We returned from our trip to the East Coast on Sunday night. It was a really long day...cleaning up the beach house beginning at 7:00 a.m. EST...5 hours of driving from Virginia Beach to Charlotte...then flying from Charlotte through Dallas to Las Vegas...and finally arriving on the ground at 9:30 p.m. PST, 17 1/2 hours later.
To top off the long travel day, our pre-arranged ride home from the airport decided not to show up. He also decided not to answer his cell phone. We later learned that his car had broken down at some time or another. I have yet to figure out why this meant that he could not call us or answer our calls.
So, after retrieving our luggage and fruitlessly standing in passenger pick-up for awhile, we went to wait in the taxi line.
It didn't take a horrible amount of time to get a cab. We told the cab to take us home via the 15 to the 95 to Summerlin Parkway. He missed the exit to the 15 from the 215. In his words, he "forgot."
So he drove up to Decatur. Decatur has a lot of lights, but it is a major street, so usually you can hit quite a few lights right because they often stay green for a decent amount of time. After a few intersections, we began to notice that we seemed to be hitting every light on red. And after a couple more intersections and closer observation, it became apparent that the cab driver was noticeably slowing down when the lights were green. He would slow down just enough so that the light would turn yellow right as we approached it, and then he would slam on the brakes. It was almost an art; at times we noticed the speedometer dip down as low as 20 mph on a 45 mph speed limit road when the light was green. Frustrating doesn't even really begin to describe the situation after a full day of traveling.
Of course, we didn't actually complain to him. We probably should have. I didn't tip him though; I can only hope that he didn't make up the difference in his time-wasting shenanigans.
