10/30/18

Not quite the $100 plus night that I experienced last Monday.  Downtown was dead but I did get 1 rider and that was enough to "pay for the gas" to get home.

10/27/18

I hear some of the things that these, not yet mature guys say, and remember some of the things that I said when I was that age.  All I can think of to say is that "guys can say some really stupid shit".  "Bros before Hos" with Hos being a reference to all females and the overall reference being that your buddies have priority over girlfriends or women.  There was a female in the group that didn't care a whole lot for what they were saying.  She said something that was quite profound.  "When will people realize that we are all alike and start focusing on personalities?"

Damn dogs shed all over everywhere.  I was nice and told the riders that it was okay that their dogs ride in the vehicle.  I like dogs but I don't like dog hair all over the place.

The first request came in at 7:10pm and it was non-stop after that until a stopped at about 1:45am.

10/25/18

Let's just call this "Ladies Night".  All riders were female and all of the conversations were great.

The first rider was from Puerto Rico.  She had a beautiful accent as she spoke perfect English.  Then she practically yelled out, oh my God, scaring the crap out of me, and then saying that this was the most beautiful sunset she had ever seen.  I turned and looked and indeed it was beautiful.  The most beautiful I had ever seen also.  As I dropped her off I stated to her that I was glad we got to share that sunset together.  She laughed and said, me too. 

The profound element to this experience is the following.  We will never see each other again but we will remember this moment for the rest of our lives.  A permanent beautiful memory with a complete stranger that only a few moments earlier we had never seen before in our lives.

But there is more.  The last ride of the night found myself and the rider driving straight into a huge and rising almost full moon.  Moments later we were treated to this same moon as a backdrop to a lake with the reflection off of the water being breathtaking.

Incredible evening of ridesharing.  Setting sun, rising moon and beautiful ladies to talk to.

10/22/18

Mondays can be incredible.  It was non-stop for 4 hours.  17 trips.

10/20/18

That guy was damn weird.

Almost made it to Liberty Hill.

Why is Rock Rose blocked off?  Let's pull around the corner.  That "wanna be cop" has really got the wanna turned on.

All of these guys voices sound the same.

This lady has said "fuck", in one form another, 53 times in 13.43 minutes.  She didn't look like someone who would use that word so frequently.

I felt very uneasy tonight for some reason.  Somehow I managed to make it through downtown and the campus on i35 without getting a ride.  As I got closer to home I shut off the app and stopped at Whataburger for some taquitos.

10/18/18

I received an XL request as I pulled out of the parking garage at work.  As I made the final turn to arrive at the address, I saw a large number of guys and 1 lady.  She made a hand signal to acknowledge my arrival and after a brief moment her and a group of the guys started walking my way.  I immediately noticed that the guys were carrying on as if they were drunk.  The lady got in on the passenger side as the others loaded up in the seats behind us.  They weren't drunk, they were plowed and it was only 8:30pm.

She was beautiful.  The first thing she said was to put on some music because they were going to be loud. She stated that she was the "sponsor" of these guys and it was a bachelor party.  I asked what a sponsors role is at bachelor party and she laughed as she told the story as to why she was there.  The plastered guys are carrying on this whole time.  She had been living out of town for several years and was in town  visiting.  All of these guys were her classmates at school and she had found out about the bachelor party upon her arrival. She decided to crash it and ended up having to take care of all of her drunk friends.

One of the guys yelled up, "hey ×××××× are you going to invite your friends over?  Are they hot?"  She answered, "let's suppose that I do, what will ya'll do?" Three or four answers came forward all at once. "Make out", "talk", and one yelled out "Fuck!"  She looked at me and said, "you see what I am dealing with" and then said to the guys, "let's suppose that I will not be inviting them over".

We arrived at our destination a short distance away and they begin to get out.  She turned to me and thanked me to which I graciously responded to.  She may possibly be one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.  She was in complete control of this crew and herself the whole time.  Amazing.

One of the guys apparently forgot how he got in the vehicle and was trying to get out by releasing the seat.    Either him or one of the others had a beer that I did not see and as I was reaching back trying to fix the seat, I noticed that beer had been spilled in the seat.  "Idiots".  I pulled up the street and luckily had some left over napkins from Subway and was able to clean it up without any residual smell.

10/17/18

I stopped by Uber and picked up my Beacon yesterday.  Today was the first opportunity to try it out and it works good.

Always a little irritating when there is a ride request at a spot that you had just driven by.  I was over 6 miles away and ended up going back the same route that I had just taken.  I could not figure out why the app had reached out that far but then I remembered the Uber XL will do that.

Toughest time ever at getting to a pick up spot in the university.

Speaking of the university, I got stuck in that area before I was finally able to get out with the drop off point of the above mentioned rider.

10/15/18

Cold, rainy and at times, windy Monday night.  Yesterday it was 94 degrees and today 44 degrees.  From the moment I turned on the app it was busy.  I thought I was the only one doing rides downtown until I saw a Lyft driver go by. 

I had an interesting chain of pickups and dropoffs.  Took a couple to Uchi, dropped them off  picked up another couple at Uchi.  Dropped them off at Halcyon and picked up two guys at Halcyon.  Dropped off fhe two guys on Davis street near the Van Zandt.  Picked up a couple on Davis street at the Van Zandt and took them to Manuel's.

Made $100 for 3 hours work and 13 rides.

10/12/18

Friday and I took off work today as I usually do on the second Friday of each month.  I decided to see how the morning works for Uber and was shocked to see how high the demand was in the mornings.  It is just a large and maybe more than the evenings.

The first riders of the day went to an office complex in what I call the Riata area.  Interestingly enough, the last rider of the day was picked up from this same complex.  I knew that I would have at least one run to the airport and sure enough I picked up at the Aloft hotel near home and went to the airport.  Traffic sucked and I should have stuck with where the navigation told me to go and it wasn't 183 all the way which is what I thought would be better and was not.

Of course once I dropped off at the airport, I was within range of downtown activity and begin to get little short rides around the outskirts of downtown.  I took a long lunch break and spent it with a close friend downtown.  After that, the ACL festival goers took over.  Multiple rides with 8 of us in the vehicle and the last big group was having a large time that was a blast.  Somewhere out there are a couple of videos of the entire group, driver included, belting out Don't Stop Believing right on tune and in unison.  We were stuck in such bad traffic that I was having to decline additional ride requests coming in.  We finally looped around from 6th street to 5th street and they decided to walk from the Mean Eyed Cat to Austin High School and on to Zilker Park.  Before the loud music and singing took over, one of the riders was talking about a radio station that had announced that a specific day had been designated as "coming out day" for gays.  He added that this was completely ridiculous as gays do not come out when they are told to.  They will come out when it is right for them.  I thought to myself how this makes sense.  I related it to my dislike for others signing me up or making me volunteer for groups or events.  I will volunteer me and my time to the groups or events that are right for me.

I went offline and headed to the north to get in a higher paying area on the map which was lit up with red everywhere except where I was.  I started up Mopac but rush hour traffic was on and I immediately exited onto Enfield and went up to cut across on Exposition.  The high demand zone kept shrinking away from me and I never really caught it so I decided to go back online with my home address activated.  Even with those restrictions placed on myself I immediately received a ride request.  I picked her up and dropped her off near Mopac and Parmer and received another request.

This request would end up being the final one for the day at the very complex where the day had started at 7:30am.  The gentleman came out and I noticed he had a severe limp.  We immediately struck up a conversation that eventually gravitated towards the ACL music festival.  He mentioned that he had a disability and then told me about his last visit to the festival.  He told about how he was interrogated by the police at the entrance to the festival about what his disability was.  He had already gone through the "vetting" process to obtain the specific wristband but yet was being questioned by the policeman.  When the event was over, he had asked the event staff help is there was a way someone could help him get to the ride-share pick up point that was a long way from the event.  He said that they looked at each other and had no idea of what could be done, while droves of event staff in golf carts were buzzing back and forth.  It was a very enlightening conversation from an informed perspective of the ADA subject matter.  I really enjoyed to short moment we spent talking together.

I turned and looked in the back and there was a butt-load of cat hair in the floor mats.  "Where in the hell did all of that come from?"  I am sure it had to be someone in that last big group but that much stuck to someone should have been noticeable.  I have seen full grown mountain lions that did not have that much hair on them.  I stopped to get gas and cleaned most of it out.  It was flying everywhere when I swept it outside.  It reminded me of that scene in one of the American Pie movies.

10/06/18

7:30p to 3:45a     A personal record of 20 rides and over $240.

The night finally got started with a trip form nearby up to Georgetown.  Had a nice conversation about the UFC and WWF.  I dropped him off and wondered if I would be able to get a rider that was going a little bit further south.  Sure enough, picked up another one at the Cinemark at the Round Rock Premium Outlets and made my way back down 35.

Took a couple to Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, left, and immediately had a request to pick someone up from the same place.  The next ride is the one that took me downtown.

The Austin City Limits music festival had ended for the day and traffic was interesting.

Picked up a gentleman and then another ride came in.  I realized that he was a Pool Rider and I had not noticed.  He started groaning and complaining about having to go pick up someone else.  He offered to give me a good tip if I would just swing by his destination.  Honestly, I didn't care about the additional tip.  I just wanted his whiny complaining ass out of my vehicle.  Dropped his ass off at the Fairmont Hotel and headed out for the 2nd Pool group.  It was a young male and female and the moment I let the male know that we had another Uber Pool pick up, he started cursing and carrying on like a brat.  Why do these people select Uber Pool and then cry like babies when the y have to share a ride.

Pulled around to make a pick up at the Casa Chapala Mexican Restaurant.  There was some great music playing in the outside seating section and these two people dancing and having a great time near the front door.  Turns out these were my riders.

The last leg of the above mentioned Pool riders were a couple of Spanish speaking ladies that had been to the music festival.  They had noticed on my Uber profile that I spoke Spanish and we talked about how I had learned Spanish until we made it back to their hotel.

It was late and I turned off the app to go home.  Then I remembered the address feature and decided to turn it back on with my home address as the direction I wanted to pick up riders for.  Couldn't hurt anything and maybe I will get lucky.  And that I did.  Picked up a rider on E. 6th street and he was headed up almost all the way to the area where I live.  Perfect way to have the night end.

10/05/18

Well, the planned $200 night didn't happen.  It was later then usual when the first ride request came in and that was actually an indication of the night ahead.  Stopped at a little after 11:00pm with a whopping $30 bucks.  But that's okay as I have some of the best stories of them all.

Had a vehicle full of riders that I picked up at Jardin Corona in Cedar Park.  I believe that most of them were from England.  At one point one of the riders was observing the United States flag that was at a business near the intersection of 183 and 1431.  He commented how beautiful it was and how patriotic Americans were.  He went on to say that this is not found in England any more and that many British look to Trump as an admirable nationalist.

The final request of the night took me 15 miles to the west of Cedar Park on 1431, and down a dirt road called Adrian Way.  I grew up on dirt roads and had no issue diving in and extracting the riders from the location that was over a mile into the darkness.  Just as I was about to arrive at the destination, the rider cancelled.  I was pissed but okay, I will get the cancellation fee and maybe a long pick up fee.  I begin to have thoughts about why I had been lured down into this place only to have the rider cancel.  I immediately turned around and got the hell out of there.  Once back on the pavement, I stopped and logged my compliant with Uber.  In true Uber supporting style, there was a cancellation fee added to my account when I checked the app the following morning.

This wasn't the last ride but I saved it for the last section of this post.  I received a request immediately upon dropping a rider off at the shopping center in the southwest corner of Lakeline and Cypress Creek.  The app suggested that I needed to exit the shopping center and go all the way around the block to get to the location.  As I pulled out of the parking lot I realized that the pick up spot was near the same area that I had just left, so I modified my course.  As I pulled up to the location a text arrived from the rider.  "play flogging molly and Ill add 5 to your tip".  It seemed somewhat cryptic and I opted to the thought that the rider was suggesting that I should find something to do for a moment while they finished and came to the vehicle.  I responded that all was good and to take your time.  On a hunch, I thought I would turn on Spotify and see if there was such a thing as flogging molly.  Sure enough, there was a band named Flogging Molly.  I turned it on to see how their music was.  Then a lady come out of the bar and got into the vehicle.  "My husband is messing around and will be right.... OH MY GOD, THAT IS FLOGGING MOLLY!"  That is what we were listening to inside!  The husband shows up and I am giving him a thumbs up as he reaches for the vehicle door.  His wife is completely stoked and is yelling how great it is that I had Flogging Molly playing and it became obvious to me that he had not told her that he had suggested it to me.  In the conversation on the way to drop them off, it became apparent to me that this musical group shared a deep connection with this husband and wife.  Especially the wife.  She now believes that the Uber driver / me, is part of some kind of divine connection or purpose.  We arrived at their home and she went inside to get tip money as she did not understand the app.  The husband thanked me over and over about how that experience had worked out.  I was impressed by the couple.  It was obvious that they love each other and are great together.  And I am now the Divine Uber Driver.  At least for them.            Most awesome trip to date.

09/29/18

I can confirm that ladies do refer to men with nicknames.  In a previous post (10/26/16) I had overheard 2 ladies talking about how they use nicknames for men to identify them amongst each other.  Tonight I had a different group of ladies that were doing that.  This confirms that the phenomenon does occur.

Personal record of 19 rides tonight and once again easily broke the $200 barrier.  Big rally at Auditorium Shores for "Beto" in his Senatorial election efforts, in fact the first 3 rides were Beto related.

It didn't feel like 19 rides and before I knew it, it was after 2:00am.  Several Uber Pool riders and they actually left tips.  Pool riders usually don't leave tips.

9/24/18

Two riders were talking about their cell phone service and why it was or wasn't doing what they wanted it to do.  They were using all of the technical jargon that is associated with this technology and I begin thinking about how none of this existed only a few short years ago.