C. Elliot makes it to the big time

[UrbanSpaceman]

Christopher Elliot has made it to the big time!!!

In the book "Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition", he is the expert they used for the "How to Escape a Wild Taxi Ride" section of the "Everyday Dangers" chapter.

I am not sure if anyone has brought this up before, but I thought it was worth an "attaboy."

Chris--where can I read/hear some of your wild taxi ride experiences?

For everyone else--let's hear about some of your wild taxi rides!

Here is mine: Many years ago, a co-worker and I flew home, landing at Chicago O'Hare airport (ORD). I had left my car at his parent's, so we were going to share a taxi to his parent's house. Now, ORD is in the city of Chicago, and his parent's house was in a suburb; this means that the taxi will charge us fare-and-a-half (since apprantly we have to pay more since the cabbie will not get a rider where we are dropped off). The first cab we got into did not want to take us, so he drove us to a cab that would. This drive involved going very fast and dodging around other cars while getting to the new cab. This is through the area just outside of the arrival doors and there are cars picking up people, or waiting for people to pick up. The speed limit is about 15 mph, but our cab was probably going 2-3 times faster. Very hairy, but we made it to the new cab without getting ourselves or anyone else hurt.

[trojan]

My wildest cab ride was also in Chicago. I was at a function downtown at Michael Jordan's restaurant and had tickets to the Cubs game at Wrigley. So, my buddy hailed a cab and told the driver to haul booty.

With a glint in his eye, our Pakistani chauffeur asked just how fast we wanted to get there. My buddy said fastest possible.

The next thing I know, we are driving through Lincoln Park - not the neighborhood, the PARK ITSELF. As we are barreling down sidewalks and rolling across grassy greens, people are diving out of the way, screaming bloody murder.

Miraculously, nobody was hit, although one could see many laying on the ground.

We made it to the corner of Addison and Clark (the sign one always sees in TV/movies is here) in TWELVE minutes!

Jake and Elwood had nothing on our muslim friend.

[jjjenny]

I once had a taxi driver in Nassau that was going up on sidewalks, in yards and running lights to get us to our ship.....never thought we'd make it alive, but , he didn't hit one thing!

[mercwyn]

My wildest cab ride was in Beirut. We went up on the sidewalk, knocking over tables at a sidewallk cafe, took a short cut through a construction site, ran countless lights, stop signs and missed hitting hundreds by inches and all of that was in the first two miles!