Fare warning to taxi drivers: If you’re called to pick up a passenger in Pasadena, be prepared to carry a suitcase. Your own.
Cabbie Steve Baird found that out when Pat Fry summoned him for a ride to the beach – and ended up traveling to Victoria, British Columbia.
The pair was back home on Monday from a nine-day, 3,128-mile odyssey in Baird’s dusty Yellow Cab, which drew double-takes throughout the Pacific Northwest.
The round-trip fare came to $4,100. Baird earned a 15 percent tip, plus meals and lodging.
“I kind of had cabin fever,” said Fry, 68, a retired hotel worker. “I needed to get out of my apartment.”
Fry said her spirits were down because of the death of a friend, so she called Baird on July 13 for a lift.
“I love riding along the ocean – I guess I could have gone to Santa Monica,” she said. “But I said, ‘Let’s go to Santa Barbara.’ When we got there, I didn’t want to stop. I said, ‘Let’s keep going north.”‘
By then, Fry had climbed out from behind the Yellow Cab’s bulletproof back-seat divider and was sitting up front, watching the taxi meter spin wildly. Baird, 40, told her not to worry, that he would give her a discount.
“My bosses don’t care how far I go as long as they get their money,” Baird said. “I’m always ready to go – I just follow orders.”
Outside of Santa Barbara, the pair pulled over to buy toothbrushes. Later, they stopped to buy clean clothes. With Fry footing the bill, they ate at fast-food restaurants and coffee shops and picked budget motels – “with separate accommodations,” Fry pointed out.
“I had my credit card and checkbook and about $30 in my purse,” she said.
Baird had an ATM card, credit cards and a cellular phone he keeps in his glove compartment. He used the phone to call his bosses at the taxi office and explain that he wouldn’t be back any time soon with their 2-year-old Chevrolet Caprice, which has 177,780 miles on it.
Fry called her landlady to tell her not to worry and her dentist to cancel an appointment.
The cab, with “City of Los Angeles Taxi” decals, was attracting plenty of attention by the time it cruised through Northern California’s redwood forest and stopped in Mendocino. Fry said she made a point of stopping there to see the fictional “Cabot Cove” backdrop for her favorite TV show, Murder, She Wrote.
Canadians surprised by the sight of a Los Angeles cab on their streets treated Fry and Baird to lunches and dinners in local pubs and restaurants. Some even invited the pair to their homes. The tale of the taxi carrying “the little old lady from Pasadena” made the front page of the local newspaper.
Fry said the taxi trip was just the thing to snap her out of her blue mood.
“I never laughed so much in my life as I did the last nine days,” she said. “I’ll never be depressed again.”
