Our final team is gone and I have tons of thoughts on that topic. Maybe you’ll get them tomorrow. But first I just have to tell a story.
We headed over to the Paynes’ house tonight to watch a movie. The crowd ended up being Bryan, Dana, Danielle, Danny, Jerry, Lane, Nicole, and Teddy. I had come straight from the airport with all my stuff, not having been home all day. “Stuff” included my guitar. We watched “What Lies Beneath” (the girls weren’t present for the related voting process and I was apparently not paying attention while it took place) and finished up around midnight. Then the fun began.
We called a taxi from the house. Here’s a couple of relevant facts about taxis:
1. No more than four people can ride in a taxi.
2. The charge more if you call them somewhere.
3. You can expect to pay more if it’s after nine, and more if it’s after eleven.
4. You can tend to expect to pay more if you have a bunch of stuff in the trunk.
5. You are going to get ripped if the driver doesn’t have a meter.
6. It’s not surprising to pay more if you’re a gringo.
Therefore, six gringos walking out of a house at midnight with a guitar do not want to see one hatchback taxi pull up. We saw one hatchback taxi pull up. With no meter.
I cannot believe the guy even let us in the taxi, much less helped me put the guitar in the “trunk.” The seating arrangement ended up being Teddy in the front with Dana, Danielle, Nicole and Jerry arranged driver to passenger side in the back with me originally basically sitting in Nicole’s lap, and ending up more or less laying on Dana. You can imagine the conversation.
We dropped Danielle off first and the driver turned to Teddy and asked for money. When we all sort of stared at him he asked if all were getting off here. “Solo uno.” The driver just laughed and headed back for Granda Centeno. By the fourth and final stop of the back-and-forth ride, we’d run up a bill of $5.00, the third highest taxi bill I’ve been a part of causing in this country, and although a couple people probably thought that was high, it beats the heck out of the $8.00 trip from the bus station or the $11.00 return trip from Metro Cafe. The guy was so cool and didn’t rip us out of any more than we expected.
All told, it was a fun night of squeezed bodies, heads between legs, worked abs, and a possible question mark on somebody’s team finances. There should be more taxis in the world.
