"How far do you go?"
This is something that people ask us all the time. Lately, my stock answer has become: "The question is not how far can I go. The question is how far can you afford!"
There are only two real limitations:
1. Legally we can't leave Orleans Parish.
2. The pedicab doesn't float.
According to Wikipedia, Orleans Parish takes in 350.2 square miles, of which 169.7 square miles is water. That leaves us 180.6 square miles of dry land (assuming all the levees and pumps are functioning) on which to range.
It's true that most of the time we operate in a fairly small geographical area: the French Quarter; the Central Business District; the Warehouse District; and Frenchmen St. in the Marigny. A lot of locals never see us anywhere else, so they assume that we can't cross these boundaries.
For the first couple of months of my career, I tended to stay inside that zone, but now I'm happy to venture further afield. Especially on the day shift, when rides are much harder to come by, I jump at the chance to take someone up to the Garden District or down to the Bywater. At night, I need a little stronger motivation before I'm willing to remove myself from the action.
Speaking of "motivation", it's the monetary type that first comes to mind of course. But oddly enough, when I think about the furthest rides I've undertaken, there are three trips that stand out, and in all three cases my main motivation was something other than money.
All the way uptown for oysters.
I was working Uptown during Mardi Gras when I was approached by a couple of men, locals, who wanted a ride all the way to Carrollton at the end of St. Charles. I was already about three miles from our base, and Carrollton was another three miles upriver. (In New Orleans, "uptown" is upriver, and "downtown" is downriver.) The men had been drinking heavily and were a little bit hostile, so I was reluctant to let them on my pedicab at all. After a bit of haggling I agreed to take them 20 minutes toward their destination, but no more. They weren't happy with this arrangement, but there were no taxis to be found, and they weren't in any condition to walk three miles, so they agreed. "OK, 20 minutes then," one of them said. "But we're going to f*** with you the whole time!"
I'm pretty sure that they were expecting me to take the 20 minutes at a leisurely pace. Since I had insisted on doing the ride based on time rather than distance, there wasn't much incentive for me to exert myself. With every push of the pedals I would only be distancing myself that much more from the active zone where I was likely to pick up rides. Nevertheless, I decided that I would do my best to give these two jerks their money's worth, so I started working up a sweat, and in less than five minutes I had completely won them over.
To be fair, it wasn't just me. Riding along upper St. Charles Avenue past the 19th Century mansions beneath the shade of overarching live oak trees on that gorgeous spring afternoon probably would have been enough to mellow out the most ferocious mass murderer.
According to conventional wisdom, this trip is best experienced from the inside of a streetcar. I'm not one to lightly discard more than 100 years of tradition, and I'll be the first to admit that the streetcar has plenty of historical charm -- not to mention that it's very cheap. But for sheer pleasure on a pretty spring afternoon, I think that the pedicab is hard to beat. Maybe I'm wrong about this, and maybe calling a couple of drunken Mardi Gras revelers to the stand doesn't strengthen my case all that much. But I can tell you that they were certainly eager to testify. "This is definitely the best way to see the city," they were saying. It was as though these two natives were getting to know New Orleans for the first time. "This is the most most beautiful city in the world!" one of them kept saying. I've been to a few places that he probably hadn't been to: Prague, Barcelona, Budapest, London... But that afternoon I would have found it hard to disagree.
Somewhere along the way, my passengers re-opened the negotiations. They would pay me more AND treat me to a dozen raw erstas on the half-shell if I would take them all the way to Cooter Brown's on Carrollton. By the time the 20 minutes was up, my mind was made up. I wanted those oysters. I kept going.
After ducking inside Cooter Brown's for the oysters and a cold Coke, I managed to pick up one more ride, which actually took me a little further from base. Then, knowing that someone on the night shift would be needing my trike, I had to pedal furiously more than six miles to get back to the shop by 6 PM.
To the end of the Bywater for barbecue ribs (and friendship)
Once when I was working the day shift, an old friend of mine called to say that he had some free time and that he wanted to ride around with me and hang out for a bit. He offered to treat me to lunch at The Joint, a favorite barbecue place of his, which had recently been featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The Joint (motto: Always Smokin') was located at the very end of the Bywater on Poland Avenue, three miles downriver from the French Quarter. (It has since relocated a few blocks to Mazant and Royal.) After tasting their ribs, I concluded that they were definitely worth pedaling three miles for.
A side benefit of that trip was that I got to explore the Bywater for the first time, and I instantly fell in love with the neighborhood. I think it's the coolest neighborhood in New Orleans, and whenever I get tourists on the pedicab who are ready for an off-the-beaten track experience, I try to talk them into letting me take them there.
To the Garden District to rescue a damsel in distress
Trips to the Garden District have become almost routine for me during the daytime, but this was the only time I've undertaken such a distant journey at 3:30 in the morning. Technically the night shift ends at 2, but there's often a lot of money to be made between 2 and 4, so it's not uncommon for me to stay out a couple of extra hours.
On this particular occasion, I was flagged down by a beautiful young couple on Poydras St. Earlier that evening they had been in the company of Sheryl Crow, Ellen Degeneres, and other stars at a gala fundraiser sponsored by Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation. But the event had ended hours ago, and they had been trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab to take them home to the Garden District. The lady was wearing heels, so walking a couple of miles was out of the question.
"I'm sorry, but I can't help you," I said. "It's already past time for me to be heading home. If it were on my way, I might consider it, but that's just too far at this time of night." I was thinking not only of the ride back to the shop, but also of the 45 minute commute by car across the lake to Slidell.
"OK, we understand," the man said.
Then his female companion looked at me with big, puppy-dog eyes that were filling with tears. And suddenly I was the one that was helpless, not she. "Get on, and let's go!" I said.
After I had dropped them off and I was on my way back to the shop, my boss happened to pass me in his car. He whipped over to the side of the road and got out to ask me what the heck I was doing in the Garden District at 4 AM. He wasn't angry, just amazed.
"I know, it's crazy," I said. "It was this girl's eyes. You should have seen them. You would have done the same thing."
We both laughed, and he got back in his car, and each of us continued on his way.
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