Most guests of Aspen and Snowmass Village come here expecting the usual fare: great skiing, exciting nightlife and excellent cuisine. But these amenities can be found at any first-class resort. There is one unusual bit of entertainment, though, that is not your typical fare and can only be found in Aspen, but it will cost you $125 for half an hour- a ride in the Ultimate Taxi. You may have ridden in taxis all over the world, but you’ve never ridden in a taxi like this. A cross between Bill Gates’s home office and Studio 54, this cab ride will take you to the outer limits of your imagination and return you safely to your hotel.

  The brainchild of cabbie-turned-entertainer Jon Barnes, the Ultimate Taxi defies description. Want a Pink Floyd concert complete with laser show? The Ultimate Taxi delivers. Can’t live without knowing what the Beatles sound like with a flute accompaniment? Jon will join in with the boys from Liverpool while driving with his elbows. Want immortality? Well, the Ultimate Taxi provides it, at least in the sense that your photograph will always reside at www.ultimatetaxi.com.

  The roof of the cab is decorated with black light material and fiber optic cable. The lasers are in your face bright and the colorful fool spews dry ice fog. Synth drums, a keyboard and MIDI flute make the show interactive. And lets not forget, Jon performs magic and sings with whatever body part is still available. “Safety first,” Jon likes to say as he maneuvers the streets pounding the drums with both hands. His sustain pedal for the piano is near the brake. “Don’t want to get those confused,” he dryly intones through the fog, lasers and disco ball spinning on the roof. What kind of twisted mind does it take to dream up such a concept? It all started more than 10 years ago with a portable organ and long nights of waiting for cab fares in Aspen.   “I was bored and started practicing between fares in an old keyboard,” says Jon. “I also had other devices in the car that people were interested in, and I thought, Why not make my cab the ultimate ride?”

  The music is but one aspect of what makes this taxi “ultimate.” It is actually one of the most high-tech computer terminals in the world- the world’s only Web site on wheels-with an experimental 1.5 megabyte wireless Internet network run in Aspen by Sun Microsystems. Jon can digitize your image in the back seat, post it to “taxicam” while you’re cruising the streets, and print it out in living color before you exit the cab.

  What’s more, Jon Web site receives more than 150,000 hits a year, so not only will you be treated to a concert, you will be a celebrity too. How many cab rides can promise that?