A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 28

Is there a movie here:

A New York City cab driver has racked up the fare of a lifetime.

Mohammed Alam is being paid $5,000 to drive a pair of friends to Los Angeles. The trio left Saturday night and had reached Las Vegas by Thursday.

Investment banker John Belitsky, of Leonia, N.J., tells the New York Post that the idea was hatched during a birthday celebration for Dan Wuebben of Queens.

Belitsky said they wanted to do something “magical.” When they decided on a cab ride to California, they found Alam at LaGuardia Airport and brokered the deal.

The two friends haven’t decided how they’ll get back yet. As for the cab driver, he says a friend will meet him in Los Angeles and help him make the drive home.

I remember reading a story several years ago about an older woman who hailed a taxi driver and asked him to drive her several thousand miles to see a good friend. He did. And they developed an amazing bond. Completely different people brought together by the magical powers of being on the road.

Hollywood has a fascination with road movies as I’ve explored here. There’s something about leaving the Ordinary World and traveling into a New World that causes all sorts of things to happen, witness movies like It Happened One Night and Thelma & Louise.

So two guys hire a cab to drive cross-country as a birthday celebration. An old lady gets it into her head to take a cab thousands of miles to visit a dear friend.

It’s Driving Miss Daisy meets Rain Man. Or Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Or Midnight Run.

Lots of possibilities. What would you do with this story?