Oh Abra! How I've missed you!

Abra Moore is back!

Taxicab Nightmare

It was a quiet Sunday morning. I left my hotel early after the big show to head off to LaGuardia airport to catch my 10 o'clock flight. Little did I know what horrors would ensue. My first mistake, hailing a taxi cab. I should have just let the Hotel bellboy catch me one. But no, I was cheap and didn't want to pay a tip. The cab driver didn't quite understand what I meant by LaGuardia. That should have been the first major warning. And then when he accepted me in and we headed down the wrong direction on a one-way street (with 4 lanes of oncoming traffic), I should have asked him to just drop me off at the nearest street corner immediately. But no, I was patient. That is until I realize he didn't know where he was going. By that point we were crossing the Brooklyn bridge and it was too late. For the next hour and 15 minutes, I was taken on an excrutiately slow ride through Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. At one point, I saw an exit sign for Long Island and almost fainted. I panicked. I pleaded with the driver, but he had no clue where he was going. He was constantly checking a map, calling another cab driver for advice, going very slowly, taking illegal turns, missing green lights and passing red ones. Then when my time started to slip away, I pleaded in tears to get me to the airport. I was going to miss my flight. I made a tearful call to my parents and continued to beg the driver to hurry up. He kept saying sorry and not to worry about the fare. I wasn't worried about the fare. I was worried about missing my flight!

Finally, we reach the airport and I breathe a sigh of relief. I tell the driver to drop me off at the USAirways terminal. The driver takes me to the first terminal he sees, the Delta Airlines one. At that point, I started screaming at him to get me to the right terminal. So he went around and only half-stopped at a stop sign, and then proceeded to rear-end the vehicle in front of him. The man from the other car started screaming and cursing at him. At that point I knew my contract with the driver had ended, he no longer could deliver me to my destination. I grabbed my things and bolted out of there without paying the driver one cent. I pleaded with a Hertz shuttle bus driver, who had seen the accident, to help me. I was shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. He was sympathetic and took me to my terminal. A couple on the bus, gave me some tissues as I told them about my hellish joyride through the burroughs.

I caught my flight just in the nick of time. They had started boarding when I got there. If the driver hadn't crashed into another car, he would have probably taken me to another wrong terminal or I would have had to negotiate some discount (the fare was at $45). But instead, I got a life lesson, free trip and a story to tell.