Ten Things Stories: Ghost Rider On The Beltway

I’ve had another “story behind the story” request:

6. Rode in an unmarked taxi driven by a man named "Ghost Rider."

About fifteen years ago, I went to on vacation to the US Virgin Islands with (oddly enough) my boss from summer camp, WoodsWoman, and her daughter and son-in-law. We stayed with an old camp buddy and her husband, who owned the dive shop at one of the resorts on St. Thomas.

Yep, free lodging, free snorkeling and scuba diving, mostly free food (cooked by our hostess) and free tour guides. There’s a reason they call it paradise.

Magan's Bay, photographed from our hosts' front porch. Note the rainbow that looks like it ends right at the beach. The joke was, "Tomorrow, we're going snorkeling right there!"

But, I’m getting ahead of myself, because I'm sure you're thinking by now that Ghost Rider was some fly-by-night island cabbie.

Nope, believe it or not, that little adventure happened before we even left Texas.

At the time, I was living in Houston, and WoodsWoman lived a couple of hours away. Our flight left Houston Intercontinental Airport (it was named that at the time and, as far as I’m concerned, it still is) at around 6 am, so she spent the night with me the night before. Her daughter and son-in-law were flying down from Oklahoma and meeting us there, so it was just the two of us.

Sidebar:
WoodsWoman is the one of the toughest, most fearless people that I know and I’d trust her with my life. Over many, many years at summer camp, I only saw her look a little nervous about a situation a couple of times – and I figured that probably mean that we were all going to die.

We got up in the middle of the night, called a cab and waited for it outside my apartment.

As we were waiting, we were laughing about how we must look, standing in the parking lot with our suitcases at 3 am, and WoodsWoman said something along the lines of “How will we know if it’s our cab? We don’t want to get in the car with just anyone!”

I (ever the smart-ass) pointed out that it would probably be that yellow car with the big lit-up sign on top that says ‘Taxi.’

Before long, up pulled a grayish 1970-something piece of shit, with no kind of markings on the outside.

The driver got out and asked “Y’all goin’ to the airport?”

“Yep!”

We tossed our bags in the trunk and hopped right in.

Now, I there was definitely no “taxi” sign on the outside of the vehicle, and I’m not sure there was a meter inside (the trip to the airport is a flat-fee) but I do know there was a radio, because as he pulled out of the parking lot, our driver picked up the microphone and said,

”Tequila? This is Ghost Rider – in route to Intercontinental.”

WoodsWoman and I did not make eye contact with each other during the entire twenty-minute drive to the airport, because we both knew that if we did, there’s no way we could not laugh.

Later, I told her that I was thinking the whole time, “Well, at least I know I’m safe, because I’m with WoodsWoman!”

She said she wished she’d been that confident about it.

We did make it to the airport, and to the islands, and back home with no further incidents, but it was definitely an interesting way to kick off a vacation!