I picked up three people from the bar scene downtown. The guy is holding up one very drunk girl helping her get in the back seat. The other girl gets in up front. Shortly after we get under way I mention the little white plastic bags in the seat back pockets and my only rule is if they use one please keep it.

The girl in the front seems fine and we chat a bit when she calmly asks me to pull over and stop. She gets out and shortly, like thirty seconds, gets back in. No drama. I’m like “Wow that’s impressive!”. She says she listens to her body and if she needs to puke she just does it. How cool is that. The lessen here is don’t be in denial if you know you’ve had too much to drink and you start to feel nauseous. If you think you might puke you probable will and the longer you wait the more uncontrolled it will be. And you could get charged to clean up my car.

The really drunk girl in back makes it to the destination fine except the guy had to practically drag her out of the car.

Went to pick up a college girl at a sorority event. She was standing alone between cars parked out front. She gets in the back seat and immediately lays down. I asked is everything ok. She says she’s hiding. I’m thinking this is getting interesting already. She says she’s hiding from everybody. Okaaaay.

As we drive away she sits up and explains she found out the day before that her boy friend had slept with one of the sorority girls and the talk was getting around at the event. A friend there suggested she just leave so she did.

What impressed me is she did not seem at all upset. No obvious anger or emotion. Probably saving it up for when she confronted him. I said it sounded like she needed to have a talk with him. She said she was actually looking forward to doing that and telling him what an asshole he is. I think she had it under control.

I picked up a couple at a bar last night that went somewhat oddly. The woman appeared very drunk as they got into the backseat. I see there is no destination set so I ask where to. He names a hotel near by. As I’m driving he is asking her where she’s staying. She’s not answering and he keeps asking. Hmm… Then he’s on his phone explaning he’s coming right back and he just wants to get her to a safe place to rest. He repeats this maybe a dozen times becoming increasingly emphatic. It appears to me that whoever he’s talking to doesn’t believe him. I too am wondering what this guy is up to.

As we near the hotel he seems to see how this all looks. He explains he just met the woman, she’s alone and from out of town. He says he’s a fireman and knows the woman is too drunk to be left alone. She still has not uttered a word. When we get to the hotel he asks if I would wait a few minutes and take him back to the bar. At this point I’m pretty convinced he’s on the level so I agree. I could use a break anyway.

I takes some coaxing for him to get her out of the car and she’s still not saying anything. I couldn’t judge her mood but she was probably scared and confused being that drunk around strangers. He comes back a few minutes later and I ask is everything ok now. He says she went into the hotel rest room and won’t come out but the hotel manager agreed to deal with it. As I’m driving him back to his fireman buddies at the bar he tells me he’s married and wouldn’t take advantage of a woman in that condition. He thanks me for being understanding and I tell him I’m glad to help one of the good guys.

I’ve been slacking. As the previous post shows I’ve had some stories I’ve been meaning to write. But I heard about something from a rider yesterday that needs to be told.

I’ve given this guy a ride home from work several times so we’ve gotten acquainted. Nice guy. Yesterday he was noticeably upset about an Uber ride he had earlier in the day. He’s from India here to work for a local software company on a temporary contract. He had called for a ride to move his belongings packed in luggage to a new residence. A woman driver arrived to pick him up. He loaded his stuff into her car and before he could get in she just drove off leaving him standing there.

He told me how afraid he was at that moment as everything he owned including his passport disappeared as that car drove away. I asked why he thought she had done that. He didn’t know. He reported his stuff stolen to the police and luckily they later found the luggage on the side of the road. Nothing was apparently missing.

So why did this woman drive off with this man’s belongings in her car? He didn’t know but I think I know. As a middle eastern man he was racially profiled buy the woman. She just wasn’t going to let him in her car and probably panicked. This incident has all of the appearance of an example of the growing racial and ethnic hatred in some segments of American society that is being whipped up by right wing politics from the White House to the streets of the “happiest city in America”.

 

Gravity Strikes

To the Rescue

Its About the Money

I drive mostly at night. My routine is to keep driving until coffee runs out or I stop getting rides. If I get home before another ping I logoff and call it a night. As you might expect, the later it gets the more interesting it gets.

I arrive at a house in a dark quiet neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. Shortly a group of young people walk toward the car. I count five, four girls and a guy. I can only take four because of four available seat belts. Its the law. As they open the doors and start to pile in I inform them of this. The guy and three of the girls are already in the car. The fourth girl is obviously quite drunk and very angry standing outside shouting “I’m not getting in the car with him!”. I figure problem solved but the girls in the car are shouting at her to get in. I repeat the seat belt rule and the guy says he’ll stay behind and gets out. As he walks away the drunk girl follows him. The girls in the car keep shouting for her to get in. I’m sure the neighbors are loving this. One of the girls says “I’m gonna kill her.” Another says lets just go. I don’t need to hear that twice so I put the car in gear and we’re off.

Clearly that drunk girl needs to get home but at least she’s not alone even if it is with the guy she hates. There’s only so much a driver can do. End of story. Well, not so much. This is where things get a bit fuzzy so bear with me. Girl in the car makes or gets a phone call. Talks to the guy. The drunk girl has wandered off into the night. The three girls in the car implore me to go back and get her. The ride fee is all time and distance so what the hell. None of the three know exactly where the house is so we circle the neighborhood for a bit and when we find it of course the drunk girl is not there. One of the girls calls her and she doesn’t know where she is. I told you it wasn’t the end of the story.

We continued to roam the neighborhood. It was like what another rider said that I told this story to, “Like looking for a drunken needle in a haystack”.  Finally found her sitting on the curb a short distance away. With some encouragement she finally gets in and I am hoping that’s the end of the drama. Nope. She just keeps going on with the loud profane drunken rant. Apparently she’s angry about being rejected. As you can imagine its a real downer in the car. I can tolerate just about anything as long as there is no puking involved. I say “Some one should record this”. After a moment of silence the girl in the front seat turns to me with a smile holding up her phone and says someone is now. Giggling ensues. I suggest they play the recording for her tomorrow and maybe blackmail her by threatening to play it for her mother. I like laughter in my car.

We get to their destination, they thank me and we say good night. I end the ride on my phone and drive down the street a bit before making a U turn. Passing back by the house I see the girls still huddled around the front door. I remember them talking about how they were going to get in the house. One assured the others she could break a window if need be. They’ll be fine.

Picked up four college girls who were out on the town and needed a ride home. From the start the talk was light and fun. Don’t recall what turned it serious. Probably me going on about my philosophy of pessimism. The discussion turned to the poor state of this country’s social and political discourse, how people just look out for themselves, what made people believe what they do, and how dark the future looks. There was general agreement that everyone needs to not be afraid to speak their mind and do it in a civil and respectful way.

Arriving at their destination I found myself apologizing for how much my  generation was screwing up the world and the challenges their generation will have. As we said good night one of the girls in the back seat leaned forward before she got out and with a calm and serious tone said, “We got this”. I can’t describe how good that made me feel.

Here’s two stories of two rides. Seems kinda strange they happened on the same night.

Foot in Mouth

I arrive for a pickup and a young couple approach the car. I note the name on the rider account is a woman but the woman turns and walks away as the guy gets in the car. I check with him to make sure the rider account is correct as I always do. He says it’s his girl friend’s account and he just needs a ride home. Not an unusual situation but without too much thought I say “That’s one way to get rid of you”. No laugh. I can be such a dick some times.

With no hesitation he tells me he finally got up the nerve to tell her he loves her, and she said she loves him too. I quickly congratulated him hoping to make up for the earlier crack. He said he felt so good it was like being high. I said something like love being like a drug. There I go again trying to be clever.

I dropped him off and congratulated him again and drove off thinking what a lucky guy he is, for now.

The Other side of the Coin

On the same night as the previous ride, it was getting late when I picked up a guy who from the get go was not a happy camper. He wanted to go a short distance to the 7-Eleven to get a pack of cigarettes and come back. He just needed to get out of the house. Shit, not gonna make much on this one.

After some silence he proceeds to gradually relate how his brother who he’s helping out by letting him move in is moving in on his girl friend. Wow, now that’s a downer! He had gone through a rough divorce awhile back and now found a woman he felt very connected to. He was hurting. I tried to be sympathetic by asking things like is his brother older or younger and was he surprised by his behavior. He said it was unexpected and he was very hurt and angry.

I was thinking about what the deal was with the woman. He had said nothing about her specifically . As we got back to his house I tried to come up with something helpful. All I had was the woman gets to choose.

Its late on a Tuesday night and business is slowing down early when I get one of those ride requests 17 minutes away. Not usually a good deal making no money to the pickup for a short ride and then deadhead home. I’ll admit my hero complex sometimes kicks in when I see that someone likely needs a ride home late at night.

I could tell when she walked around the front of the car this was not going to be a fun ride. After confirming where she needed to go it looked like I was right but as luck would have it the drop off was hear home so at least I’d get paid for my return trip.

She was depressed and obviously high. Her band had met to discuss braking up. Something about the band leader’s mentor had died. So not a happy evening for her. We talked about music and music radio stations. I switch to a station she liked and she asked me to turn it up. She closed her eyes and we just listened as the miles slipped by. When we got to her destination I suggested a great internet music station, Radio Paradise. She said she’d try it and shook my hand which was surprisingly large and firm. She thanked me and we said good night. It was a good way to end my evening.

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.