Doing a double
Speaking of long hours, I worked a couple of double shifts in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. The money was good of course, but my main motivation was something else: I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. Making it through more than 16 straight hours (almost 18 in one case) pedaling God-only-knows-how-many pounds of passengers for God-only-knows-how-many miles was as exhilarating as it was exhausting. To grasp why I found this so thrilling, you probably need to understand that I've never been the athletic type. When I was a kid and it came time to pick teams for kickball or dodgeball or whatever, there were generally girls who went higher in the draft than me. So at this point in my life, just a couple weeks shy of my 46th birthday (a milestone I crossed last Monday, by the way), meeting the physical challenge of "doing a double" on the pedicab felt like scaling a mountain or running a marathon.
Easy money
Like I said, the money was good too. Sometimes, it felt almost as though it were falling out of the sky. Here are some examples (not in chronological order):
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The weekend before Mardi Gras day I had a couple of pretty girls on the back of the bike, and we were stuck in traffic. Some young guys in a nearby car started flirting with the girls, who seemed to be enjoying the attention. One of the guys began begging me to pop a wheelie. After he had made this request for about the fifth time, I got down off my seat and, with my feet planted on terra firma, gently lifted the front tire about three inches off the ground. The guy jumped out of the car, ran over to me, and handed me a twenty dollar bill.__________
I was hired for a big chunk of Mardi Gras morning by a middle-aged man. A long-time resident of the Garden District, he and his wife belong to a small circle of friends who choose a theme every year, dress in elaborate handmade costumes based on that theme, and march together along Saint Charles Avenue (the main parade route) during the brief interlude between the two big parades, Zulu and Rex. This man has a handicap, which makes it difficult for him to walk, so he hired me to haul him and his wife in the pedicab while their friends walked alongside us. We moved at a snail's pace, pausing every few seconds to allow the people lined up along the route to take pictures of our procession.
When we saw the Krewe of Rex parade coming toward us, we pulled off onto a side street to watch for a couple of hours. During this time I was on standby, free to watch the parade or just wander around until the gentleman and his wife got ready for me to take them home.
Back at their house, they urged me to come in and eat lunch with them and their friends. I was eager to get back out and make more money, so I stopped in just long enough for some chitchat and a Coke. All in all, the whole job took a little more than three hours, of which less than one hour was spent actually pedaling -- and that at a very easy pace. For this, I was paid the full hourly rate for four hours plus a generous tip.
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When we reached his hotel, I had to grab his shoulder and gently shake him to wake him up. Once he had gathered his wits, he told me that he needed to go up to his room to get some money and that I would have to wait for him to come back down and pay me.
A couple of ladies who were standing outside the hotel smoking cigarettes overheard this conversation and offered me a twenty dollar bill. They said that they doubted very much that I would see my passenger again, and they hated to see me get stiffed. I argued that we should at least give him a couple of minutes to see if he kept his word; and at any rate, it wasn't their bill to pay. But they kept insisting that they wanted to pay for the man's ride, so finally I took the twenty.
Just about that time, the guy came back (seemingly a whole lot more coherent and energetic than a few short minutes before) and also offered me a twenty -- which, by the way, was a fairly generous amount for a single passenger on a brief ride.
"These two ladies already paid me for your ride, so why don't you just give it to them," I suggested.
Looking a bit bewildered, he turned toward the women and held out the money to them, but they refused to take it, so he turned back to me, trying to press it into my hand. I declined again. "Your ride has been taken care of," I said. "If they don't want the money, you can just keep it."
He just stood there stubbornly holding the money out and insisting that I take it until finally, I did. I made one more attempt to hand it over to the ladies, but they continued to refuse, so in the end I stuck his twenty in my wallet alongside theirs.
"You're an angel!" one of the ladies said to me as she planted a kiss on my cheek. I was grateful for the kiss and the compliment, but it still strikes me as strange. If anybody was angelic in that situation, it had to be the ladies. I, on the other hand, made out like a bandit.
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An angel with wheels instead of wings
Actually, these weren't the only women to tell me that I was an angel during the Mardi Gras season. It became something of a recurring theme. The typical scenario was that I would happen along at the right time to offer a ride to a lady who was desperately trying to get somewhere on foot while, either: A) drunk; B) wearing high heels; or C) drunk and wearing high heels. And she would say, "Oh God, yes, I would LOVE a ride!" And the whole way she would tell me over and over again that I was her angel (sometimes interspersing compliments on my calves). I lost track of how many times this happened, but I can tell you that I never got tired of it.
What does it take to make the blog?
On Mardi Gras and the days leading up to it, I ended up working more in the Garden District than in the French Quarter. I found working uptown (the Garden District) to be a much more pleasant experience all the way around than working downtown (the French Quarter). Navigating traffic was much easier, and the parade watchers were much better behaved. Truth be told, Mardi Gras parades are wild and raunchy affairs anywhere in the city, but far less so uptown where the crowd is made up largely of families with children as opposed to college kids and of locals as opposed to tourists.
That's not to say that all of my passengers were perfectly orderly, law-abiding and sober though. For example, there was this one seemingly sweet, young couple. We were having a pleasant chat along the way, and I mentioned to them that I write a blog about my experiences as a pedicabbie.
"That's cool," the man said, "So are we going to be in your blog?"
"Probably not," I told him. "You haven't really done anything outrageous enough to bear mentioning."
"Really?" said his female companion. "We just smoked a joint back here!"
So, sweet young couple, if you happen to read this, let me say to you, "Congratulations! You made the blog after all."
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