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Posts published by “Erik S. McMahon”

Not Thinking About Rocks

One tolerable, humid yet cloudless July morning in the late 60s, the apparent aim was to relocate a buttload of ugly, undistinguished rocks — are stones bigger? to call them “boulders” would be hyperbolic —…

Cuarto Cero-Cero

We’d flown into a Mexican coastal resort without hotel reservations. On the wretched stretch of road between airport and town, we chatted up our cab driver — gushing over family photos pasted across his dashboard…

Late For San Pedro

Bumpy Ride, late landing at LAX. Stateside pilots talk about “a little rough air.” In Mexico, they’re more honest and refer to una zona de turbulencia. Fog, air traffic, gate delays. Due in San Pedro…

Nassau Taxi

Most travelers can recount airplane “flights from Hell.” But of course, there are also Satanic cab and bus rides. Sometimes, even a pleasant-looking ferry will stray across the River Styx. Taxi terror, for me, will…

Brazilian Cabbie

Another entry for my bulging file of cab-ride tales. Slipped out early from work and went book shopping, emerging into cold winds on lower Van Ness in San Francisco, with no 47 or 49 bus…

Duct-Taped To A Couch

Tracey crept up on you bit by bit. Eventually, you’d sense yourself relenting. The fastidious rational brain no longer bothered calculating how much of his rap was mythological, which anecdotes apocryphal, or what percentage of…

Bowl Of Borscht

Flying Oakland to Burbank meant saving a couple hundred bucks. So headquarters could spring for a cab, instead of the Muni/BART/shuttle journey. A Georgian — not the Atlanta kind — arrived to haul me across…

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