For New Yorkers, it’s hard to understand transportation in other cities. The cabbie whom I hailed recently at the San Jose airport wanted to know whether Arriba Drive, my destination in Sunnyvale, had one or two Rs. Spelling isn’t a big concern with the taxi drivers I’m used to. But this one needed to type the address into his GPS, while simultaneously maneuvering on the freeway.
“So do all taxis have a GPS now?” I inquired.
“Yes. Many,” the cabbie said, explaining that the devices had become affordable recently.“It’s faster.You don’t need to carry a map. Or remember the addresses.”
You say I should’ve rented a car. Unlike some New Yorkers I know, I do have a license and drive around Brooklyn on occasion, but I’m still not comfortable on the highway.The friend I was visiting has a nice car, and I didn’t expect to have as many business meetings as I ended up having.
On the second day of my working from California, I ordered a cab from my hotel in San Mateo for 3:10 p.m. The front desk called me 30 minutes beforehand to say that the car was already waiting outside.When I came out at the appointed time the cabbie was chatting with the valet. It looked like he actually did wait for me; and as I later realized, this wasn’t out of courtesy, but because the distances these cabbies cover mean almost no job can be accomplished within a half hour. He later said that there is no more than one call per hour anyway.
I got in and gave him an address on Sand Hill Road, a famous (in the business world) street in Menlo Park for the unusual number of venture-capitalist offices there. The assistant to the man I was about to meet told me it would take 15 minutes to cover the route.
“It’s right off Highway 280,” I told the driver helpfully.
“Do you know which exit to take?”
“No.”
“Umm. You don’t have a map?”
“No,” I answered slowly. I threw a glance around his dashboard—there was no GPS there.
I took out my cell phone and dialed the 650 area code number stored there for the assistant at my destination. But the important man I was about to see picked up.
“Dave?” I said, and asked for the exit.
The man mumbled, but then started giving me directions, pointing me to a different highway. The cabbie I was relating some of this information to pulled into a mall’s parking lot to wait for directions.
Then the guy on the phone said, “Are you coming today? Now?”
I found that odd, as we set up the meeting through his assistant earlier that day. “Well. Yes. Is that OK?”
“OK,” he said.
I was getting uncomfortable taking him away from his business, meanwhile the cabbie was motioning to talk to him directly, as my translation of the directions was confusing. I didn’t give him the phone. When I finally thought I got the directions down, I said,“OK and then we’ll turn onto Sand Hill Road.”
“No.We’re not near Sand Hill Road.”
It hit me then. This man was a David I met with the day before, not the one I was on my way to—not that I was on my way to anywhere yet.
I hoped that the Bay Area public transportation system would treat me better.That led me to take the Light Rail, a short railway system in one part of Silicon Valley where two-car trains run. At the ticket-dispensing machine I chose to get two single tickets, including one for my return trip, as they cost only $3.60, and not the more expensive Day Pass. But when the tickets were dispensed it turned out each of them was to expire two hours after purchase. So much for the go-with-the-flow reputation of California.
But the laid-back nature of the place soon caught up with me—no one checked my ticket on the Light Rail. And I cynically took advantage of this by not purchasing an additional ticket even though my trip back took place more than two hours later.
I also experimented with the BART, a subway-like train system that shoots out of San Francisco into the nearby suburbs. My friend decided to park his car outside a BART station close to the city and take the train in so we wouldn’t have to look for parking there.
The parking lot outside of the station, which cost just $1, had a helpful sign reminding us to remember our lot number. But since our car was one of the few there, the utility of that was slightly overblown.
On our way back it turned out that we had to pay more for the train than on the way there. “There’s San Francisco logic for you,” I said with an ironic smirk to my proud-Californian friend.When we were purchasing tickets, I pointed out that it was the Colma station we needed, but my friend looked at me condescendingly, and said: “Julia. It’s Daly City.”
The minute we got out of the train my friend’s gaze turned uneasy. Though it was already apparent that this wasn’t our stop, he insisted to walk through the indoor garage that was the only similar feature as to the station where we did park. It was clear we were at the wrong place.
“Well. It’s still Daly City,” my friend told me.
“It’s just so big that it has two stations.” Right.
Guess even a GPS couldn’t help in this case. If only they had a helpful sign, “Please remember the station where you park.”
As I landed back at JFK, I called my Brooklyn car service to pick me up. Never had I been so relaxed about getting into that sedan.
