My night started out rough – the (hopefully) annual Rickshaw Races were taking place… It’s a big pub crawl race where the participants have a bingo card of drinks they have to drink and a list of rules. Included on their bingo card is “Give your Driver some Water” and “Drink Water” and on their list of rules is “Tip your driver $25 – no skimping!”. Two participants per cab – you run them to the pub as hard as you can, they run in and drink their drink, then run out and onto the next. You ride your butt off, but you make $50. This year they called for 7 bikes and we were all excited as heck. Unfortunately… Well, there’s another cab company that just opened up in town and competition is fierce. We aren’t allowed to ride with them because of liability issues… and therein messed everything up. Half the riders got into the other company’s cab and… then we had issues. Our boss was right there and tried to convince everyone to ride in our cabs, but they were already in the spirit of their race and not able to listen… so… none of us got to ride them. It really sucked for everyone – we’d waited around for them for about 45 minutes so we’d all lost out on a lot of shift time, plus the other cab company doesn’t have enough cabs for them, so their event was ruined. It was.. a really awful start to the night. Everyone was pretty down about it. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to have a good day until I got it out of my system so I pulled my shift leader aside and bitched at him.

And then proceeded to have an AWESOME night. The streets were busy, I rode repeatedly, but nothing that really made me feel worn out and the tips were all pretty good.But a few highlights of the evening:

• The soon to be married couple who tipped me a $20 and a can of mace, telling me to be safe out there. I have MACE! Tremble before me. ^_^
• The drunk fellow and his sober friend who I picked up on Glenwood who were both charming and a ton of fun. The sober friend tipped me comfortably for the ride and then the drunk fellow pushed a pocketful of crumpled dollars into my hand for being awesome.
• The extremely attractive girls who kept asking if they could ring my bell…
• The chimney sweep who I hung out with for about half an hour who might’ve been hitting on me. Chimney sweep! Hah!
• The young lady who got a beer tossed onto her leg and then insisted on tipping me when I chased her down with wet wipes.
• The fellow who insisted on tipping me for letting pretty girls sit in my cab while I was hanging out resting my legs and then periodically asked, “Do you need more tip yet?”

Thanks to all of you, my evening was both profitable and a ton of fun. Much love!

Just to show that pedicabbing isn’t all doom and gloom, I had an awesome night last night. There were two concerts playing in town – one large band at the amphitheatre and a symphony down at the memorial building, performing a tribute to Queen. My night was made however on the first ride, which was a stylish and attractive computer geek (I know! But seriously, this guy was bebonair) wanted to go to the other end of town. We had a great chat about technology, languages, and the like and then he tipped me generously – paid off my rental fee for the shift, making the rest of the night profit and guaranteeing me a good day. Thanks Mister Hot Computer Type Guy!

After that things were pretty laid back for awhile – not many people wanted rides to the shows because the weather was lovely, but we all knew everyone would want a lift back after they’d had a couple drinks and stood around partying for a few hours. I still managed to snag a couple of rides though, which made me happy. ^_^ Then I got an hour or so to putter around during the lull. Every shift has a time block where the streets are dead. if you ride all over the place and pester people, you’ll get a ride… but then your legs are going to be way more tired than you want for the rest of the night. There’s an effort to profit ratio you have to watch out for, especially when you work several days a week.

Once the shows started letting out though, it was on! I have a love/hate relationship with the amphitheatre… Whenever they do a show I get a lot of rides and make a lot of money, but it’s situated at the bottom of steep climbs in all directions. After three or four rides, you start seriously considering packing it up and going home. There was quite a bit of awesomeness though – M and I picked up a group of four slightly drunken fellows who wanted to have a good time. They handed us a fifty and told us to take them to a good bar and that we should go uphill. I asked them if they liked irish pubs, they said they loved irish pubs.. so we decided to haul them up the hill and across town to my second favourite pub. Halfway up the hill? My riders decided to get out and push the cab up the hill. xD It happens sometimes, boys feel bad about making a girl pedal them around. The first few times, I fretted and fussed, but now I just kick into high gear and peel up that hill, cheering the fellows on to keep up. Poor M had to trudge up by himself – he was much jealous, but these guys were awesome. They were all drunken but in a pleasant, fun way. They weren’t rowdy or out of control. One kept telling me, “That is a nice thigh. You have great legs!” Which a girl needs to hear sometimes. ^_~

The best quote of the evening came when I was coasting down the Hill O Death to pick up more passengers and past a couple of drunken walkers, staggering up it. One stopped in his path and stared at me, mouth open in shock.

“She’s a wo.. That’s a WOMAN!” he slurred urgently to his companions. I guess my legs are just that astounding.

It was a Wednesday night and a terrible pedicabbing day. The weather was cool, but only because it kept raining every hour. I was feeling surprisingly relaxed about this however, as I’d been the first one out on the road and gotten a really good first ride. Two petite Asian women and a little girl who wanted a tour of the capital building. I give awesome tours – they tipped me enough to cover my shift fee and gas money out. So the rest of the night was going to be pure profit and even on a wednesday night I was sure I could get a ride or two… except it started raining. And it kept raining, all night. Between bouts of rain, I’d hit the road, coasting up and down the streets looking for ANYONE. The streets were dead – all the sensible people having decided to stay at home.

I got lucky though, as I turned a corner I found a small family – husband, wife, child who wanted a lift back to their car, a good ways away. I was having a pretty good time, talking to the folks, complimenting the child on his art supplies, playing music for them – Oh yeah. I have an awesome little speaker that hooks up to my phone. When people get on, I eyeball them over and play a Pandora station that I think will suit them best. I get numerous compliments and I do pretty in the evenings, taking couples along a beautiful, starlit courtyard I know while playing Marvin Gaye and Michael Buble at them.

All was going well until apparently the kid discovered he could turn my music on and off by kicking my speaker with his foot. What? Yes! It took me a couple minutes to figure out what was going on until I caught him at it… and asked his parents to stop him. Then followed a really lousy 7 minutes where in I repeatedly asked these people to stop their kid from KICKING MY SPEAKER. Repeatedly. They’d stop him, he’s start again.. they would do nothing until I asked. I was shocked. When I got them to the car and they started to get off, the kid went crazy, kicking my speaker repeatedly. “Hey! Stop!” I cried. “That’s mine! I paid for that, it’s mine! That’s not nice, Stop!”

They gave me $3.

And the speaker? The sound jack is broken and now the cable has to be in at an angle for it to work. *vex*

(Although, my boss was awesome. We had to shut the shift down at 9:30 when a large storm rolled in. He asked us how many rides we’d gotten and all of us had been pretty dead… so he refunded our shift fees. Win!)

The other day I was coasting up the road with another driver when we got flagged down by a group of three – a young lady, her apparent date, and their third wheel. They wanted to go to a club a few blocks and a massive hill away – no problem! The young lady and her date climbed into the other driver’s cab leaving me to spend a shockingly long 15 minutes with… a complete asshole. I should have taken warning from how much junk he had in his hair. He started by asking me if I’d been to the expensive restaurant we’d picked him up at and I said no, was it any good? He began to explain his connections with the owners and how much of a big shot he was. >_>

At which point the driver in front of me coasted through a yellow light and I had to stop… getting hit by traffic isn’t my main hobby.

“What are you doing?!” he asked.

“It’s a red light.”

“You can’t run those?!”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh man. You see this? This is your tip going down.”

Like I said, he was an asshole. While we were at the red light he began to reassert his big shot status, asking what it took to get advertising space on our shirts and reaching out to pluck at my shirt. As in. Touching me. T_T I really hate being touched by strangers, let me tell you. Anyway, I told him he could call me boss and started trying to climb up the massive hill… unfortunately getting caught at the light killed my momentum and it was fairly tough going. “C’mon” said Mister Big Shot. “Faster! Go faster! This is your tip.”

I have never been so tempted to kick someone out of my cab. I didn’t because I’m kind of a whuss, but I wanted to. For my troubles and agitation, he gave me.. $5.

I picked up a second job this summer to make a little extra money for the school year. As a hobby, it’s wonderful. I get to ride a bike around an amazing city, pestering people and generally getting paid for it. It’s not very much money, but it’s a lot of fun. Getting the job was very easy – we’re independent contractors so I called up, went for an interview and paid a fee for training. After that… I was officially a professional cyclist. Sorta. I sign up for shifts, go into work, pay my shift fee and then take my cab out. Our particular company works solely off of tips – we don’t charge specific rates or mileage. We range all over the downtown area, which lets us take rides that are a couple miles long and gives us plenty of hills to climb.

Unfortunately a couple of weeks into my pedicabbing adventure, my boss told me they’d run out of work for me to do… they didn’t want to but they were going to have to send me home for unpaid leave and when they were ready, they’d call and ask me if I still wanted to work for them. That left my fun pedicab hobby as my sole source of income… I’ve been pedicabbing a lot. A lot, a lot. So I thought it was time to start blogging some of my adventures on the bike. ^_^ Expect stories to be forthcoming!