Much as I appreciate a three day weekend – and the probability of further extensions until the cab is repaired – I am in sore need of money to fund my upcoming trip, and the pleasure of leisure is balanced by the the sad thought of my bank balance.

I’ve been reasonably discreet with the news, but I was involved in yet another cab crash on Friday morning. Just after midnight, on the way in to the Alinga Street rank with the city centre full of young folk and the prospect of three hours of work, a young lady made a right turn across traffic, imagining that the green light freed her from the duty of giving way to oncoming traffic – me.

To be fair to her, it’s a confusing intersection, and the traffic lights control the pedestrian crossing, not the intersection, but still, she suddenly appeared in front of me and I was unable to stop in time. No injuries, but both cars had to be towed away.

The insurance will pay for the repairs, but the loss of income over the busy weekend, and likely the busy week with Parliament’s imminent return, will severely disadvantage the cab owner, the weekend driver, the day driver and me.

I’m getting rather cheesed off with this side of cabdriving. In the four years of cabbing, I’ve had more accidents than I ever did in the thirty-some years since I first got a learner’s permit. Nothing major, and one or two were my fault, especially that whole backing into a tree thing, but still it’s not good for the soul. Or the bank balance.

The job itself is a lot of fun. Long hours and short pay, but I get to read books and watch movies and surf the net between fares, and the people I carry are generally interesting. I collected a young lady from the airport the other night, a former Australian of the Year, and she was a total delight. In the middle of summer, she was carrying a heavy coat, and explained that she was off to Canada in a day or two. We talked about travel and Route 66 and the underground culture of generosity and service. There are so many people around who donate time and money to making the world a better place, and it delights me to hear of them. This lady was one, and knew many more.

Famous authors, leading public figures, artists – the list goes on and on. You never know who will jump into the cab. Or the ordinary people who will never make the papers, but delight me with their jokes or their good humour or their companionship in the night. A few days ago, I picked up four young people from a house in the suburbs, heading off for an evening at a nearby tavern. I looked at them, selected CD 1 which is Michael Jackson, and as “Billie Jean” thumped through the speakers, the three in the back seat began doing Mexican waves. I could see the hands rising and falling in the rear mirror, and I giggled happily at the sight. For some reason, we cabbies are supposed to be hard, crusty, unsmiling men, bitter at life and closed up in emotion. Not me. Something amuses me, I laugh.

I like the job. It suits me.

But the long hours and low pay aren’t sustainable.

In the meantime, I’ve got leisure to write, and to declutter. I went through my cupboards and put some stuff up on eBay. I’ll try to clear out a bit each day – the result should be a house less full of junk, and a bank that smiles at me.

An address in Ainslie, and when she came out in a light, gauzey green dress, telling me “Pavillion”, I wondered. The Pavillion is a nearby hotel, not a place for locals to go for a drink, but somewhere for visitors to stay. Bill Bryson, for instance.

But I didn’t say nothing.

It’s not at all easy to get to, and I had to head towards Dickson and back down Northbourne Avenue. When I indicated left to go in to the hotel entrance, she woke up, saying “No, the Carillon!”

Maybe she blushed, but I wasn’t looking.

We sorted it out and I promised to knock a few dollars off the fare. Down Limestone, Anzac, Constitution, and we see a sign saying that Wendouree Drive to the Carillon was closed. Something to do with the secret new ASIO headquarters building being constructed nearby.

So we had to go around the Kings Avenue roundabout – or rather the pot-holed temporary roads that mark the transition from roundabout to overpass – and across the bridge, under Kings Avenue, back over the bridge, and into the other entrance to the Carillon. I knocked off a few more dollars for that – I’d dimly remembered about the road closure from months ago – and all up it was a prime example of incompetence on my part.

The Carillon on Aspen Island is one of my favorite places. A beautiful elegant bell tower soaring white and pure above a small island in a man-made lake, shores studded with monuments, showpiece buildings and grand vistas.

An open-air ninja concert featuring Amanda Palmer – Neil Gaiman’s brand new punk cabaret queen wife – and it looked like a merry scene as my passenger walked to join her friends, green gauze skirt brushing her thighs.

The clouds were darkening over Black Mountain as I turned the cab. Home was a few minutes away, and while I made a fresh cup of moka pot coffee, the skies opened. Heavy rain, lightning, wind – the whole deal, and I was glad that I was tucked drily inside Betsy.

Apparently it was an awesome concert. Umbrellas were not enough to shelter the crowd, and the lofty chamber of the Carillon can’t have provided much of a roof in the wind.

But the atmosphere! Reading Amanda’s twitter feed, it sounded like an incredible, albeit damp, time was had, leading to some monumental hangovers.

Me, I went off to hide in the underground carpark of Parliament House, to ponder whether I could have found any more roadworks and diversions on the way. I’ll be so very glad when they finish the current wave of construction!

I got a call – first job of the day – to a museum. Passenger named David, heading to the airport. Lots of work around, so I was a bit nettled when I pulled up outside the entrance to find nobody waiting. Waited five minutes, fuming at the fact that I could easily pick up a fare, just by driving around and looking for hails, and instead I was idle, waiting for a passenger who had likely jumped into the first gypsy cab along.

I gave up, called in a no-show, and prepared to go off hunting for a real passenger.

There was a delivery van in the Loading Zone ahead of me, and he pulled out first. When the way was clear I indicated and moved out into traffic, just as a man who had been hidden by the van raised his arm to hail me.

“Airport, please!” he said, helping his wife into the back seat. Red remembrance poppies in their buttonholes, and she was wearing a row of ribbons over her right breast. Armistice Day today, and there had been the annual ceremony at the Australian War Memorial.

“You wouldn’t be David, by any chance?”

“Yes,” he replied. “You haven’t been waiting there all this time?”

He must have picked up on the irritation in my voice.

Oh well. At least we’d found each other.

He named a nearby hotel. The usual deal – check out in the morning and collect the luggage on the way to the airport in the afternoon, rather than carry the bags around all day.

We drew up at the hotel and he went inside to retrieve his bags. I turned to the woman in the back seat. “Did you get to have a good look around the War Memorial?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she replied.

This threw me. The Australian War Memorial is very well regarded as an evocative, respectful memorial and museum dedicated to the sacrifices made by our servicemen and women. It is a must-see for tours, and there are always groups of schoolchildren led about, learning of Anzac and Vietnam, looking up at the tanks and guns and planes and trench signs and the photographs of those who never made it home, smiling with comrades in front of the Pyramids, loading aircraft with belts of bullets in Korea, patrolling a dusty village in Afghanistan.

Visitors to Canberra usually talk of what a wonderful, emotional place it is, how they could have spent a week exploring the halls, how the bugler’s call of the Last Post tugs on heartstrings at closing time, the cloisters and the eternal flame a fit setting for the long lines of names.

“We lost our son,” she explained.

Oh. There had been a private ceremony before the Governor-General laid a public wreath and gave a short speech for Armistice Day. Ten new names had been added to the thousands already there. This would explain the Combat Infantry Badge above the medals on her chest.

Her husband returned and I jumped out to help with the luggage. We pulled out onto Limestone Avenue, past the War Memorial where the rows of temporary seating were still being packed away, and along to the airport.

I had Chet Baker on the CD, his jazz mellow in the late afternoon. Tenderly and These Foolish Things. My eyes were brimming as I thought on the couple in the back. They were so very young to have had a son in uniform, a son who must have been of an age with the cadets from the service colleges we were passing now, cadets who piled into my cab for a night out with their comrades, talking about instructors and drills, music and cars, careers and holidays. A son now “lost” but never far from their thoughts and their hearts.

We threaded the temporary roadworks at the airport, finding a place in the clutter of cabs and rental cars. I cleared the meter, said “No charge,” held the door open for him, and lifted the bags from the boot.

He didn’t understand, pulling out his wallet.

“The fare’s already been paid,” I explained.

“What? Who by?”

There was a catch in my voice. “Your son.”

They got in on the main city rank, now re-opened at a third the original size. “Can we stop at a bottle-o first?” one asked.

“Right-oh!” I replied. “But where are we going?”

“Formule 1″

“You beauty!” I thought to myself. The Formule 1 motel is one of those cheapo deals out on the highway. $59 a night for a basic room and the dining room is a vending machine.

But it’s a nice long fare.

We went through Braddon, stopping at the Bottle-O there. That’s the trade name, and it’s a good one. Well-stocked grog shop, free parking outside, off-licence to print money, it is.

One of the two young men went inside and I hit the “Pause” button on the meter. It was going to be a good fare and people who stay at cheap motels are reaching into their own pockets to count the pennies. I look after them.

The guy in the back seat, a fairly chunky sort of fella, caught sight of the “Route 66″ keyring I have bluetacked to the dashboard. It’s one I bought at the Route 66 museum in Chandler, OK last year, and I keep it there for daydreaming purposes. That half day spent exploring the old road between Tulsa and Oklahoma City was a very happy one!

“I’m going to ride Route 66 next year with my father,” he said. “We’ll pick up the Harleys in Detroit, ride them to LA, and ship them home.”

Wow! What a trip! This chap immediately had my attention.

His mate got back in, with a six pack of Jim Beams to help the night ahead go down, and we set off on Canberra’s own Mother Road. Northbourne Avenue.

We talked Route 66 and the USA all the way. The food, the cars, the motels, the people. I mentioned that I’m planning my own father-son trip along Route 66 next year. From the other side of the generation gap. Myself, my son and my daughter.

I had lusted after a rental Mustang, but looking at the reviews it sounds like it wouldn’t be as much fun for the third person, sitting in the cramped back seat, peering out through a couple of tiny side windows. I’d be doing a lot of the driving, but some of the time it would be me in the back seat, and I wanted to enjoy the experience.

So we’ll likely hire something with a bit of size and a bit of style. A Chrysler 300C would be ideal. Lots of room for people and baggage, space for extras, a bunch of buttons to press and an image that is unmistakably All-American.

Not as much fun as a Harley, to be sure, but I’m not a Harley kind of guy. I wished my passengers the best for the trip, put my foot down and whipped off in a cloud of dust for the airport, where I watched the planes climb into the night sky and sent my thoughts with them.

Earlier that day, a package from Amazon had arrived, containing a DVD: Route 66: Producer’s Picks.

Not a lot to do with Route 66 as such, but for the feeling of driving through Sixties America in a classy car, there’s nothing to beat it. The black and white scenes, the corny live-to-camera adverts, the unforgettable theme music, the guest appearances of later stars, the thought-provoking plots, and above all the lifestyle, it’s a pleasure to watch.

I’ve got a bunch of maps and guidebooks, any number of websites, and all my dreams to keep me going until next year.

Last October we said goodbye to Betsy, our lovely silver Holden Statesman taxi. Almost new, she was loaded down with great features, and was a pleasure to drive.

But while I was off in America, the owner managed to write her off. One design flaw is that the A-pillars are very thick, hiding oncoming traffic at intersections. He didn’t mean to hit the other car, but he did, and hard enough to do some serious damage.

But he bought her back off the insurance company and over the past half year or so, while we’ve been driving loaner a Ford Fairlane, he’s gradually put her back together in the back of the workshop.

Yes, Charles the Fairlane that I crashed a week ago.

Friday it all came together and we swapped the patched-up Charles* for renewed Betsy. I got to drive her first shift as a reborn cab, just like I drove her first shift as a new cab last year.

What a pleasure! She’s got some wonderful functions, such as automatic windscreen wipers, front and rear parking sensors, MP3 disc player. The gas tank in the boot doesn’t rattle, so I don’t have to use the “ex-girlfriend” joke any more.

On the slight downside, there’s no seat memory – a boon for a car with three regular drivers – and the transmission makes a racket. Put your foot down, and the world can count the revs.

There’s also a new taximeter, so I’ll have to upgrade my muscle memory after three years of hitting the old set of buttons. At least this one comes with a user manual, which is a lot more than ever we got with the old one.

* Charles was repaired with bits from another Fairlane that just happened to be stuffed in the back of the workshop, and – trust me on this – there’s a fair bit of duct tape hiding some of the scars.

I was munching on a carrot in my cab, number two on the Manuka rank. Reading Further Tales of the City and just chilling.

So I was surprised when a passenger opened the door and got in. “What about him?” I asked, indicating the cab ahead.

“I didn’t want to wake him up,” she said, and gave me a destination on the further side of the city, an easy forty dollar fare.

I take the position that if a cabbie is asleep on a rank – especially at five in the afternoon – then he’s too weary to drive safely.

Sleep management is an important part of a cabbie’s life. The average rate per hour is so low that if a cabbie wants to make serious money, he’s got to drive serious hours. In theory, I drive a thirteen hour shift each weeknight, and other drivers, especially those who own their own cabs, will drive even longer hours to make the money needed both to pay the huge costs of operating a cab and make some sort of living.

While a cabbie’s shift isn’t continuous driving, and it’s a sight more interesting than the highway driving of long-haul truckers, it’s still a long time to be awake and alert. A good cabbie, even if he’s not actually driving, will be waiting for somebody to walk up and get in, or for the chime of an incoming radio job. He’ll be watching the stats screen to work out where the work patterns are flowing best, and he’ll be cleaning the windows or shaking out the floormats when there’s nothing else to do.

Or he’ll be chatting to other drivers, reading a book, doing the crossword puzzle, listening to the cricket… There’s a lot of idle time in a cabbie’s life.

What he shouldn’t be doing is sleeping. Other cabbies will take his passengers, he’ll miss out on radio jobs, he’ll lose income.

In an ideal world, a cabbie gets eight hours of good, solid sleep, drives his twelve hour shift, and has four hours left over for recreation. Not much of a life, but, as I always tell the passengers, “It beats working!”

In the real world, it’s hard to get a solid chunk of uninterrupted sleep, especially for a night cabbie like myself. There’s the unavoidable noise and activity of the rest of the family waking up and going to work or school. There are traffic noises, horns honking, construction vehicles rumbling. There are phone calls. In summer it’s hot, and there’s always the problem of too much light seeping around the curtains.

I’m lucky if I get three hours of sleep in a row. I’ll take a nap in the early afternoon before starting work at three, but somewhere around midnight, I’ll be running down. With the last planes landed at the airport and streets full of cabbies competing over the last few fares, it’s an ideal time for me to take a nap before joining the die-hard taxidrivers serving the empty city. There’s always work around at two in the morning on a weeknight. You might have to drive a bit further to pick up a passenger, but in a city the size of Canberra with a floating population of students and parliamentary staffers and public servants staying a few nights for a course or a convention, there’s always someone in the wee hours who needs to go somewhere.

I don’t pump myself full of energy drinks or pills to stay awake. I know other cabbies do, and I’ve tried some of those pills many years ago, but it’s an artificial alertness, and while the body stays awake, hands gripping the steering wheel, the mind goes off in strange directions. I know that everyone expects cabbies to be a little bit crazy, but I don’t want artificial assistance in that direction.

But I can’t drive when I’m tired. I start making mistakes. I’ll give out the wrong change, I’ll take an inefficient route, I’ll miss out on fares. And, worst of all, I’ll drive in an unsafe fashion. There are only so many traffic lights you can misjudge, only so many Stop signs you can roll through, only so many Give Way signs you can ignore.

Or I’ll begin to microsleep.

When that happens, I’ll stop work and take a nap immediately. I usually stop well before I get to that point, but sometimes when the flow of work on a busy night doesn’t give a natural break, I’ll find myself whipping down the Monaro Highway, long and straight down to the far suburbs of Tuggeranong, with eyes that don’t want to stay open.

I’ve got my own private map of quiet little corners of the city. Dark and deserted at midnight. Parks, sporting fields, carparks. What I need is something off the streets, not too much light or noise. I’m lucky in that Canberra has many such places. In fact there are four excellent carparks right in the middle of the Parliamentary Triangle in Federation Mall that are dark and deserted. Telopea Park and Haig Park have some good spots. But there’s always somewhere.

I park the car facing my best exit route, I lock the doors, turn off as many lights and displays as I can, crank the seat right back and zonk off. Even a five or ten minute powernap is good, but sometimes I’ll doze for an hour. I don’t set any alarm, because I figure that I’ll wake when I feel rested.

Usually what happens is that I get woken up by an incoming radio job after fifteen or twenty minutes. I can ignore it if I want, but generally I take the job and get back to work, good to go for those last few hours before I hand the car over to the day driver at four in the morning.

An alternative strategy, one my wife prefers, is that on a slow night I finish early. Like most other night cabbies. Trouble is that if every cabbie did that, then there would be no taxis on the streets to cope with the small demand at that time, let alone the unexpected load of a delayed flight or a late bus or a big function going late. There are always people to be shifted around the city and it is at these times that I feel most useful, saving people a long wait or a long walk. And making myself a few quid getting them home safely and comfortably.

The taxidriver’s navigation screen was tilted. Quint noticed it as soon as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. He almost reached to straighten it, but instead buckled his seatbelt and put his hands in his lap, sitting quietly.

“Where are we off to?” asked the cabbie, looking at Quint looking at the map screen.

“2A Monash Drive, Campbell 2612.”

“Ohhhh-kay!” The driver put the car in gear, pulling away from the taxi rank into the maze of roadworks surrounding the airport. This was jarring, as the road surfaces were uneven, speed bumps mingled with potholes and abrupt changes in level as the cab sped past construction barriers and signs.

“You know the way?” Quint asked, quite lost already.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve driven along here!” the cabbie said. He paused. “Oddly enough, that’s how it works out.”

Quint guessed there might be a joke somewhere in that, but he decided that it meant the cabbie knew how to find his home.

The interior of the taxi was cluttered with keypads, screens, mysterious gadgets and notices, and it took time to look at them all. The map screen was canted in two directions, he saw, but he kept his hands in his lap. Soon the jumble of the airport roadworks was behind, they had passed the guns mounted either side of the entrance to the Royal Military College, and Quint saw the name of Monash Drive come up on the tilted screen. He angled his head to read it.

He liked seeing streets and landmarks labelled and presented for his view. Like a living, moving map. From the air, although everything was laid out, especially when the plane was taking off or landing, there were no labels, and you had to guess what things were.

The cab turned into Monash Drive, and the cabbie, looking at the house numbers, said a rude word. But Quint knew where they were. The high end of his street had the high numbers and it was easy to remember. The cabbie couldn’t have been driving around Canberra long.

Here the houses were grand, on big blocks, with views out over the rest of the suburb, across the lake and onto Parliament House. The house price numbers were also high.

As they descended, the houses became smaller and closer together. Grouped around a central oval were the retirement home, school and shops. Newsagent, a small supermarket, restaurant, bakery and bookshop. A cluster of flats formed a red brick block between Monash Drive and Blamey Crescent.

Then a small hill, right in the middle of Campbell, and after that they were going down again, through the ex-government houses. Many of the cheaper sort, the “monocrete” fibro houses, had made way for more modern homes, usually with flat slab sides in pastel colours of mauve and green.

Sometimes the developers had managed to squeeze in two or even three small houses on a single block. The wide lawns and roomy yards replaced by a few square metres of pebbles.

Quint looked at a block enclosed by mesh fencing. Just a tangle of rubble where a home had been. A couple of bare fruit trees forlorn to one side.

The bottom of Monash Drive, where it hit Constitution Avenue, was home. Quint’s block of flats stood four and square on the corner. They were ugly but practical, and they suited him. A companion block on the Blamey Crescent corner had been modernised, and the tall panes of glass, angled like the prows of a fleet of ships, made them look most un-flatlike. Flats should be flat, Quint thought, not tricked out to look like an airport terminal or sports stadium.

The cabbie stopped in the centre of the row of flats. Quint looked at him sharply.

“Number 2A, please. Look, there it is. The number’s on the door.”

The cab moved forward five metres and the meter ticked over five cents to $16.20.

“That’s eighteen-twenty with the two dollar parking fee they stick us with,” the cabbie rattled, indicating a slip of paper. “Ah, just make it eighteen dollars, thanks.”

That seemed very high.

“Have the taxi fares gone up?” he asked.

“Not since the last time.”

Quint looked in his wallet. He had a twenty, two tens and a five. He pulled out the twenty, considered that the cabbie might not have any change, put it back and after some thought, handed over a ten and a five.

“I’ve got the rest in coins. Is that okay?”

“Fine, fine,” the cabbie said, watching Quint count out a fifty-cent piece, eight twenties, four tens and a series of five cent coins.

Quint wasn’t sure he’d gotten it right, and began laying out the coins on the centre console, but the driver scooped them up and jangled them into a bag. There might have been five cents extra, he thought, trying to remember how they had looked on the black vinyl. That wasn’t right.

But it could be a tip if it was extra. He smiled. “Thank you!”

The driver said something, but his words were lost in a great rending sound. Quint looked out to see one of the trees in the parkland across the street crash to the ground. There were men in orange vests with tools and helmets, vehicles with flashing lights, signs and barriers.

“That’s the new ASIO building going up,” the driver said, seeing Quint’s blank face. “Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation. The spy mob. Going to be a huge building. Five stories high.”

“Five stories?” Quint tried to imagine an office block stretching along Constitution Avenue, rising above the oak trees.

“Of course, those five stories will be underground. Security, you see. Just a grassy knoll on top.”

That didn’t sound so bad.

“Mind you,” the driver went on, “it’s going to be chaos here for the next couple of years.”

Chaos opposite Quint’s home. This was not good. He reached out and straightened the driver’s map screen.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay