Saturday, July 08, 2006

Link to my Daughter Nyle

My Daughter Nyle has her own blog site, called -
Nyles Adventures, and it is very interesting if anyone would care to go have a look, they will find it well worth the effort.

http://www.nylesblog.blogspot.com/

Taxi Drivers Tales


Taxi Driver's tales.
Everyone says to me 'taxi driving must be so dangerous, specially at night' so I thought I would share with you all a couple of very recent cases where taxi drivers did get hurt while on duty.
We have recently had to drive because another driver Mac our friend, was requested as a male driver to help an elderly gent that had the misfortunte to have a mild stroke while in his bed. Mac arrived to find he had to help dress the man, then had to assist him into his wheelchair, push him out to the taxi, take him to hospital, wait and return him to his house. While getting the wheelchair man get from his cab into the wheelchair the gentleman slipped so Mac reached over the wheelchair to try and catch the man and then the man really fell and Mac was left carrying all his weight at arms length over the chair, a very nasty kind of lift. It has torn muscles off Mac's back and he has been in hospital for treatment and is still not very well but hopes to be back at work next week.
The second; This winter is in fact the coldest we have had in 40 years, so they say on the news. We have had heaps of snow on our mountains all around us in June - virtually unheard of, we do have snow there in late July and August at times but I can't recall snow on those peaks in June.
We have had to be out driving Mac's taxi at 6am every day for two weeks (while his back heals) so we know it is very cold, there have been heavy frosts each morning. On Monday there had been some rain during the night as well and it had frozen solid and formed black ice - the worst kind , very dangerous. It was my turn to drive that morning and my first passenger had many bags of luggage, going to the airport, so I got out to assist him to carry the cases to the car and went sliding across his driveway on the ice, fell and skinned my knee and ankle quite deep grazes that bled everywhere. The man on hearing me squeal as I skated down his driveway on my knees and ankle turned and said to me ' Shush there are people in there trying to sleep'!!!!! not a word about how was I. So I looked him in the eye from down on the ground and said ' thankyou for your concern' but he didn't get the insult I intended, at least still didn't inquire about my poor knees, that are still very skinned and sore, fortunately that haven't infected and are healing nicely.

Not quite the way most people expect that taxi drivers might be hurt, ofcause the truely violent things could happen, and do in the big cities, but not as a rule around our town.