Pedi-Cab Chronicles

Day 13 | $24,666 paid | $66,051 till freedom

This is a low-quality post in terms of actual story-telling, but I will push forward with what I have to say anyway since tonight was fairly eventful and I want to get it down before I forget it all.

Observations from My First Night of Pedi-Cabbing

• The owner convinced me it would be a good idea to ride without my shirt to get more attention and therefore make better money. I was treated like a piece of meat all night long, and while it was  funny, flattering, and novel at first, it quickly grew old.
• Some drunk girl I gave a ride to literally humped my bike seat. Awkward. Her friend pinched my nipples. Hard.
• I will wear a shirt next time I go out.
• I got comfortable calling out to complete strangers, and I did it quite a bit.
• But out of the seven rides I gave, not a single one of them was from "hustling." Four of them were from just parking in a spot and sitting in the trailer and waiting for a fare. The othe three were for riding along the road, not saying anything.
• I'm done hustling.
• I hate just parking in a spot and sitting in the trailer. I feel so lazy. I'd rather be giving rides the entire time and making as much money if I were to give rides only half the time and sit around the other half.
• I was riding around for an hour with no fares, growing more and more frustrated, ten seconds away from getting on my bike and riding back to the depot to quit, when three people came up to me asking me for a ride. They turned out to be really cool. I took them to get hot dogs and then dropped them off at Chinatown.
• Giving rides to three drunk and wild dudes from New York who each weighed at least 200 pounds and want me to race their two friends in another pedi-cab is exhausting. I lost. But I still got a great tip.
• I broke only three traffic laws tonight.
• I rode my bike 14 miles.
• I gave 7  rides to 15 people.
• I gave a ride to a couple of girls even though they warned me that they didn't have the cash and wouldn't be able to pay me anything. I figured that I needed the practice.
• Other pedi-cab drivers are friendly. Most of them all seem a little off in some way.
• I made some new friends.
• In 4.5 hours, I grossed $107 and netted $72 after the trailer rental. That's $16/hr. (Which would be tax-free if it weren't for this blog!)
• All the pedi-cabbies I talked to agreed that tonight was slow.
• I'm exhausted. It's now 3:36 AM.
• I had a good time overall. It didn't  feel like work.
• I'll do it again--next Friday and Saturday if I can get on the schedule.
• I'm concerned that it won't be as lucrative as I was led to believe.

The best part...

• I ended up making $10 more than Joel, my trainer from last night, even though we worked the same hours.