Well then - Yappy and I enter the Kansas City concourse, Blearly eyed, dragging our luggage and sure we were just minutes from getting to the hotel and looking forward to resting our bones. We find the cab stand and - voila - there is a cab. We approach it and it drives off. It's cold, we're tired. Do we look that bad? Yappy complains that she didn't like the color of the taxi in the first place and why don't I zip up my coat. Just to be obstinate, I take off my coat and my sweater and stand there like a crazed Russian in the Gulag.
After - oh about three hours - the same cab comes back. I give Yappy $20 to make up for the unattractive color and off we go. Well the driver seems decent enough as we chat like you do about the town and what's new and the local politics and the sports teams. Then of course we are lost after 30 minutes of going in a circle. The guy has no idea where our hotel is - you know - the farther away the hotel from the airport the cheaper...Cheapo the boss strikes again!
Cabbie is on the cell phone calling his brother in law or his bookie or his preacher or doctor to find out where to go and we just drive around and drive around some more. Off in the horizon I am sure I see the first faint light of dawn. Cabbie distracts us with stories about his teenage boys and introducing them to politics and I'm thinking, Wow what a great Dad." Suddenly - Oh-oh.
Cabbie goes off talking about how the Twin Towers went down in a conspiracy of the Bush family and how Lincoln's death was the fault of the Bush's and how the Challenger disaster was Jeb's fault and the OK City bombing was planned by W and I am not kidding. Even Yappy shut up at that point. Yappy and I glanced sideways at one another and whew... I checked my door handle to make sure it worked and thankfully it did. Just about then I saw the lights from our hotel, but they were on the opposite side of the road and we weren't slowing down. I took 50 bucks out of my wallet, threw it at the cabbie with a big thank you, told Yappy to grap her bag, clasped her by the lapels, kicked open the door and we jumped. We rolled into the ditch and saw the tail lights of the cab fade into the night.
Yappy's heel broke on her strappy little number and she limp-walked ahead of me - step-clunk, step-clunk. Boy she was talking now, but I just pulled up the collar of my coat, ignored her and we walked into the hotel "lobby". Step-clunking all the way in. It was now 4:30 a.m. There was a line...
Next time: Yappy nearly ends up rooming with snoose chewing Okee, or "Running on a treadmill to create electricity in your room is good for ya."
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