Monday, August 1, 2011

The Love life of a Cab Driver

Picture the scene: 5Am and the sun hasn't quite begun to make its ascent yet. A young woman is waiting outsite a building, eyeing the dark sky and trying to figure out how long it has been since she has seen a sunrise. In a cloud of exhaust fumes and a too-loud engine, a cab pulls up and asks if she is the bearer of a certain name. Not fazed by this, she admits to being the owner of the name and gets into the cab.
"So, heading to the Buffalo Airport, eh?" the cab driver asks through a full gray beard that reminds the woman of Santa Claus (or if you're a Harry Potter fan - Dumbledore).
"Yes," she replies simply since her sleep-addled brain could not come up with a wittier retort.
"What for?"
"Personal, mostly vacation,"
"Ah okay,"
Silence which is followed aptly by more silence as the young woman thinks she can nod off and catch another half hours of precious sleep before reaching the border. The cab driver breaks into her half-sleep with the follow proclamnation:
"You know, I kind of know what's up with women. I mean I had four wives..."

If you hadn't guessed it yet, the young woman was me. And yes, I did sit through about an hour of a stranger telling me about his love life that spanned over 30 years while (in mostly shock and sleepiness) I listened and made the appropriate comments. Had I been more awake I think the conversation would have gone a tad bit better.

Oh, and if you haven't been keeping up (or remembering) on the past few tweets (shame on you), then I'll let you know now that the above was the beginning of a 12 hour journey to Los Angeles, CA where I was to pitch my book as a movie idea to Hollywood executives. Yes you read that right. I was headed to Hollywood with my book in one hand, a suitcase in the other and half-remembered dreams of, well, I can't exactly remember what I was dreaming. Surely it had something to do with impressing an executive enough that I'd get a call back.

I digress (as I normally do); the cab ride went over fairly smoothly. The airport was a normalcy for me since I'd been there before. Finding the gate and waiting for the hour was no concern. Once the plane actually came and we made our ascent, I assumed I was settling in for a two hour flight as the ticket had said.

A voice from somewhere in front broke into these thoughts and informed us: "Thanks for joining us on this five hour flight..." Excerpt from brain: Five hours? Huh? Oh right, time change. Oh Hell, I didn't bring enough to amuse myself with in my purse and there's no way in Hell I can get my carry-on down from the luggage compartment. Bloody Hell.

The last was thought in a British accent of course. Anyway, let's fast foward over the exceptionally boring five hour plane righe and get to the more interesting descent, shall we?

As the air-bird began to land, I looked out my window and saw the great black pyramid rising up through a cluster of flat and stale looking buildings. Excitment bubbled in my chest (either that or it was indigestion) as I thought: "Oh my freaking God, it's the Luxor! Criss Angel performs there!" This was quickly followed by: "Noooo, this is only a two hour layover, I can't DO anything!" And thus my fan-girl/morbid obsession with pyramids/perverse obsession with magic moment was destroyed.

Skipping over the escape of the tublar metal flying can, I realized the Las Vegas airport was about the size of a small city. People crowded everywhere and the gate I was looking for was no where near my general proximity. I was happy that I booked a two-hour layover. Finding the gate was akin to a journey through the tourist section of a city made famous for hosting a wonder of the world. I should know since I live 15 minutes from such a city.

A path cleared ahead and I noted with a sense of relief that I found my gate. Unfortunately my stomach reminded me that it hadn't been fed and would soon eat itself if I didn't feed it soon. I followed my nose (literally) and found food. I just travelled 4000 KM/2,800 miles to eat at Burger King.

Skipping forward another hour and a half, I got on the second plane. According to my ticket (I should have known that tickets lie), I would be in LA in two hours. A summary of the flight: the plane went up and we could turn on electronic devices. The plane hovered for 15 or 20 minutes and we had to turn off our electronci devices as we made the final descent. Excerpt from brain: Why exactly was there a layover for that?

Regardless, I made it out of the second air-born tin can relatively safely and found a bright green cab to spend an obscene amount of money in to get to my hotel. That night was spend on taking in my surroundings, exploring the concept of a mall without a roof (we call these "a plaza" in Canada and have indoor malls. The entire outdoor mall concept amuses me), eating and working on detailed character profiles for a crime fiction novel I'm working on.

No, the irony of profiling detective characters was not lost on me. And knowing one such character extremely well, the irony would be exceptionally amusing to one fictional detective known as James Reeves. He might even make a reference to some obscure factoid that people could live without knowing a la Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory". Probably not though as James is not Sheldon.

Sleep was imminent by 8PM (11 PM in the Great Not-so-white-right-now North) but I pushed through until 11PM and enjoyed the luxury of having a king-sized bed all to myself. The next day would be spent at an exhibit featuring creepy clowns and meeting my fellow authors. But as I began to drift into unconsciousness, I had no idea of the creepy clowns that would claim my waking hours. Thus ends the first day of the LA trip.

A bit of shameless self-promotion: "A Small Slice of the Undead" (my zombie anthology) will be coming out this month. Once the cover is complete and the final edit done, I will be putting it up for sale as an ebook. Until then, be amused by future blogs and don't answer the door if someone asks if you have an extra brains.

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