$5,000 cab ride: N.Y. to L.A. Six days. One 'shower.'

$5,000 cab ride takes two students from New York to Los Angeles. Why take a $5,000 cab ride? Idea hatched at a birthday party.

New York taxi cabs speed down Broadway near the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 42nd street in Times Square in this May 5, 2005, file photo. In April 2011, two friends paid a New York cabbie to make a $5,000 cab ride from New York to Los Angeles.

Kathy Willens/AP/File

April 24, 2011

Two friends who hired a New York City cab driver to drive them across the United States for $5,000 have arrived in Los Angeles.

John Belitsky and Dan Wuebben reached California on Friday after a six-day trip.

The cab made a pit stop in Las Vegas, where the friends won more than $2,000 at the craps and blackjack tables. They told the New York Post that they woke up cabbie Mohammed Alam "with a shower of $100 bills."

The pair told the newspaper the idea for the trip was hatched during a birthday party.

The two friends haven't yet said how they'll get back. The cab driver says a friend will help him make the drive home.