first rain friday night

I thought it was Friday the 13th and I expected strange things. Nothing crazy happened but it was Friday the 14th, so it’s understandable.
It was a beautiful day as I started my shift driving empty up and over Potrero hill with the fog to my west and Dungen blasting on the radio thanks to KUSF. My first fare is a ride from Alemany/Potrero to Golden Gate Heights. From there I get a ride to Pacific Heights and all the while listen to new Death Cab for Cutie; a quick $25 and some good music in good weather. Since its 3pm, I head down to financial district to deal with traffic and people outflow. Queuing at 555 California, two guys on recumbent bikes ride bye with mini billboards attached to their frames. From here I get an old lady going out to Sunset district. She says I drive very fast as I am driving very fast down Masonic St. I drop her off at 22/Irving and immediately get another old lady with groceries going even deeper into the Sunset. She asks me to carry her groceries into her house and I oblige, anything for a dollar tip. My dispatcher sends me from there to the other side of the park at 25th/Lake and this old lady is going to St. Mary’s hospital to get her annual flu shot. We talk about the flu and she predicts 5 million people will be killed by avian flu. She also says the new DeYoung museum sucks and her mother and herself hated the new design. She said she expected Darth Vader to step out of the shadows. At the Hilton I picked up Chinese man who just got into the country and the first place he wanted to go was Pier 39. He told me 3 times that America is a very beautiful place. I suppose it is, until it started raining and that it did last night. Our first real rain of season and it became slippery. I was fishtailing all over the place and pedestrians were darting across my water streaked and occasionally fogged up windshield. When I ended my shift, the gas guy told me it gets so slippery because of all the oil on the streets accumulating 6 months during our dry season.
And now it all gets washed out into our bay and ocean.

Another article on that tragic cab accident last week appears in today’s chronicle. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/15/BAGOEF8UQ61.DTL