Pirates to Pyramids: Las Vegas Taxi Tales by JJ Carlson, George Bunescu, Sylvia Carlson Read Free Book Online
I knew this because she was in Las Vegas for a tournament. Why else go to the desert to play hockey unless it was a tournament enticing many teams, the way bowlers had done for decades. This means there had to be hundreds, if not, thousands of amateur girl hockey players in our country. What a country.
This was glorious news and made me crazy with delight. Remember, we had recently been attacked by terrorists. We Americans were shocked to be hated by anyone. We still wondered what we had done. Back then you could see people in my cab trying to make sense of it.
Hockey girl put it all back in perspective for me just by walking out to my cab. What I saw was:
The good old U.S.A. has so much liberty available for the citizenry that even our girls can choose to be anything they want. Want a hobby? Go ahead. Want to gather into teams and leagues and regions and travel across the country? Do it. Want to play on ice rinks in the desert? Go and do it, with our blessing.
How great is our country to allow choices like that. And we got attacked by a guy or guys that think we should change? These guys who are led by a fanatic who lives in a cave? Don't let me get started. So she got in my cab.
Airport, yes, she was going home and I could not wait to pump the answers out of her.
"You were here for a tournament?" Oh yeah. They had played three games in a double elimination tournament, meaning her team won one and lost two. She added that they were good teams this year. My buttons were secretly popping off.
Turns out there were 21 teams this year. Now I checked my assumptions. Nope, she was from Miami. I learned that Miami is crazy about hockey, like they are up north, because they come from up north. She loved the game since childhood, and girls are often not encouraged to play hockey. Miami was a freedom for her inner hockey player.
Hockey girl was an absolute tonic for me and many of my riders after 9/11.
After hockey girl, I made it a point to share my personal wake up call of American pride and my riders responded like the sun had come up. We were sick and tired of being sick and tired. We all needed to remember who we are and what we have. I never stop thanking hockey girl for the reminder.
You go, American amateur hockey girl.
RUNAWAY PLANE
I have driven by Vegas' airport in my cab probably thousands of times. Nothing very unusual ever happened until one day. Private planes at McCarran International Airport are bunched together in their own areas. Often so close together I've wondered how they squeeze them all into their parking spots. I saw the answer to this was that they carefully tow them with special tow jeeps going at very slow speeds.
So, I was very surprised to see that a big G5 Gulfstream, worth $50 million had gone for "a stroll" off the airport property. Okay, so it was just its front wheels that left the blacktop, but this was enough for the large precious plane to bust through the airport perimeter fence. Its front wheels rolled down ten feet of desert landscaping to the sidewalk allowing its expensive pointy nose to stick right out into Tropicana Boulevard. Maybe it just wanted to smell freedom?
The arrival of a corporate jet, albeit the nose, of which, onto one of Las Vegas' busiest streets near rush hour on a Friday night had the exact expected result. Immediately cars crashed into each other like a movie cliché. Yes, two cabs in a hurry to start their shift at the airport, bringing guests into Vegas for the weekend, smacked into one another. Predictably, the first one saw the "unusually large pedestrian” and the second one creamed the back end of the first cab.
The importance of this was that the police saw this and fearing more wrecks did what police do. They shut down the highway. This, alone, was interesting because it is the main street, to and from, the airport. Frequent travelers through our Las Vegas airport know Tropicana
This was glorious news and made me crazy with delight. Remember, we had recently been attacked by terrorists. We Americans were shocked to be hated by anyone. We still wondered what we had done. Back then you could see people in my cab trying to make sense of it.
Hockey girl put it all back in perspective for me just by walking out to my cab. What I saw was:
The good old U.S.A. has so much liberty available for the citizenry that even our girls can choose to be anything they want. Want a hobby? Go ahead. Want to gather into teams and leagues and regions and travel across the country? Do it. Want to play on ice rinks in the desert? Go and do it, with our blessing.
How great is our country to allow choices like that. And we got attacked by a guy or guys that think we should change? These guys who are led by a fanatic who lives in a cave? Don't let me get started. So she got in my cab.
Airport, yes, she was going home and I could not wait to pump the answers out of her.
"You were here for a tournament?" Oh yeah. They had played three games in a double elimination tournament, meaning her team won one and lost two. She added that they were good teams this year. My buttons were secretly popping off.
Turns out there were 21 teams this year. Now I checked my assumptions. Nope, she was from Miami. I learned that Miami is crazy about hockey, like they are up north, because they come from up north. She loved the game since childhood, and girls are often not encouraged to play hockey. Miami was a freedom for her inner hockey player.
Hockey girl was an absolute tonic for me and many of my riders after 9/11.
After hockey girl, I made it a point to share my personal wake up call of American pride and my riders responded like the sun had come up. We were sick and tired of being sick and tired. We all needed to remember who we are and what we have. I never stop thanking hockey girl for the reminder.
You go, American amateur hockey girl.
RUNAWAY PLANE
I have driven by Vegas' airport in my cab probably thousands of times. Nothing very unusual ever happened until one day. Private planes at McCarran International Airport are bunched together in their own areas. Often so close together I've wondered how they squeeze them all into their parking spots. I saw the answer to this was that they carefully tow them with special tow jeeps going at very slow speeds.
So, I was very surprised to see that a big G5 Gulfstream, worth $50 million had gone for "a stroll" off the airport property. Okay, so it was just its front wheels that left the blacktop, but this was enough for the large precious plane to bust through the airport perimeter fence. Its front wheels rolled down ten feet of desert landscaping to the sidewalk allowing its expensive pointy nose to stick right out into Tropicana Boulevard. Maybe it just wanted to smell freedom?
The arrival of a corporate jet, albeit the nose, of which, onto one of Las Vegas' busiest streets near rush hour on a Friday night had the exact expected result. Immediately cars crashed into each other like a movie cliché. Yes, two cabs in a hurry to start their shift at the airport, bringing guests into Vegas for the weekend, smacked into one another. Predictably, the first one saw the "unusually large pedestrian” and the second one creamed the back end of the first cab.
The importance of this was that the police saw this and fearing more wrecks did what police do. They shut down the highway. This, alone, was interesting because it is the main street, to and from, the airport. Frequent travelers through our Las Vegas airport know Tropicana
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