Well I haven't been here for awhile. I had a motorcycle wreck, I was riding my BMW GS 650 on I25 doing 65 mph and an SUV hit me from behind doing about 80. I totaled that SUV! But ya, he totaled me. Broke my neck. Broke my C-2 vertebrae crushed my L-4 screwed my knee up, it goes both directions now like a bent hinge. But hey I'm alive,the C-2 is the Christopher reeves break and I am not paralyzed so I guess I am tougher than superman. So anyway I have not been driving the cab for awhile but I still have a large archive in my brain of all the crazy cab stories that happened in the past, o here is a new...old one! So I go into work, and I see on the bulletin board that the front page of the New Mexican is posted with an article about a boxer, Robbie Lovato who is wanted by the Police. Evidently he has robbed a couple of banks in Albuquerque and he is on the loose. There is a note written on the newspaper article from one of our drivers written in Black marker, right next to his picture it says, ”This guy owes me 15 bucks”. This is our clientele, oh brother. It is a summer Friday night, and everything is pretty mundane until 10 o’clock. I know I am going to have a late night so I go by the Hotel St. Frances for a cup of coffee. Charles and Becky are working and I sit at the bar to get my coffee and talk to Becky. She is a sweet attractive blonde and I know her quite well. Not only am I a regular there, but Charles and Becky always take cabs home after work , so I know them very well, as do all the cab drivers. So we talk and come to the conclusion that it is just another boring Friday night. Charles is a tall, lanky, British fellow and things are pretty busy in there so I just say hi and leave. I get a call from the Eldorado Hotel, one of the nicer and probably the largest Hotel in town. The guy tries to sit up front but I say “No, sit in the back”. The second he gets in he says “get me the hell out of here, there are cops everywhere” I ask him where he’s going and he says to take him out Agua Fria. Then he starts talking about boxing, I don’t know a lot about boxing but I hear the name Marciano and then he asks me if I know who he is? I say “No not really, who are you?” he doesn’t answer. His cell phone rang, and he starts talking to somebody. I hear him say “I’m going over on Agua Fria…No I’m in a cab,…no he doesn’t know who I am”. When I drop him off, I get a really good look at him, notice the clothes he is wearing, and look very carefully so I can give a good description. He pays me and I go straight to the cab company office, I want to look at the paper again, just to be sure it is the guy in the paper. When I look at the paper I am convinced. I just picked up Robbie Lovato. I tell my dispatcher and I call the police. They tell me to meet a detective at Devargas Mall, so I drive the cab down there and a plain clothed guy with long hair and a little beret gets in the back seat. He ask me to drive by the house where I dropped Robbie off, so I take him up Agua Fria and point out the house. He says “that is fine, we will take it from here”. I drive him back to his car at the mall. It’s getting late and I am about done with my shift so I do a few more bar rush calls and call it a night. When I got home I started wondering if there might be a reward so I called the police dept and asked them if there were any developments on the Robbie Lovato case, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. The next day I got up and had to be at work by 2pm. When I got to work Dan was dispatching. He said “Oh man, you wouldn’t believe the night we had last night. You know Charles and Becky at the St. Frances? Well they stayed late after work and got really drunk. They were breaking bottles and they really tore up the bar. They called for a cab about 5am and Dave went to pick them up. They were both wasted and got in Dave’s cab. Dave was doing the night dispatch on the cell phone. He got a call and Charles and Becky were yelling at each other in the back seat, so loud that Dave couldn’t hear the guy on the phone. So Dave stepped out of the cab, right in front of the St. Frances so he could get the information for the call. He is writing down the information, and Becky jumps over from the back into the drivers seat and takes off with Dave’s cab! He was dumbfounded! He hated to do it but shit, man she had stolen his cab, so he called 911 and reported it. The cops had them pulled over by the time they got to the capitol building. Becky got out of the cab and kicked the cop in the nuts, twice! We got the cab back, but Charles and Becky are both in jail. What were they thinking? We know where they live! I said, “Well did you hear about my night? I picked up Robbie Lovato and had to deal with detectives and I wasted half my night dealing with the cops.” Dan replies, “Oh ya, by the way that guy that you dropped off on Agua Fria called. He wanted me to tell you that he is not Robbie Lovato, and the cops came to his house and broke his collarbone, and he is really pissed. His name is Antonio Serano, don’t you know who that is?” “ No, who is that?” “That is that kick boxer, that killed a guy in the ring a couple of years ago! Not the kind of guy I would want pissed off at me!” “Oh shit Dan, I need to go talk to this guy. I need to clear this up right now, I don’t want to run into this guy in a dark alley later, can I come in a little later?” “Sure, but do you really want to go see this guy?” “I think I better.” So I drive my personal vehicle down to that house on Agua Fria. I nervously got out of the car and knocked on the door. The guy that I picked up at the Eldorado answers the door, and yells to someone in the back of the house. “I can’t believe it, it’s that asshole cabby that picked me up last night!” I started groveling, “I am so sorry, I can’t believe the cops broke your collarbone, I am so sorry, but you look just like Robbie Lovato, I am so sorry, why did you say all that stuff? You said, get me out of here, there are cops everywhere. Do you know who I am? You were talking about boxing and Marciano. I am so sorry.” Antonio said, ”I don’t look anything like Robbie Lovato, I know, I fought him in the ring, we don’t look alike at all!” I think he was more offended that I mistook him for Robbie than anything else. I was apologizing profusely and then I asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He said “actually, could you give me a ride to Walgreens? I need to pick up some pain meds.” “Sure, let’s go, hop in my car.” So I gave him a ride to Walgreens, we were walking in the store and somebody said “Hey, Antonio, wassup?” he says “Oh Bro, the cops thought I was Robbie Lovato, and beat the shit out of me.” We went back to the prescription counter and as he was picking up his meds I said “Hey, please let me get this OK? Please, the first round is on me.”

Out of the Cab for a bit

Yes I am taking a break from cab driving for a bit. I have gone off to work the New Mexico state legislature. I did make the news though. Check it out on my facebook page! Nial

Bears in the beehive

What a drag, I just came home and there were all thease bees buzzing around the light in front of my house.I was thinking "what are the bees doing up at 3am?" So I walked around to the backyard and there is a black bear chowing down on all the honey, what a bummer.

Cowgirl is the place to be

There is a benifit and thank you to the firefighters at the cowgirl this evening, be there. What a great week of music,James Mcmurtry,Eliza Gilkison,and all our locals. The bandstand has been great this year. I'm impressed!

Cowboy Cabby the website is up!

So we got the website "Cowboy Cabby" up today at www.cowboycabby.com It has a bunch of crazy cab stories up in a beautiful format. We are about to head to the plaza to hear "Curry Springer and Primm" and "The Wise Guys" on the bandstand this evening. Should be a good time.      CC

July 4th

So the fires have slowed down with the afternoon rains. They have pulled much of the manpower off the Pacheco Canyon fire and moved them over to the Conchas fire, according to one of the helecopter pilots I was talking to. I picked up Jennifer Best the other night, I guess she has moved back to Santa fe. Los Alamos has lifted the evacuation and so people are going back home on the hill. The pancake breakfast on the plaza went well, and it is still very busy there. Have a happy 4th, and Happy Birthday to my sister...Born on the 4th of July!!!
CC

4th of July events

So it's the first of july and the bandstand on the plaza starts today! woo hoo! , it's always fun. The smoke is annoying and the fire in the jemez has hit over 100,000 acres, what a bummer. Pancakes on the plaza is happening monday from 7-12 that is always a good time. I think we have the worlds record for the longest line for a flapjack. There is a 5k run happening in Las Vegas next week for all you runners out there. That's it for the moment.  Cowboy Cabby