Will’s View

I went to Sydney recently to go and see what the Golden Land up North had to offer (and for my sister’s birthday). Seeing as it was a particularly early flight I thought I’d take a taxi. Sounds reasonable enough, it is a rare occasion that I taxi anywhere - being a student and all - but public transport just doesn’t run that early!

So I did the right thing, ordered the taxi the night before and proceeded to pack my bags. The next morning rolled around and I rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed and a feeling a little venomous toward the world in general for existing at 5:30am. Standing on the footpath (or the sidewalk/kerb for our North American readership) waiting for the taxi, I saw it sidle past and quite obviously neglect to notice me. After a brief taxi-chase I jumped in the back and told the driver I was going to the airport.

After I said this we sat idling on the corner while he programmed ‘The Airport’ into his Navman GPS navigator mounted conspicuously on the dashboard. Oh dear. What sort of cabbie doesn’t know his way to the airport?! Especially when:

• The airport must be a very common destination for taxis in general, you’d think a taxi driver would get reasonably familiar with the routes to the airport
• I haven’t been in Melbourne for all that long, and even I know the general direction to the airport!
• The taxi was ordered in advance, the blimmin’ cabbie already knew where I was going, so he had time to check a map or program his GPS navigator

What is the world coming to when cabbies don’t know the way to the airport? Imagine a large-scale-blockbuster-record-breaking-box-office-hit-smash movie where the male lead jumps into a cab and suavely says, “To the airport, driver” and the driver spends the next 2 minutes of the movie planning the fastest and shortest routes there on his handy GPS navigator. Or that all too-familiar scene where someone jumps into the back of a taxi and yells: “Follow that car!” and so the taxi-driver goes diligently about programming the perfectly enunciated dulcet tones of the GPS navigator to guide him turn-by-turn through the chase. It’s just plain unheard of.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Humorous, Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.