driver would come back to get us. Our host got the biggest laugh out of it as well. Which is good because we felt terrible for missing the event. We are already putting together a better plan for our rain check.

So what could we do next? All we could do was take the cab back to the city and grab some dinner. We ended up taking the cab to Vita, within walking distance of where we started (we did walk home after dinner).

I had to take a picture of our cab meter (and we tipped him big for being such a good sport and trying to treat his cab like an SUV) for the longest cab ride I have ever taken. And all to get to a spot we could have walked to. If it didn’t make such a fun story it would be more painful.

And as a side note… we asked our cab driver if we were the longest fare he had. We were surprised to learn that we were not even close. He took a couple to Kansas City Missouri once. That fare was about a grand. He has taken folks repeatedly between DIA and Colorado Springs, Vail, and Breckenridge (although they only do that in the summer because the cabs have rear wheel drive).

We still believe in taking cabs, but the Evergreen location may require a special solution. I am still holding on to the gift bottle of wine for my friend who’s dinner we missed, but hopefully we gave the dinner party a great story to laugh about.

Cheers! Anybody have a story that can beat this one?

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites