Courtesy Wanted

Early this month, I traveled to San Diego, CA. For the noon flight back to San Francisco, I planned enough time for a taxi ride from the hotel at the Ocean Beach to the SAN airport, and paid a last visit to the nice beach, which I enjoyed the previous afternoon and night. 

To my surprise, when I walked back to the hotel and collected luggage to leave, I found there was no taxis in front of the hotel, and for the next half an hour, none driving by. I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, realizing there was little chance that I could catch a cab in time. The hotel front desk said it would take another half an hour to 1 hour to get a cab in depending on the traffic situation. Now I really got nervous. I need to help myself.

Standing by the traffic flow, I quickly started to screen the driving-by cars, looking for a candidate for a ride. I was proactive enough this time and held a greenback note in my raised hand, not that I was expecting people would stop for the money but I believed they would stop just for their curiosity. Sure enough, I would say people from all walks of life did pause and satisfy their desire of discovery, but for the first 4 or 5 occurrences, the driver either said “sorry, I’m not familiar with the area” or “sorry I’m in a hurry too”. So I needed a better strategy and somehow became more efficient and effective.

I experimented with Fleud’s ubiquitous theory and it did not take more than 2 female refusals before I realized and reluctantly accepted the fact that under the circumstances my masculine attraction was well overcasted by my potential aggressive threats to the female drivers – they did not get to know me thru wxc anyways. So my screening criteria instantly switched to “men only”, no teenagers no women, period.

Here came an open roof convertible, a not so shining red BMW with a rough lined man behind the wheel!

“How did you know I would stop for you?” After I sat beside his driving seat, he asked, smile on his light brown face.

“Well, an open ceiling indicates a good chance of open mind I guess. And I did it for others before so I thought I might as well gave a try.”

“I’m glad you put it this way!” He nodded. “Today I happened to have no particular plan and was in the mood to drive around the greens and beach. And I had an Asian wife sometime ago.”

“Obviously she did not ruin the Asian image.” 

“As far as I’m concerned, you are quite right.” He threw me a brief glance.  

For this experience, I’m all for the international marriages, as if I own all Chinese girls and have a veto on that matter. Keep up the great diplomatic work, girls!  

BTW, my courtesy driver was Mr. Scott Votow. He is self-employed, trading brand name vehicles, both previously and newly owned. I have been trying to get back in touch with him ever since. That is one intention of this post. I’ll Google his name later to see if this post pops up. Hope he occasionally searches his own name on the net too.

 
Approaching to my flight time, got to go before I have to get another last minute ride to the airplane!

[aircraft]

“my masculine attraction was well overcasted by my potential aggressive threats to the female drivers – they did not get to know me thru wxc anyways”：))

[Flamenco_Girl]

Good for you. Most time I saw people holding these kind of papers writing on it: "I Am Homeless". Kidding. My friends in Europe told me that they do this kind of things for travel when they were students.