A real American hero?

A hero's serenade

So I'm hanging out in front of Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop last night waiting for a fare, and there are three college kids hanging out there as well. One male and two female. Good-looking kids, from Alabama if I remember right. Not wasted, but drunk enough to be pretty happy.

We start chatting, and they mention the name of a pedicab colleague and ask if I know him, and I say, "Yeah, I know who he is but don't really know him very well."

And they say, "Well, he's a real American hero! And so are you. So are all you pedicab guys."

And I say, "Really? What makes us heroes?"

And they say, "Because you save lives!... That and your calves."

And I ask, "How do we save lives?"

And they say, "Because you take drunk people home so they don't have to drive."

They ask me if I know the real American heroes song from the Bud Light commercial, and I say, "No, not really. I was out of the country for a long time, so I probably missed it.

One of the girls says, "Well Nate here can sing it for you. Can't you, Nate?" (I'm calling him "Nate" here, but I don't really remember the dude's name.)

And Nate says, "Sure!" And he serenades me with the advertising jingle -- cheerfully and badly.

And I say, "Well sometimes I don't feel so heroic because a lot of times I get drunk people on the pedicab who want me to take them to their car, and I really don't know what to do. Because the right thing to do is probably to take their car keys from them and throw them as far as I can, but I don't really have the balls to do that. So I always end up taking them to their car, and I worry about it. What do you think I should do in those situations?"

And they say, "Wow, we hadn't thought about that! That's a tough one. We don't know what you should do in a situation like that."

And I say, "Well, I write a blog about this job, so maybe I'll write a post about this and see if my readers have any wisdom to offer me." So here it is, dear readers. Jump in.

Playing the hero

Later that night I'm back in front of Lafitte's, and this drunk guy walks up. He can barely keep his feet.

"Where's Ursa...Ursa..." he stumbles, trying to pronounce "Ursulines."

"Ursulines Street?" I prompt. "It's just one block over."

"What about Bourbon Street?" he asks.

"You're on Bourbon Street," I answer. "This is Bourbon Street right here!"

"Oh," he says. "Life's a bitch", and he wanders off while I stand there wondering what the connection might be between Bourbon Street and "Life's a bitch." Who knows? Anyway, I'm not sorry to see him go.

Then he apparently changes his mind and wanders back in my direction. "How much to take me to Ursa...Ursa...?" He still can't get his tongue around the word.

"Which block of Ursulines do you need to get to?" I ask.

"The Empress Hotel," he replies, his speech so slurred that I can barely understand him. The Empress is a notoriously nasty place in a sketchy neighborhood. Actually, it's so bad that the reviews make really entertaining reading!

I'm counting up the blocks in my head to quote him a price, when he plops down in the seat of the pedicab and says, "OK, how much just to ride around?"

It makes me nervous whenever drunk people sit down on the pedicab before we've worked out where we're going and how much they're going to pay. But I answer him respectfully. "Well that would be a dollar a minute. Twenty dollars for a twenty minute ride, for example."

"OK, I'll give you twenty dollars just to ride me around." He takes his wallet out and fumbles with it for a couple of minutes. Finally he turns it upside down and shakes the entire contents out on the seat of the pedicab: a couple of business cards and a single dollar bill.

"OK, take me to an ATM," He says.

Against my better judgment I agree to do the ride. Along the way he blurts out, apropos of nothing, "You gotta pay the piper!"

"Um, yeah," I say to be agreeable. "You've definitely got to pay the piper."

He mumbles something else, the only part of which I catch is "I just want to be left alone."

I'm sure that this is not directed at me, so once again I decide just to go along. "Yeah, we all want to be left alone, don't we?" I say.

I take him to a little daiquiri shop on Decatur Street with an ATM just inside the front door. I sit outside and watch as he stumbles up to the machine, pulls his wallet out, and fumbles with it again, this time dropping the contents onto the floor. He shuffles through them, unable to find the ATM card. Finally he chooses one of the  business cards and stands there stabbing at the ATM slot, so drunk that he lacks the dexterity to actually insert the card.

By this time, it's clear to me that there's no way I'm not going to get paid for this ride. I consider riding away. I don't owe this guy anything, do I? To the contrary, he owes me! I'm supposed to pay $155 to lease the bike tonight, and I can't afford to be wasting time like this. On the other hand, this guy is now several blocks farther from his hotel than when we started our little ride. And if I don't take him, how's he ever going to get back?

I watch as he finally gives up on the ATM and walks up to the counter to talk to the bartender. I sit there stewing while they converse for a couple of minutes. It's obvious that this isn't going anywhere. What was he expecting the bartender to do for him?

Still tempted to cut my losses and run, I'm remembering those college kids earlier who said that I was a hero because I take drunk people home. So I decide to live up to their estimation of me and be a hero. I'm going to get this guy back to his hotel. As I walk up I hear the bartender telling him, "You need to leave. You're so drunk that you don't know what you're doing. I'm sorry, I can't help you."

"Get on the bike," I order the drunk guy. "I'm taking you back to your hotel for free." Looking defeated, he stumbles along behind me and collapses into the passenger seat.

Along the way he suddenly blurts out with some new-found (and completely unfounded) resolve, "I'm going to pay you! I'm not going to let you take me for free."

"Well I would love to get paid," I admit. "But I don't see how you're going to do that. Anyway, don't worry about it. I'm going to get you there one way or the other."

When we arrive at the Empress, he instructs me to wait. "I'm going to pay you! You can't leave. Wait right here."

I really don't want to waste any more time. I hand him my business card and say, "If you think about it later and want to get in touch with me and pay me, that would be great. But it's no big deal. Anyway, have a great night. I need to get moving."

"No, no" he says shouting. "Please, I can't let you leave without paying you. I'm going to pay you. Just wait two seconds! Just two seconds!"

"OK, I say. Two seconds." I watch as he walks up to the counter and begins talking to the clerk, apparently a replay of the conversation with the guy at the daiquiri shop. It's been two seconds. I start pedaling away. He runs out after me yelling, "No, no I've got to pay you!"

And just then he reaches in his back pocket and pulls out his wallet again, and this time he pulls out an ATM card, which apparently had been in the pocket but not in the wallet. "Look!" he exclaims waving the card in my face.

"Glad you found it!" I say, riding away as fast as I can pump the pedals. There's no way in the world I'm letting that guy back on my bike to go searching for an ATM. If it were possible to peel out on a pedicab I would have done it.

Aiding and abetting 

Later that night the hypothetical dilemma that I had discussed with the college kids presents itself. Two forlorn-looking young ladies are sitting on a dark sidewalk. I ask them if they need a ride, and they say, "We need to know where St. Louis Street is. We're parked on St. Louis, and we can't find it. Everybody keeps telling us different stuff, and we're totally lost!"

"I don't know where exactly on St. Louis you're parked, but St. Louis Street is just two blocks that way," I say, pointing.

"Are you sure?" they ask. "Because every time someone tells us somewhere to go we just end up more lost."

"Get on the bike," I tell them. "I'll take you there."

They protest that they don't have any money, but I'm in hero mode now. And anyway, St. Louis really is very close. "It's free," I say. "Hop on!" They obey.

Along the way, they offer me booze, Adderall, and cigarettes in lieu of cash. I turn all of these down. It soon becomes apparent that, while they're not nearly as drunk as that other guy, they're clearly not in any condition to be behind the wheel. Nevertheless, I deliver them safely to their car, hoping fervently that they won't hurt themselves or anyone else on their way home.

What really happens

Thinking back on the sweet college kids and their flattering assessment of my colleagues and me, it occurs to me just how wrong they are. The scenario they described -- driving drunks home so that they don't have to drive -- rarely if ever happens with a pedicab. When it comes to taking intoxicated people places, here are the actual scenarios that we regularly encounter in our work:

1. Transporting drunks tourist back to their hotel rooms, e.g., the guy at the Empress. In this case, I'm preventing drunk walking, not drunk driving. I heard a guy on the radio one time arguing that, statistically, drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving. So maybe in this scenario we really are saving lives. But  saving the life of an irresponsible person (the drunk pedestrian) seems much less heroic than saving the life of an innocent person (the drunk driver's victim).

2. Transporting drunken locals home. This would almost always apply to those locals who live within the relatively small radius in which pedicabs commonly operate: the French Quarter, the Marigny, the Central Business District, and the Warehouse District. In other words, these are people who haven't driven anywhere in the first place. Once again, we may be preventing drunk walking, but not drunk driving. New Orleanians who live in more far-flung parts of the city would invariably take a taxi home rather than a pedicab. As much as it pains me to admit it, taxi drivers are the ones who are doing the heroic work of keeping drunk drivers off the streets.

3. Transporting drunks (locals or tourists) between bars, strip clubs, the casino, restaurants, etc. This is a big part of what we do, but not much heroic here.

4. Transporting drunken locals to their parked cars, e.g, the two young ladies. This is the troubling scenario in which we may actually be enabling drunk driving. Whatever hero status we might legitimately claim for numbers 1 and 2 is canceled out by this. But how can we avoid it? Once again, I'd love to hear from my readers.

Back to those three college kids at the beginning. I think that they were right about at least one thing. We pedicabbies do have some heroic calves!