Doing the Dome part I: The Bayou Classic

I worked my first Superdome events this past weekend: the Bayou Classic and a Monday night Saints vs. Giants game.

For the uninitiated, the Bayou Classic is a football game between two HCBUs, Grambling State University and Southern University. The game, which is held in the Dome every year the Saturday after Thanksgiving, is sometimes referred to as The Black Superbowl.

According to some estimates the event draws 200,000 visitors to downtown New Orleans. The seating capacity of the Superdome is only 75,000 or so, if the 200,000 figure is accurate it would mean that well over half of the crowd is in town more for the party more than for the actual game. (This may or may not be true of other big sporting events in New Orleans. I really have no idea.)

I'm going to to tread very carefully here... In the week leading up to the event, I learned that most of those who work in New Orleans's tourism trade look upon Bayou Classic with deep dread. Is there an element of racism in this? Perhaps. But of all the complaints I heard, the most strident by far came from a hotel employee who was himself African American. "I've been doing this 20 years, and I don't think I can take it one more year," he said. "I'm going to call in sick."

Having heard that kind of talk all week, I was prepared for the worst. In the end, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had been led to believe. Looking back I can't remember a single passenger who was drunk, disrespectful or disorderly, which is an exceptionally good weekend's work in my profession!

There was one aspect in which the naysayers were right. It was a pretty poor weekend from a financial standpoint. For many of us in the tourist trade, tips are our bread and butter, and the Bayou Classic crowd aren't extravagant tippers by any stretch. Several of them even complained about paying what is generally considered a bare minimum price for a ride. Ahem... I'm thinking I better change the subject here before I get in over my head. There's something a bit unseemly about a white guy whining about black folk not being willing to pay him a fair wage.

All in all, I sincerely enjoyed transporting the Bayou Classic guests. A real highlight for me was the chance to share the story of my personal Grambling connection with so many of the university's students, alumni and fans. For those of you who don't know, here's the synopsis of that story: My wife and I met for the first time 24 years ago at Grambling. She was a junior at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now U. La. Lafayette), and I was a senior at the University of Southern Mississippi. (I like to say that USL stands for the University of Super Women and USM for the University of Super Men!) We met at a conference of Chi Alpha, a Christian student organization with which we were both involved.

The Bayou Classic actually featured two separate Superdome events: an epic Battle of the Bands on Friday night and the football game on Saturday night. Most of the partying and carrying on actually happened on the first night. Game night was a bit anti-climactic with a soaking rain that probably sent a lot of would-be partiers straight from the Superdome to their hotel rooms.

At one point during the game, I ducked into a Starbucks adjacent to a hotel lobby to escape the heavy rain. The hotel concierge saw me standing there at the Starbucks counter and rushed to me with me a towel to dry myself off. "Stay in here in the lobby as long as you want," she urged. "Our doorman will keep an eye on your bike." God bless her!

The New Orleans police department unveiled a new security plan for the event -- partly in response to the Bayou Classic's reputation/history and partly in response to an infamous series of shootings this past Halloween. I read news reports that spoke of 700 plus cops on the street. Honestly, I would have guessed a much higher number. I had never seen so many police in one place before.

As the crowds spilled out of the Dome, the police kept blocking more and more streets to deal with the traffic flow and to stay on top of the security situation. I ended up feeling like a rat in ever-changing maze. After the Battle of the Bands on Friday night, I got stuck in traffic on the Superdome side of Canal St. for more than an hour -- and this just at the time when all of the pedicab action had shifted across to the French Quarter side of the street. It was frustrating of course, but I comforted myself with the thought that the lessons I was learning during this, my first Superdome event, would enable me to position myself in the thick of the action next time.

My most precious passengers

The Thanksgiving holiday offered me the chance to finally take the wife and kids out for a spin on the pedicab. It was a huge treat for Lydia and Luke and maybe even more so for me. I think Mary enjoyed it too, but she's not the type to get over-enthusiastic about that sort of thing.

Memo to self:

Next time you're going to be riding and there's rain in the forecast, don't forget to pack some towels to wipe off the passenger seat. People are apparently a lot more tolerant of getting their heads drenched than getting their seats soaked.

Perfecting the 3-second sales pitch

Night and day

Today was better than yesterday but still painfully slow. I mentioned in yesterday's post that it's much easier to make good money at night. There are certainly more tourists out and about in the Quarter after dark; but I'm starting to wonder whether there isn't another factor at work beyond sheer numbers. I've noticed that the people that I approach act differently in the daytime than they do at night.

Day or night, the vast majority of them decline my offer of a ride, of course. But they don't decline it in the same way. After sundown, if I say to someone, "Would you like a ride?", he's likely to look at me with a big smile and say, "No thanks. We're good!"; whereas, in the daytime, he'll probably look away, scowl, and shake his head no. What's up with that?

At least a smile

Challenging days like these give me more opportunity to perfect my 3-second sales pitch. I'm constantly experimenting with endless variations on a basic theme:

"Need a ride?"
"Would you care for a ride?"
"Wanna ride?"
"Would you like a lift?"
"Care for a lift?"
"Who's ready to ride?"

Getting people on the bike is the goal of course, but failing that I hope to at least get them to smile. Sometimes the border between being funny and obnoxious is pretty thin. Here are some the things I might say:

"Take a trip on my magic chariot!"

To the male half of a couple: "What kind of a gentleman are you making a lovely lady like that walk?"

To someone who looks overweight and tired: "Ready to get off your feet for a bit?"

To a parent with a child: "I'll bet the little fellow there would like a ride!" (Kids always want to ride. Sometimes I'll address the kid directly, and the kid will say, "Yes!" In these cases I don't get very many smiles from the parents. They look at me with spitting cobra eyes and say, "No thank you!" in such a way that you know the "thank you" wasn't at all sincere before turning their attention to comforting the bitterly disappointed tot.)

To girls in stilettos: "Aren't you ready to get off those heels?" (All joking aside, alcohol, high heels, and the broken pavement of the French Quarter streets are a dangerous combination. I see girls stumbling and falling  all the time. I played ambulance driver last week to a girl who had twisted her ankle badly. She was celebrating her 24th birthday, poor thing.)

To someone sitting on a bench: "Hey, you could be resting and moving at the same time!"

To people emerging from the convention center when I know that there's a teachers conference going on: "We've got discounts for teachers today!" (We generally let people pay whatever they want for anything under 20 minutes, so the discount is whatever they want it to be.)

One of my biggest challenges is that I can only take two passengers or three at the most. Packs of four or more tourists seem a lot more common than couples. Here's a common scenario:

Me to a group of six tourists: "Anybody ready for a ride?"
One of the six (laughing): "Can you take all of us?"
Me: "I can take the two tiredest!"

This rarely fails to get a smile.

My first night on the job a prostitute called out to me as I rode by: "Hey baby, where you going?" I guess she was working on her 3-second sales pitch too.

Bright spots on a bad day

I've been experimenting lately with working a mixture of nights and days to figure out what works for me. There's a lot more money to be made at night -- and probably better stories for the blog. The downside of the night shift is that it makes it a lot harder to be a good dad and husband. Also, Mary is teaching in New Orleans, so if I can synchronize my schedule with hers we can commute together -- thus carving out a little more couple time and saving some money on fuel. Long term, I'll probably have to choose either days or nights because switching back and forth is just too physically demanding.

Last week I did better than expected on the day shift. I mentioned the H&R Block convention in an earlier post. Just as the accountants were clearing out the National Alliance of Black School Educators came to town, and I did OK with those guys too. I rode up and down in front of the convention center shouting, "We got a teachers' discount today!" Even when I didn't get riders, at least I got lots of big smiles.

Since it's so much harder to make money in the daytime, the rent that our company charges operators to ride during the day is ridiculously low compared to the night rate. As I was paying up at the end of a profitable shift, one of the brothers who co-runs the company said, "We're probably having to raise our day rate soon." And the other brother said, "Yeah, we'll call it the Mark factor."

Like I said, that was last week. Apparently, there aren't any conventions in town this week. Financially, yesterday was the worst day of my brief career. I had very few riders, and though all of them were fair with me, none were particularly generous tippers.

The good news is that I ran into two old friends whom I hadn't seen in many long years. Both of them are now working in downtown New Orleans, one as a concierge at a hotel in the Central Business District and the other as a tour guide on a mule carriage in the French Quarter. (The CBD and the French Quarter are two adjacent parts of the city that that make up most of our territory.)  I'm excited to know that these guys are in the neighborhood and for the chance to renew old friendships.

(When I mentioned that I has having a slow day, the concierge said that Thanksgiving week is always a slow time for tourism in New Orleans.)

Another bright spot yesterday was a pair of passengers who gave me a really good laugh, which I suppose is the next best thing to a really generous tip. They were middle-aged, very overweight women, and as we sailed down Decatur, one of them was singing at the top of her lungs: "Don't cha wish your boyfriend had a bike like mine!" (to the tune of "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me.")

"Are we the fattest people you've ever hauled?" they asked me.

"Not by a long shot." I answered. "I had these two girls the other night. I told them I might have to charge them by the pound!" (This was true by the way.)

"Well, we may not be the fattest, but I bet we're the most fun," one of them said.

"Well I'd have to say that you rank pretty high up there," I told them.

Before I found this job, I turned down a job selling life insurance. That job offered the potential to make a lot of money. But I figure that even a bad day driving a bike taxi is a lot more fun than a good day selling insurance. I'm just speaking for myself here. I've got a good friend who absolutely loves selling life insurance, and I'm happy for him.

Trying on someone else's glasses

I had a couple from Atlanta on the back of my bike the other day. They were about 10 or 15 years older than me and African American. We rode past the police station on Royal Street, and the man spoke up:

"That's a police station isn't it? Can you pedal a little faster?"

Chuckling, I said, "My dad grew up here in New Orleans, and he was in trouble with the law all the time when he was young. But he raised me to be a law-abiding citizen."

My passenger paused a minute before replying: "That's nice in theory... But you know, you're white."

His words took the wind out of me for a moment then left me irritated at myself for having been been totally oblivious to the racial subtext of the "pedal faster" comment.

Mentally groping for some common ground, I thought of the twinge of fear I feel when I pass by the Iberville housing project. But the limitations of the analogy were immediately obvious to me. Being afraid of outlaws is bad enough; but being afraid of the law must be many, many times worse. That's something I've been privileged not to have experienced.

Conversation between two drunk Cajuns riders from Lafourche Parish

Drunk Cajun A: Man, look at those calves!

Drunk Cajun B: Those aren't calves, no. Those are full grown cows!

In which I ride to the rescue of a young movie star

I found six-year-old Hunter and his mother shivering on a street corner in the Central Business District at 9:10 a.m. yesterday. The previous day had been as hot and muggy as... well,... as New Orleans; but a cold front had blown through during the night and a blustery wind was whipping down the city streets. When I'm riding, I pretty much generate my own heat, but even I was feeling it a bit. Apparently, Hunter's mom hadn't anticipated this kind of weather, and neither she nor her son had the proper apparel.

Hunter was in town because he had a part in a movie called Dog Fight. In order to be on time for shooting he was going to have to be back at that same corner by 9:30. That gave us just 20 minutes. None of the nearby clothing stores opened till 10.

"Hop aboard!" I told them. "We'll find something." I was carrying my sweatshirt, which I had just washed the night before, in the storage compartment under the passenger seat, so I pulled it out, wrapped Hunter up in it, and set out into the cold headwind pumping the pedals at double speed.

I headed toward the French Quarter figuring that our best chance was to find a sweatshirt in a souvenir shop. Along the way I learned that my six-year-old passenger was no stranger to the silver screen. He had already had parts in a couple of movies -- not to mention TV commercials and whatnot. "Wow, this is really cool," I told him. "I've never hauled a movie star before!"

I pulled up to the first souvenir shop we came to and waited while Hunter and his mom rushed in. They came back after just a couple of minutes, empty-handed. The clock was ticking. Desperate, I asked a female taxi driver nearby if she had any suggestions. "I'd try over on Bourbon," she said. "You're bound to find something over there."

Of course! Bourbon St. is better known for it's strip clubs, but I'd venture to bet that there are at least ten t-shirt shops for every strip club. Among those dozens of t-shirt shops lining the street, surely one of them would be open early. (You, dear reader, may already be recognizing the problem with this plan. Of course I should have seen it as well. All I can say in my own defense is that I was in a big hurry to help out a cold kid.)

We zipped over to Bourbon St., and right away, we found an Asian guy just opening up his shop for the day. (Kudos to all the hardworking Asians who get to work 45 minutes before everybody else. This early bird was definitely going to be rewarded with the worm!)

"We're looking for a child's sweater or sweatshirt, something nice and warm for this little guy. Y'all have anything like that?" I asked.

"Yes, we have, we have!" he said.

Once again Hunter and his mother disappeared into the store. As I sat outside watching the shopkeeper set up his wares for display, I suddenly realized that thing that probably made you, the reader, groan out loud a couple of paragraphs ago -- that is, assuming you have any kind of notion of the kind of merchandise that dominates the market on Bourbon St. If you don't know and can't guess, let me just say that if I were to reproduce here the messages printed on some of those shirts, my blog would immediately be placed in the "adult content" category. There were even shirts with stick figures engaged in various kinds of sex acts. "Oh my!" I thought to myself. "What have I done now?"

My riders came back out after a few minutes both wearing brand new sweatshirts with "New Orleans" emblazoned across the front -- likely the only garments in the entire shop that weren't obscene, sacrilegious, or both.

"I'm really glad you found something," I said. "I... uh... hope Hunter doesn't read too well." Which under normal circumstances would have been a terrible thing to say to the parent of a six-year-old.

"Oh, Hunter reads very well!" his mother assured me.

"I'm really sorry," I said.

"It's OK," she said. "At least we're warm now. And we're going to be on time."

By the way, the film industry is really taking off in New Orleans lately. They tell me that there are 7 movies currently being filmed in the city. Hollywood at the mouth of the Mississippi!

Amish gone wild

You know that thing about not taking pictures of Amish people? I've always heard that they consider photography a violation of the commandment against graven images and that an Amish dude will get really angry if you take his picture. (Which raises the question, what might an Amish man do to you if he gets really angry? Perhaps he might forcibly shave your beard, like this guy. But what if you're clean-shaven like me?)

Anyway, we all know that the French Quarter is a place where people release their inhibitions and do outrageous, scandalous stuff, right? So I suppose I shouldn't be shocked. Anyway, I'm sitting on a corner by the French Market waiting for a couple of clients -- an elderly man and his even more elderly aunt -- to finish their shopping and climb back on my bike when this group of Amish women walks by. One of them -- I'm guessing she was about 40 or 50 years old -- hangs back just a bit to let the group get ahead of her, glances furtively around, quickly pulls a camera from her purse, and takes a picture of me. She snaps the picture at waist level without taking the time to aim and focus and quickly slides the camera back into her bag.

In a recent post I speculated that I might be on my way to becoming a major New Orleans tourist attraction. But I never imagined that it would get to the point that Amish people would be taking pictures of me!

(By the way, if I seem to be making fun of the Amish, you should understand that I consider myself a dedicated Anabaptist, which makes me a close ideological cousin to the Amish. So I look at it as gently poking fun at family members.)

From the superhero files: Pedicabbieman

• superpower: super strong legs
• mild-mannered alter-ego: Mark Orfila
• Achilles heel: poor sense of direction; lack of ability to navigate tight spaces on the street
• nemesis: auto taxi drivers and mule carriages?
• cool superhero-mobile: big yellow trike with back seat
• hq: dank, abandoned parking garage beside an infamous housing project
• back story: delivered newspapers by bicycle as a boy;developed massive calves while fleeing neighborhood dogs and bullies; further developed and refined cycling powers as an adult biking up Mount Vodno in Skopje, Macedonia

5,000 bean counters

OK, here I am coming to you live via the miracle of modern technology atop the seat of my big yellow trike here at the c...

I had the brilliant idea of blogging live from my bike last night, but that's as far as I got. (In case you're wondering, the last part of that sentence was supposed to be "corner of Royal and Toulouse".) The blogspot interface on my Android phone turned out to be virtually impossible to work with, and I finally got frustrated and gave up. I was making good money, -- more on that later -- so I didn't want to waste a lot of time sitting on a street corner trying to type invisible text onto a microscopic keyboard.

There are 5,000 H&R Block people in town for their annual convention, so transporting accountants was the bulk of my business by far last night. This produced a kind of good news/bad news situation.

Bad news first: They were every bit as boring as you would expect accountants to be. Nobody was drunk. (Though it was Monday night and the first day of their convention. so they may start to cut loose later in the week.) Nobody said anything outrageous. Nobody even said anything at all to me about my calves (though I did overhear them remarking to one another a couple of times). I finished the evening without any compelling stories for you, my readers.

The good news is that I made a ton of money! Thanks to the generosity of H&R convention-goers, I exceeded my financial target (set by the company) for the first time last night.

If you were to say to me, "Bean counters are boring," I wouldn't have any reason to disagree. But if you were to say, "Bean counters are stingy," I would be obligated to stand up to you and defend them against a vicious and baseless prejudice!

Regarding fat derrieres and massive calves

The mules and me

I picked up a lady and her little girl the other day. The mother informed me that her daughter had wanted to ride in a mule-drawn carriage, but that she (the mother) had been dead set against it.

"Well I'm glad you chose me, but I'm curious as to why you weren't comfortable getting in a carriage," I asked.

"I guess I just feel sorry for the mules hauling all that weight," she explained.

I stifled a snort of laughter lest the lady think me ungrateful for her business. Actually, I can kind of see her point if I squint just right. I mean the mules didn't really choose the job, right?

Every street name is a shibboleth.

Unlike this particular lady (who was actually quite trim), many female passengers express their self-consciousness about their weight in the form of pity for me. "Oh, I feel so sorry for you. I know I must be really heavy for you to haul," they say.

Last night I picked up three such ladies, girlfriends from out of town having a good time in the city. (We're allowed to carry up to three, but the passenger seat only fits two adults, so in cases like this somebody has to sit on somebody's lap.) They were a real hoot -- the kind of folks who make my job so much fun.

They did seem genuinely concerned that their weight would be too much for me, and I reassured them that it wasn't going to be a problem.

That's not to say that there wasn't any problem. The real problem was going to be finding the place they wanted to go. They asked to be taken to a bed and breakfast in the Marigny, out on the edge of the territory we generally cover. In my first week's work I've grown a lot more confident about navigating New Orleans' narrow streets, but I've still got a lot of learning to do. I told the ladies upfront, "We may not get there by the most the efficient route, but I promise we'll find it."

As it turned out I took a couple of wrong turns and had to stop and ask directions a couple of times. I kept apologizing to my riders, but they were very encouraging. "Oh no, don't worry about it. We're having fun! We just feel sorry for you having to haul our three fat asses around."

I need to interject a little explanation at this point. Going into the job, my mom's greatest fear was that I would be stabbed by a junkie for the cash to buy his next fix. My greatest fear, on the other hand, was butchering a street name in front of a local.

Having grown up across the lake from New Orleans, I don't stumble at all over words like Tchoupitoulas, which totally intimidate tourists. For me the really scary ones are those that appear simple and straightforward. Like Conti for example, which New Orleans natives pronounce "Kon-tie" with a long "i" at the end. Or "Burgundy" with the accent not on "Bur" but on "gun". (Given New Orleans' notorious murder rate, maybe there's some Freudian thing going on with this one.)

The names of the city's streets are a mixture of Spanish, French, native American, and heaven-only-knows what else; but there is no discernible pattern to the pronunciation. I say "discernible", because I suspect that there really is a pattern known only to insiders. I'm convinced that it's all a carefully thought out conspiracy designed to easily identify who's local and who's not. There's probably some kind of code, for instance, that dictates that French names will be pronounced according to the rules of native American pronunciation; native American words will be pronounced according to Croatian rules; and so forth.

I really thought I was figuring it out and that I was going to be spared any major shame. The previous night I had actually laughed at some poor tourist (Not one of my riders. I would NEVER laugh at a rider.) who pronounced "Marigny" (the "g" is supposed to be silent) "margin-y".

So here I found myself -- a man transporting three female passengers, upon whom I hoped to make a reasonably good impression if for no other reason than to get a generous tip -- being forced to stop and ask directions. Everyone knows that this in itself is agonizingly embarrassing for us men. But it was about to get a lot worse.

"Excuse me, sir," I said to a fellow on a street corner who looked suitably local. "Can you tell me how to get to Royal and St. Roch?" And I pronounced "Roch" -- Oh the shame! -- like "roach". Which is pretty hilarious if you think about it. St. Roach, of all things!

"Do you mean St. Roch?" he clarified, pronouncing it like "rock". (Which as it turns out is the proper French pronunciation. I'll have to find a way to accommodate this fact to my conspiracy theory.)

I don't think that the ladies noticed all that much. They were from out of town, and it wasn't as if they had known the proper pronunciation after all. Like I said, they were pretty gracious for the most part,.

Did you get your license in a box of Cracker Jacks? 

One of them couldn't resist a deep dig though. They asked me about the job, and I mentioned that there was a fairly rigorous process for obtaining a permit to be a pedicabbie. There was a pause, and one of them said, "Really?" (Since you, dear reader, weren't present to hear the inflection, an explanation is necessary. One can say "Really?" merely as a friendly way of showing interest and keeping the conversation moving; or one can say "Really" as a way of expressing genuine incredulity. This was definitely the latter.) Ouch!

I finally found the hotel and dropped them off safe and sound. Ten minutes later, I picked up a pair of ladies who also seemed self-conscious about their weight and expressed it in precisely the same way. "Are you sure that you're really up to hauling our fat asses?" they asked. "We don't want to kill you or break the bike!"

Again, I promised them that it wasn't a problem. "You should see the ladies I just hauled," I said. "There were three of them, and they were way fatter than y'all!"

(For the record, I have to admit that I really don't know which group was fatter. I was just trying in my own clumsy way to be nice. Looking back, I can see that I went about this in the altogether the wrong way; telling a woman who's worried about her weight, "I've seen worse," isn't very helpful, is it? I've always been awkward when it comes to this kind of thing.)

"So where are you headed?" I asked.  "Balcony Bed and Breakfast," they answered. "It's on the corner of Royal and St. Roch."

"You're kidding!" I blurted out. "What a coincidence. I just finished taking three ladies there to that very same place."

My passengers burst into laughter. "The ones who were way fatter than us?" one of them asked when she could get her breath.

I must have gone pale. "So you know them then?" I asked weakly.

"We're not old friends or anything, but we met them there at the guest house. Hey, don't worry about it. We wouldn't dream of telling them that you said their asses were way fatter than ours!"

 A freak show on three wheels

I've mentioned a couple of times the attention that my calves have been attracting. Well it just keeps getting crazier. As I noted before, it makes sense that the backs of my lower legs would be the most noticeable part of my anatomy from the passenger seat of the cab. But lately people have been calling out to me from the street as I ride by. Drunk women. Gay men. All kinds of people.

To tell the truth, I was enjoying the admiration at first, but now I'm starting to feel a bit like a freak show on wheels. Maybe my calves are destined to be one of New Orleans' major tourist attractions. I guess that's OK as long as it helps me get more riders and bigger tips.

Dirty Bird riders

I sure am glad that the Saints pulled it out today in overtime against our bitterest rivals, the Atlanta Falcons, (or "the Dirty Birds" as we call them around here). I had a couple of passengers from Atlanta over the course of the last couple of days, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking smack with them.

"I'm going to treat y'all extra good today because I know that Sunday is gonna be a real sad day for y'all!" I told them. Naturally, they gave as good as they got, and it was all in good fun.

I've got some good stories to tell about the last few days adventures when I get a little more time. Stay tuned.

An old friend and a new band

Last night's highlight was the chance to haul and hang out with an old friend. I've noticed that the phrase "old friend"  lends itself to jokes due to the ambiguity as to exactly what is being referred to as old. Is it the friendship or the friend? In this case, I would have to say both. The friend is pushing 50, and the friendship is almost 30.

I'm referring here to Eric Treuil here, alias E.T. Eric works at the University of Louisiana Lafayette with Chi Alpha, a Christian student organization. He was in town for a national convention of the organization's leaders. (I also worked with Chi Alpha many years ago including a stint as intern under Eric in 1988/89.)

He rang me on the cell phone last night to tell me that he was eating beignets at Cafe du Monde, so I pedaled over there as fast as my muscular calves would push me. We chatted on the street in front of the cafe for a few minutes, then he and another Chi Alphan climbed into the passenger seat for a ride back to their hotel. Along the way he kept saying over and over, "This is just so surreal!"

It was a bit surreal I suppose -- but also a ton of fun. May God grant that the friend and our friendship just keep on getting older.

I gotta give a shout-out here to E.T.'s brother in law, Adolfo Garcia, who is one of New Orleans' top chefs. His flagship restaurant, RioMar, has become legendary not only locally but nationally. More recently he has opened an Argentine steakhouse (La Boca) and an Italian restaurant (A Mano), both of which are also attracting rave reviews and hordes of hungry people.

At the end of the shift, I hung out a bit back at the shop with my boss PJ and a colleague. PJ's originally from D.C. but he's been captured by the orbit of the Crescent City and has become a walking Wikipedia (uh, make that "pedaling Wikipedia") of what is hip, fun, and delicious in town. (He says that this is the key to making a good living as a pedicabbie.) In the course of the conversation, he highly recommended a local indie rock band called The Revivalists. I checked them out online and was suitably impressed. Here's a video. (I'm totally enamored with the Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons these days; apparently I've got a real weakness for banjo bands!)  And here's an article about them from the Times Picayune. They play tonight (November 11) at One Eyed Jack's in the Quarter. If you're around for the show make sure to call me to come take you for a spin!

First day, continued

Fishing for riders 

After my fellow pedicabbies and I had dropped off our first passengers, we were on our own. I spent the rest of the night zig-zagging in and around the French Quarter, trying to catch the eye of every pedestrian I passed and calling out to them: "Hey, need a lift?" Most smiled and said, "No thank you," which was really nice because it didn't feel at all like rejection.

Occasionally someone said yes and this invariably gave me a jolt of joy -- like the feeling you get from an unexpected compliment or a surprise gift. I'm guessing that as I get better at the job, I'll start actually expecting people to want to ride, and that this expectation will make me more effective. I figure it's a bit like fishing. When you really expect to catch something on every cast -- an expectation which every fisherman knows is utterly unreasonable -- you somehow end up with a lot more fish. Maybe there's something about confidence that makes you work that lure a little more convincingly. Or maybe it sharpens your reaction time so you set the hook a split second sooner.  Then again, maybe it's just my imagination...

Complimentary and kind passengers

Ok, this blog isn't about fishing. Where was I? Oh yeah, speaking of unexpected compliments... I got a lot of admiration of my calf muscles. (Presumably this would be the part of me most readily apparent from the rear of the rickshaw). While living in Skopje for the last couple of years, I got around almost exclusively by bicycle. Our house there was situated at the top of a daunting hill, which had to be conquered every time I came home. I guess that well-defined calves on an otherwise flabby, forty-five year-old body are the trophies of that daily struggle.

I had imagined that my passengers might be irritated to find themselves in the care of a pedicabbie who knew next to nothing about the layout of the city. I decided that my best policy was to appeal to my passengers for mercy. I explained at the beginning of every ride that it was my first night. "If you know how to get where you want to go, feel free to navigate us. Otherwise, I can look it up on my smart phone or radio the dispatcher for directions." As it turned out, every one of them was gracious, and there was never so much as a hint of annoyance.

Childhood delight

I think that my favorite passengers of the evening (though not my most profitable by a long shot!) were a mother and her 11-year-old son. "How much does it cost?" she asked a bit anxiously when I approached them.

"As much as you want to pay!" I said. (Municipal law allows us to charge up to a certain amount based on a fairly complex fare structure, but our company encourages us to allow our passengers to decide for themselves the value of our service.)

"My son has really been dying to ride one of these, but I've only got three dollars," the lady said.

"That's fine," I said. "Hop on!"

Let me interject here that I have an 11-year old son at home, so if I speak about "kids these days", I presume to speak with some authority. One of the things I thought I knew is that in the era of the internet and Xbox, kids are a lot harder to entertain and impress than they used to be. But for this one boy at least, sitting on the back of a giant tricycle with a grown man pedaling him around town was almost as good as riding with Aladdin on his carpet or Santa on his sleigh.

 "How old do you have to be to drive one of these?" he asked me.

"I dunno. I guess 18," I replied.

"Well I want to do this when I grow up!"

Of course you do, I thought. Who wouldn't? What a lucky guy I am!

We didn't go very far, probably because the mother didn't want to take advantage of me. But with the joy that was flowing between that 11-year-old boy and me, I think that I would've been willing to take them all the way to Texas!

Who says there's no free ride?

I mentioned that these weren't my most profitable customers, but they weren't my least profitable either. I actually hauled one guy for free. He was a New Yorker, not much more than a kid really -- maybe late teens or early 20s. I got the impression that he might have hitchhiked down here. He told me straight up that he didn't have any money, and I said, "Hey, that's cool! It's my first night. I need the practice."

At the end of the ride, he said, "Thanks man. Hey, I've got some cookies I found. They're really good! Take them. I feel bad that I can't pay you."

"No thanks, man, it's OK. Really."

"Well how about this cigarette lighter? Can I give you my cigarette lighter?"

"Thanks, but I don't need it. It was my pleasure. Really, it's OK."

I know that the job's primary purpose is to provide for my family and that providing free transport to down and out ramblers won't necessarily help me accomplish that. But I'm thinking that one of these days when Jesus is sorting things out, he might say to me, "Mark, remember that time I was in New Orleans, and you gave me a free ride?" (See Matthew 25:32-46.)

And I'll say, "Yeah, I remember that! But I've got one burning question for you... If it's OK. What was up with the cigarette lighter!"

An intoxicated Welsh nationalist

Given the French Quarter's reputation, I began the evening expecting to be the designated driver for a lot of drunks. As it turned out there was only one. She and her husband were returning to their hotel room just before midnight. They were probably in their 50s. He barely said a word the whole time and seemed pretty steady getting in and out of the rickshaw, so I'm assuming he was sober more or less. She, on the other hand, was a bit wobbly on her feet; and her speech was slurred and very LOUD.  I recognized from her accent that she was from the U.K., but there was none of the renowned British reserve here.

"I gather that you're from the U.K.," I said to strike up conversation.

"Yes!" she said. "We're from Wales. We're Welsh. We're not English." I've had enough exposure to the U.K.'s various nationalisms (Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, Irish, etc.) to  guess what was coming.

"Have you ever been to the U.K.?" she asked.

"Yes, but only to London and only very briefly."

"Well, you should go to Wales! Wales is wonderful. England is shit."

A few minutes later, apropos of nothing, she called out again from behind me: "England is shit!" Apparently she wanted to be sure I got it.

Then as we pulled up in front of the hotel she shared her assessment of England one more time just in case I had missed it on the previous two occasions: "England is shit!" she shouted.

A high price for a ride.

One more story, this one pretty sad. I approached a young lady (again late teens/early 20s) to ask if she needed a ride, and she said, "Uh... Actually, yeah... But to the Westbank..."

"Oh sorry. I can't take you there," I said, stating the obvious. (For those of you not from around here, the Westbank is the area across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.)

"Yeah, I know," she agreed. "But, um, here's the deal. See, I work at this strip club, right? And I didn't make any money at all tonight. And I don't know how I'm going to get home. Is there any way you could just give me some money to get a cab?"

The cost of a taxi to the Westbank would probably have taken everything I had earned that evening up till that point. "Sorry. I can't help you there," I said as I began pedaling on down the street. I heard her behind me calling out, "I would do anything! I would..." The last part of the sentence was indistinguishable in the general Bourbon Street hubbub as I pulled away. But I have a pretty good idea what she might have been offering. Later on, I felt really bad. I think that if I had it to do over again, I would give her the money. I hope she found someone else to help her get home -- someone decent enough not to charge her the price she was willing to pay.

First day on the job, etc.

Yesterday's daylight was fading as I drove south across Lake Pontchartrain toward the start of my new career. The sky and water were the same flat gray. When I had first applied a couple of weeks ago, driving a pedicab in New Orleans had looked to me like a dream job. Now, having finally finished the tedious process of getting my permit, that earlier excitement had been eclipsed by a kind of heaviness -- as though I were hauling behind me the weight of the concerns and criticisms of a lot of people who love me, none of whom really seemed to share or even comprehend my enthusiasm.

"What about all your dreams?" they asked.

"It's too dangerous!"

"You're too old!"

"You're too well edcuated!"

"The physical demands will wear and tear your body to bits."

"Do you really think you can make a decent living at it?"

"Maybe it's OK for this season, but God has something better."

"You're out of God's will and outside His protection."

Even apart from the questions raised by friends and family, I had begun to have my own doubts. Everyone knows that I'm a tentative, timid driver. Whoever heard of a tentative, timid taxi driver? And one who has no sense of direction?  I could get lost in a paper bag! And what about the fact that I've always been so awkward and uncoordinated when it comes to physical tasks? I had taken the bike out for a spin as part of my training the day before and had really struggled to get a feel for it. I'm a fairly experienced biker, but this didn't behave at all like any bike I knew. (Technically, of course, that's because it isn't a bike;  it has three wheels, so that would make it a trike.) Maneuvering this machine through the crowded streets of the Vieux Carre would require a whole new set of skills, and acquiring those skills was going to be a big challenge for someone like me. It would be all too easy to clip a curb or the fender of a parked car, and even such a minor mistake might have serious consequences.

Having grown up in Slidell (a suburb on the other side of the lake from New Orleans) the city had always been a bit of a scary place for me. Not scary in the sense that I was afraid of getting mugged. More like scary in the sense of trying to navigate very unfamiliar terrain. During my high school and college years, crossing the lake for a concert or a dinner date had just enough of an element of danger to make it a real thrill. Whenever I made it back home without incident, I felt a strong sense of accomplishment.

(By the way, this pattern of successful conclusion and ensuing sense of success were by no means a sure thing. On the night I graduated from college I took Mary -- now my wife of 22 years -- out for a date in the city. After an enjoyable evening, we got back to where I was sure we had parked the car, and it wasn't there. Turns out I had parked it illegally, and it had been towed. I had to find a pay phone and call my dad to come bring me the money to retrieve my impounded car. It was midnight on a Saturday, and he had to preach the next morning. I must say that my father, who is particularly averse to having his routine disrupted was quite gracious on this occasion.)

So, here I was headed into the city, this time not for a daring one-night foray, but for a new career. Wishing I could recover my earlier eagerness and unload the anxiety.

Bike Taxi Unlimited has its headquarter in a dank old parking garage on the edge of the Iberville Housing Project. The first level of the garage is occupied by a makeshift office and two long rows of black and yellow rickshaws, some of them ready to roll and others in various states of maintenance and repair.

Upon arrival I was introduced to several of my fellow operators who would be working the same shift. I quickly noted that my colleagues all looked to be in their 20s or 30s, and they all appeared fit and attractive. At least I'm in good company, I thought.

Besides me, there were three others who were about to set out on their first ever shift. Two of these were women. I thought about my family members who feared for my safety and wondered whether pointing to the presence of these female colleagues might provide any measure of reassurance. Surely, if this job is safe enough for these pretty young ladies, it's safe enough for me, a 210-pound, 45-year-old man!

I asked PJ, the owner of the company, whether I was his oldest operator, and he confirmed that it was true. "You know, I went to school at Southern Miss with Brett Favre," I told him. "But he was a freshman when I was a senior. So I really am pretty old!" I had a sense that I was going to enjoy the status of being the oldest guy on the team and  the energy that I would draw from my younger companions.

As it turned out my first shift started in just about the best way possible. The company had a request to pick up a group of a dozen or so tourists at a hotel and take them to a restaurant. Each bike can hold two, or at the most three, passengers; so transporting these was going to require 5 or 6 bikes. Rather than heading out on my own to try to track down my first fare, I would be part of a caravan, following those who knew the way and sharing the experience with my fellow newbies.

I took my place at the rear. As we headed down Canal Street, I was the tail of a beautiful black and yellow snake gliding smoothly through the city lights. PJ had pointed out to me during my training the day before that as you travel down Canal toward the Mississippi River, the tall buildings often channel air currents into a strong headwind. But at this moment, with my legs still fresh and no passengers behind me, this wind was like God's own grace -- both a gentle breeze that caressed my face and a fierce hurricane that toppled the towers of my anxieties and blew them far away. "I'm loving this!" I shouted aloud to anyone who was listening.

There is plenty more to tell about my first night on the job, but I've written more than I intended already. I'll save the rest for another entry. Stay tuned.