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.
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