COEUR DALENEThis is my mid-life crisis, Alan Perkins says with a grin as he rambles down Coeur dAlene Lake Drive in a 10-miles-to-the-gallon, look-at-me yellow Hummer H2.


The 41-year-old self-described eco-geek environmentalist adds, I justify it by saying its for business.


In fact, the Hummer is the core of Hummer Taxis Inc., a scenic-tour and charter-transportation service that provides guided trips around the Inland Northwest via the yellow Hummer.


Perkins and his wife, Noah Gale, quit their management jobs at Microsoft Corp. two years ago and moved inland. The couple incorporated their business last May and started offering rides in their taxi-themed, checkerboard-bordered beast in August.


Currently, the company has just the one Hummer, and its owners are its only employees. Gale, who co-owned a tour operation in Los Angeles 20-some years ago, handles sales and trip bookings, and Perkins does the driving.


They have another Hummer, also yellow, on hold and hope to have enough business to justify adding it and another driver this spring or summer. Perkins says hes mulling the idea of starting a Hummer Taxis operation in Sun Valley, Idaho, as well, though he doesnt have definite plans to do so at this time.


My personal feeling is that Id like Hummer Taxis to be in 10 cities in 10 years, but I cant tell you whether that will happen, Perkins says.


The business, located at 412 Sherman in this resort towns downtown core, hasnt been through a full tourist season yet, so Perkins says he doesnt know for certain what kind of volume it will generate. He says that business late last summer and early in the fall was better than he expected, but off-season activity has been slower than he anticipated.


Tourists have booked about half the trips Hummer Taxis has made so far, and Spokane-Coeur dAlene residents have accounted for the other half. Perkins expected a larger portion of the companys business to come from tourist traffic, and he thinks that might happen as the business matures.


Hummer Taxis offers transportation services by the hour and scenic trips by the half-day, full day, or for multiple days. Generally speaking, the company covers an area within a 300-mile radius of Coeur dAlene, including North Idaho, Eastern Washington, Western Montana, and southeastern British Columbia. Rates for tours in the Hummer, which can hold up to five passengers in addition to Perkins, are $75 an hour and between $249 and $499 a day.


The company has done its share of chauffer-type businesstaking a group of friends around town on a young womans 21st birthday or providing rides to formal high school dancesbut its main focus is the guided tours.


It promotes itself as a custom-tour company, but offers some trips with set itineraries. They range from day trips to Old Mission State Park and Wallace, Idaho, which include a gold or silver mine tour, to week-long excursions around the International Selkirk Loop. That route starts in North Idaho, goes into British Columbia, and swings down into northeastern Washington.


Often, the yellow Hummer will make unplanned stops along the way. For example, while Perkins was en route to Sandpoint one day, a tourist mentioned having read about a submarine base on Lake Pend Oreille, so Perkins swung by the Farragut Naval Training Center, near Bayview, to give his passenger a glimpse of some subs sitting in the water.


The couple hatched the idea for the business during a short jaunt to Coeur dAlene from Spokane. After leaving Seattle, they initially lived in southwest Spokane, but had been residents for only a short time, he says. Perkins, a Pocatello, Idaho, native, says they chose to move here because they like it and he has family herehis mom lives in the Nine Mile Falls area and his sister lives in Post Falls.


Having breakfast on a Saturday morning in Coeur dAlene, they picked up a flier about the International Selkirk Loop from a stand filled with fliers about local sites and attractions. They looked at other fliers and realized that there werent a lot of tour-guide companies in the area. They decided to move forward with a tour business after concluding, If we dont do this, someone else will, Perkins says.


To run the tour business, Perkins says he and Gale felt they needed to become resident experts of the Inland Northwest. To familiarize themselves with the region, Perkins says they took 10 reconnaissance trips, ranging from a day-long excursion to Wallace to a four-day vacation in British Columbia. Perkins says they only recommend places, restaurants, and hotels that theyve patronized.


The Hummer component of the business evolved out of talks they had about their extensive travels. One of their best experiences, he says, was touring parts of Africa in Land Rovers. He says that was fun, but people coming to North Idaho likely wouldnt want to ride around in such austere vehicles. They decided Hummers would be a better fit.


Perkins says they wanted a Web-site domain name identical to the business name, but doubted the name would be available. When he found that hummertaxis.com wasnt taken yet, he took it as a sign. If thats not a good omen, I dont know what is, he says.


They moved to Coeur dAlene shortly thereafter in order to avoid a 70-mile roundtrip commute in the gas-guzzling rig whenever they took passengers out.


Being a small-business owner is a new experience for Perkins, who for the previous 20 years worked in information technology for huge companies. Before joining Microsoft, he worked for Countrywide Home Loans, in San Francisco, where he met Gale, who had spent most of her career at big corporations as well.


I still think this is insane, Perkins says. Five years ago, would I have said I could do this? No. Not at all. Too risky.


Contact Linn Parish at (509) 344-1266 or via e-mail at linnp@spokanejournal.com.