I had a 9:10am flight out of Detroit this morning. My plane landed at LaGuardia at 4:30pm. Had I been doing a running diary this is what I would've written...
12:15am: At the Hill House Christmas Party. I'm standing in a circle with a few friends, and they're taking swings of Beefeater Gin in honor of finals being over and in honor of a really long line to the keg...I decline as flying hungover is miserable. The party is an "Ugly Sweater Party". I don't think a lot of Jews own "ugly sweaters" with reindeer prints, or other Christmas-related flair such as iron-on candy canes. Nonetheless I wear the ugliest sweater I own, which I still like, and I get slightly offended when a friend says "Whoa, that's an awesome ugly sweater". I have an early pickup tomorrow. I leave the party and there are 5 inches of snow are on the ground.
4:00am-ish: Wake up, and see that it is still snowing...hard. Go back to sleep.
6:10am: Wake up and call the shared shuttle service that I'm supposed to take. I'm wondering if they can get me to the airport on time, and after speaking with them it appears that a 7:15 pickup is going to get me to the airport at 8:45...my flight is at 9:10am and that's cutting it way too close. I scramble, google "Ann Arbor Cabs", and start calling. Nobody picks up, nobody picks up, nobody picks up. Finally someone picks up. It's C.C., whoever that is, and he says that he can be at my place 7:00a and he can get me to the airport in one hour. He's already made a three hour trip to the airport this morning. He can obviously get the job done. I say "let's do it", and I call the shuttle company to cancel my reservation.
7:00a: I'm downstairs with my bags and run into two friends from down the hall. They were supposed to be picked up by the same shuttle service at 6:45 and their shuttle hasn't arrived. I tell them they should come with me. They agree.
7:05a: C.C. arrives in a minivan, fishtails at least 5 times coming out of our driveway. This might be my last cab ride ever.
7:15a: We're driving down Washtenaw (one of the main drags in Ann Arbor) and the roads have not been plowed. I look about 30 feet ahead and there's some guy wearing black from head to toe riding his bike down the middle of the road. He looks like a ninja...a ninja with a deathwish. Good ol' C.C. pulls up next to him, rolls down the window, and say "Hey man, you're crazy". That's the pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard it. But C.C. was right. What kind of moron is going to ride a mountain bike down a four-lane road in a horrible snowstorm.
7:30a: We're on the highway, and C.C. is passing cars. He turns to me and says "It's amazing what kind of tracks you can make on fresh snow". I start thinking about that old SNL skit "Oops I Crapped My Pants".
7:37a: C.C. has some screws loose, without a doubt. He then says to us, "Hey, did you hear about the limo driver who got car jacked and pistol whipped last week over in Ypsilanti?". We say no. He says, "that was me", and with that takes of his U of M stocking cap to reveal a bloody gauze pad covering the entire back of his head. He then goes on to tell us how he wrestled the gun from the guy (a guy he was driving that night) and narrowly avoided getting shot. You can read about it here. What do you even say to that? He was talking about it like it was no big deal, which kind of freaked me out. At that moment I was reminded of that time in Pee Wee's Big Adventure when Pee Wee hitches a ride from Large Marge. In case it's been a minute since you've seen the movie you can just watch this clip.
7:45a: Two exits aways, thank you God. C.C. passes a Mack truck and I swear they trade paint. I think about a little story from Marketing class about Coors Light. Coors was trying to crack the hispanic market a number of years back and they came up with a catchy slogan: "Sueltalo con Coors", which translated to "Turn it Loose with Coors"...but also translates to "diarrhea your pants", or in this case "diarrhea you pants with Coors". Somebody got fired for that I'm sure. Meanwhile, the "Sueltalo con C.C." campaign is definitely in full swing at this point.
7:50a: My phone is ringing. Any call before 8am is generally bad news. It's the Shuttle company. The guy's waiting for me downstairs. He says "You still need that ride to the airport?". I say "Well you're about 45 mins late, but I called around 6am to cancel my ride". C.C. remarks that that's what you get with these other cab services. Crazy dude has a point.
8:00a: We're pulling up to the American Airlines departures area. C.C. starts saying how that for three people a $65 cab ride is a good deal. I don't disagree, but when I spoke to him earlier in the morning he said the ride was $55. You don't argue with a man who just got pistol whipped.
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So there you have it. By the time I got to the gate my nerves were totally fried. I'm not sure if that was the best or the worst cab ride of my entire life. I should've been wiser and realized my flight was going to be delayed 4 hours or so anyway, but I'm crazy about not being late to anything. I believe that C.C. was the only person who could've gotten me to the airport that quickly. An utter disregard for his safety, combined with a fresh pistolwhip wound, probably mixed with some sort of pharmacological cocktail du jour and good ol' C.C. defied the laws of physics, time, and common sense all so he could serve as my shepherd on this snowy, rainy Sunday. God Speed C.C., you crazy bastard.
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