Late one night I accepted an out of town pickup for a rider at a beach hotel who turned out to be one giant pain in the ass. It was bad from the get go when the pickup point was the wrong hotel causing some delay. This guy was in a bit of a hurry wanting to go to a grocery store and come back to the hotel. Seeing how it was after 1:00am I told him I didn’t think there was much chance of finding anything open. He said he’d settle for a liquor store. I suggested he do a search on his phone and give me directions. He finds one, we get there, its closed. All this time I’m having to ignore pings Uber is sending me because I have no idea how long I will be with this guy. I’m loosing money. He’s getting a bit more agitated. I point out this isn’t the big city (he’s from Seattle, WA) and stuff doesn’t stay open all night, when I thought of a grocery chain that is open 24hrs but didn’t know of one near by. He searches and finds one announcing we need to haul ass to get there before 2:00am when liqueur sales stops. Off we go at substantially illegal speeds, running stop signs, etc, through the empty streets, hoping like hell I don’t attract the attention of a cop. I try to be accommodating. We get there with a couple minutes to spare and he gets his booze and snacks.

In conversation heading back to his hotel it comes out he’s a cop and ex Marine which explains why he didn’t take kindly to my question authority world views. We covered anti-smoking, Fascism, and gun control. It got somewhat tense by the time we got back. As we sat for a few minutes disagreeing on nearly everything, I couldn’t help but get in a parting shot as he got out. I said I think I know why cops shoot unarmed people (mostly people of color) that isn’t being talked about. Not just racism but fear with the insane number of guns in America. He said he wasn’t afraid. I said it wasn’t about him or me but what is going on in the streets of this country. At least he hadn’t been drinking yet. Oh wait, probably he had and ran out.