GOOD GRIEF MR. TAXI DRIVER, WHERE ARE WE NOW!

By Robert R Rogers

A little after noon on Saturday, I caught the shuttle from my Birmingham convention hotel to the airport to catch my flight to Cincinnati.  I thought I would play it safe by being early for my 2:30 flight.  And I was plenty early too, but the plane was just a little late taking off.  There were 2 holds because of stormy weather over Cincinnati.  We finally got the go-ahead at 5:00 P.M.  I think the pilot or somebody must have understood the importance of timing, because we quickly loaded back up and were in the air in a jiffy.  Later, I learned the weather window was slammed closed for a flight just after us.  But we had a mainly uneventful flight to Cincy in a 50 passenger Canada Air jet, the flight having only a few short minutes of bumpy ride just before landing.  Once on the ground, I thought I was home free.  Wrong!  That thought ended after a very pleasant Delta employee helped me to ground transportation (I am a totally blind frequent flyer) and I had settled into the taxi to what was normally a 25 minute ride home.  Boy, was I wrong! 

Once we were on the way, I became aware of the driver talking on his cell phone in some language other than English.  I leaned forward and gave the driver the somewhat involved directions for the route to my house, but I got no response from him.  It started to dawn on me.  Good grief, maybe he didn’t understand a word I said!

To explain, just recently, we had had a large influx of foreign taxi drivers from a nearby city, a number of those drivers reputed to know little English and even less about Cincinnati streets, and those drivers were frequently getting lost.  Oh boy, maybe he was one of those.  I wondered how I could direct him.  It sounded like some kind of television comedy, our wandering aimlessly around this city for the rest of the night, looking for my home, me blind as a bat so I couldn’t see to guide him and, neither of us understanding a word the other said.

Again, I tried giving him directions, hoping I was mistaken in my assessment, but my fears were confirmed when he handed me his cell phone.  I heard a man, presumably his dispatcher, at the other end speaking in broken English.  I gave him very detailed directions to my home, having to repeat myself from time to time.  It didn’t exactly allay my fears when the driver took back the phone and started loudly conversing with his dispatcher, maybe even arguing.  I couldn’t be sure since not a word was in recognizable English.  Meanwhile, we continued to zoom down the road to I knew not where.

After about 40 minutes on the normally 25 minute trip, I asked him in slow, deliberate tones, “Sir.  Where are we?”  Again, he called his dispatcher and conversed, none of it understandable to me.  In the meantime, he slowed not even a tad, continuing lickety-split down the road at a high rate of speed.  I began to worry.  We could end up in Dayton 50 miles north or Columbus, 100 miles northeast before I could stop him.  Maybe, at the rate of speed we were traveling, in a few short hours, I might be lucky enough to wind up all the way back in Birmingham to start this bloody thing all over again.

After several minutes more, in desperation and hoping he would understand, I told him, “Stop.”  He turned onto a side street and got out.  I wondered what was going to happen now.  When he started talking to someone on the street, I realized this was my chance to determine where we were.  I jumped out and asked for information.  Someone, not my driver, reassured me in broken English that he knew just where I wanted to go.  He said I should get back in the car.  I recognized the voice of the dispatcher.  He must have raced after us to eventually overtake us. 

We started back up in this procession of the dispatcher leading in one car and me in the taxi following.  After a while, I sensed we had turned onto a street which was only two minutes from my home.  But... but... but... we then traveled another 15 or 20 minutes!  I wondered where we were going now, so I asked.

The procession came to a halt and the dispatcher walked back to our car to confer.  It was just as I had thought.  We had gone several miles too far, so we got back into our respective cars and resumed our little parade back the other way.  Finally, an hour and twenty minutes after starting from the airport, we pulled up in front of my house.  As I got out of the taxi, my wife called to me from our front porch.  Upon hearing this, the dispatcher and my driver laughed with feigned bravado.  To me, it sounded more like nervous relief that it was all over.  I paid my fare, collected my luggage, and thanked my lucky stars as I fled.  As I closed my front door behind me, I heard the driver and dispatcher in the street talking loudly, possibly arguing, and still in some language other than English.