[focusracer]

I've notice a lot of bad driving habits by cabbies as well. My cabbie story of the day is as follows. 6 of us were at a convention for industrial supplies in Vancouver when I was a salesman, we were going from our hotel on te waterfront to a restaurant about 20 blocks down on Granville, we took 2 cabs there, they followed the same route. The cabbie I was with, really nice guy, Saudi Arabian, chatted with us, etc. it was $7, I gave him a 10 said cheers, noted the cab # for when we needed to leave the restaurant. We go into the restaurant, one of the guys from the other cab is bitching about the cabbie and how much it was, $14.50 and the guy got pissed and yelled at them when he was given $16 for the fare calling them cheap. So we finished dinner and we'd been drinking etc. We called the cab co and I asked for the cab # from earlier, was told he was at the airport and would be about 20 minutes, I said cool I'll wait and went for another drink. The other guys weren't as patient and wanted to get to the peelers, 4 took off in another cab, me and another guy waited. The cabbie showed up, we pulled up to the Cecil and the other guys aren't anywhere to be seen outside, there was a slight line up to get in, we paid our driver the $5 fare and left him with a ten, he honked his horn and the doorman came walking over and turned out to know our driver and he got us past the line and no cover etc. Our buddies show up an hour later and we're like wtf? Their cabbie wanted a $50 deposit because they were "drunken bastards" and then proceeded to take them for the grand tour of vancouver before bringiing them to the No 5 Orange (another strip club) and then refusing to take them back again and took off with their "deposit" plus the $40 fare. They called the dispatch to complain and get another cab, ended up with our little Saudi friend, who got them in at the Cecil the same as us. The best part was at the end of the night he was sitting waiting for us, his doorman buddy had called him on his cell to let him know we were getting ready to go, he'd met up with the driver who'd ripped the other guys off and got their 50 bones back. He took us around to a couple of other places to grab a few more rounds and didn't want anything for it until the end of the night, just call him when we were ready, gave us his cell #. At the end of the night he got all of us to the hotel safe, got the full fares from us, got the $50 that the other cabbie had stiffed and another $50 for a tip. Whenever I need a cab in Vancouver, I call my little Saudi friend, Samil, he's also going to be the driver for my sisters wedding, he has a late 60's restored Mercedes limo. Pretty good for him for one trip being kind, courteous and profesional. It was the cleanest, nicest smelling cab I've ever been in too.