11/11/22

 It is amazing to me how many ride requests were coming in.  9 rides in 3 hours tonight and then when I went to transfer the money into my bank account, I noticed that somehow I had achieved a bonus of $110.  Nice little surprise.

Had a trivial nothingness first time occurrence of having to stop and wait for a train while on an Uber ride.

Very animated conversation with a self-proclaimed 40-year-old single working mom.  We laughed a lot about how much pain is involved on the morning after a night of hard partying.

All of the rides were in the Round Rock area with the last one being the first XL group of riders in a long time, that I dropped off on the east side of downtown Austin.  From there I turned off the app and headed home.

11/08/22

 Started at about 7:00pm and the requests were coming even before I had finished the previous ride.  It has been many months since I drove, and I was surprised that I ended up with 14 rides.

Those 14 rides included one young Latin lady, probably in her mid 20s that couldn't have weighed 75 pounds.  She had some nice smelling perfume, and it was very strong.  I couldn't imagine how she could have put on that much perfume for it to be so strong as she didn't have enough surface area to apply that much perfume to.  The first thing she asked me was if I spoke Spanish.  As always, my answer in Spanish was, "when it is convenient for me".  She laughed and requested that we communicate in Spanish.

One rider claimed to have a medical condition that caused him to talk like he was drunk and stumble around like he was drunk.  I suppose it is a possibility and I am sure the name of his condition is "Drunkashell"

05/27/22

There is just something about driving in bad traffic that just sucks the life out of me.  I am not doing anything physical and setting in a comfortable environment and it still feel like I have been fighting for my life.

I had intended on starting earlier in the morning to catch riders leaving the hotels and heading to the airport, but I decided to catch up on a couple of hours more of sleep.  Even after I turned on the app it was over an hour before I received a request.  As always, once they start, they don't stop and not a single one to the airport.  Thats what happens when you decide to sleep a little later although it was for a good reason.

The first ride was to Howard Station.  From there I was briefly bounced around in Pflugerville until a ride took me to South Austin and my first dose of the bullshit traffic for the day.  From there I ended up in Buda after a second dose of bullshit traffic.  Then a ride to the north for a third dose of bullshit traffic.  A ride that dropped off at Burnet and 183 was close enough for me to set home as the destination and start heading that way.  After dealing with the fourth dose of bullshit traffic, I was close enough to home that I went offline and called it a day, for now.

It was very encouraging hearing a young person speak with respect and confidence.  Especially when they talk about their success in the police academy and how they are working to join the National Guard.  No sir, yes sir sounded great when compared to all of the disrespect that we have been surrounded with for the past few years.  He and his friends were all going to leave Massachusetts and come to Austin Texas.  All his friends backed out and he did it anyway, alone.  He has taken control of his life and is achieving the things that he wants to take on in life.  This was the shortest ride of the day but was by far the most impactful.

8 rides, 10 people, 101 degrees, $97, 4 hours and 48 minutes, 2 curse words (from a rider), 1 seat adjustment, $20 pit stop for a "gas and go", 7 people in right middle seat, 3 people in left middle seat, 1 hydro flask tumble, and 1 gnat smashed and the windshield. 

05/10/22

 Add San Angelo Texas to the list of cities I have driven rideshare in.  Did one ride after an early diner and then another one later so I can get out of the hotel for a moment.  A whopping $12.00 but that was part of the plan.  I was attempting to get at least $30.00 on either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or all of them, to pay for gas back to Austin.  As it turned out, I simply did not have time to drive any more during this visit to San Angelo.

05/05/22

Lately I have been on the rider side of the Uber service.  In most cases it comes out in conversation with the driver, that I also drive.  Throughout the trip I am comparing the way other drivers do things to the way I do things.  From those comparisons I can decide whether or not I want to integrate something I experienced into the way I do things.  Also, I can make sure I don't do the things that I experience that I don't like.  Not to focus on the negative but here are some things that have irritated me.

- The air freshener in the vehicle that smells like a urinal block in the men's restroom.

- A slow driver that complains about how fast everyone is driving.  The speed limit was 65 and this guy never made it above 60.  Sure, there is pay to the driver for the amount of time that a trip takes but it is not worth getting run over by everyone else that is driving at least the speed limit.

- Comments making fun at someone's luggage.  "That must be your wife's suitcase".  (WTF and no tip for you)

- This is a big one - A driver that sends a message asking if I can cancel the ride shortly after I accepted it, without any reason.  I know the reason.  They are running Uber and Lyft at the same time and received a request for a ride on the other platform that they want to take instead of mine.  This one really gets me riled up.  First of all, I have always made myself available to 1 service, I accept all rides that come in unless I am in a tense moment navigating traffic, and I represent that service well.  In my case it has always been Uber.  Secondly, a driver should never ask the rider to cancel the ride.  The driver is attempting to hide their actions from Uber by canceling the ride and they have a chance of the rider being charged a cancelation fee that would go to driver.  I have no way of knowing why this particular driver requested me to cancel the ride but by that driver not providing a reason why, the situation is suspicious.

At first, I answered the message asking if I could cancel the ride with "No".  "But you can".  However, my phone battery was almost dead, and it kept losing connection so I went ahead and canceled the ride so I could get home.  If a rideshare driver wants to cancel a ride, they can cancel the ride themselves.  A good driver would also send a message to the rider as to why they were canceling the ride before they did so.  

03/10/2022

Add Corpus Christi to the list of cities that I have driven rideshare in.  I didn't have much time so I only did 1 ride in the vacinity of where I was working.

The very moment I went online, a request came in.  It ended up being  student at a nearby high school.  I suspected he was an Uber rookie when he sat in the front seat and he was not wearing a mask.  These are both COVID related requirements that he would have known.  I didn't push the issue as I had my mask on.

I greeted him in English and he looked at me with a confused look.  He then said, in what sounded like perfect English, "I only speak Spanish".  Soooo, I repeated my greeting to him in Spanish.  He looked at me with the same confused look again.  I smiled and began the trip.  As we arrived at tje drop off location, he asked in Spanish if everything was good.  I didnt undetstand why he was asking me that and then he showed me a text message on his phone.  The message stated "ya esta pagado" which says in English, "it is already paid." Someone else had ordered the ride for him.  I then knew for sure he was an Uber rookie as he was not familiar with how the payment system worked.

All was well.  I went offline and drove back the hotel I was working at.

01/27/22

Add Waco and Temple to the list of cities where I have driven Uber.  Helped the lady load and then unload her laundry.  Picked up a nice elderly man from one rest home and took him to another.  Making the rounds I guess.

It struck me as both odd and brilliant that someone would build a funeral home right behind a rest home.  

01/07/2022

I have noticed that most times it takes a while to get the first request.  Then once the first one hits, they become almost continuous.  I started out with the errand of mailing a box that was already ready to go.  I had almost made it to the post office when the first request came in.  It took 4 rides before I finally made it by the Post Office.

All of the rides ended up being in the Cedar Park, Leander, North Austin area spanning from as for south as the Domain and as far north as Liberty Hill.  There have been very few times where this has happened.  It is more common to take someone downtown and then never escape.  I had 2 requests in Liberty Hill which was a first.  

Another first was a person's name that I had never heard before.  

Did about 4 hours of driving today.  Trips were shorter and it took a little longer to get the money I wanted for the day.

Had a family from Minnesota that said it was -20 degrees when they left this morning.  I stated that our 38-degree weather today was probably a heatwave for them.  This was the only group that was very talkative.  None of the other riders throughout the afternoon had much to say.

As I walked into the house, I had a random thought about how a caveman would go out during the day with the goal of bringing home dinner.  Upon his return he would step into his cave and announce to his significant other, Honey, I'm home! but in a grunting kind of caveman language.  He would hold up a malnourished, roughed-up, chicken-looking thing that he claimed to have killed with his club, but that in reality was already almost dead anyway, and he would present it as a trophy that the great hairy caveman had overpowered and brought home for dinner.  In my case, I step in the door after being "out there on the hunt", and say, "babe I am home" in English, hold up my smart phone to celebrate the "victorious hunt" and to signify the electronic equivalent of money that I can transfer electronically to my bank account, and we can go have dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse.  Quite the contrast and definitely evolutionary.

01/02/2022

 I knew I had missed adding another round of rides between Austin and San Antonio to this journal but apparently, I missed 2.  I can only assume that they were uneventful although they totaled to over $200 worth of uneventfulness.

Tonight, however, things were a little more interesting even though it was only for about 2 hours and 50 minutes.

I was temporarily bummed out when a rider received a call from a friend informing him that his young son had been hit by a car while riding his bicycle.  The boy was in the hospital and was unconscious.  His father did not know whether he was going to live or not.  I said a prayer for the child and hope that he pulls through.

Dropped off at several restaurants.  It made me hungry and thus made me cave in easier when my wife called and told me to come home so she could make me a sandwich.  Hooters, Higher Ground, 24 Diner, Eddie V's, Fogo de Chao.

I picked up a lady with a couple of young boys who I assume were her sons, or at least one of them was.  I dropped them off at Hooters.  Wish my mom would have taken me to eat at a place lake that when I was 12 years old.  Oh, wait.  There were no places like that when I was 12 years old and certainly not in the area where I grew up.  And my mom was anti-anything that was even remotely sexual.  It kind of makes me wonder how in the fuck I was conceived.

Haven't had many trips downtown since I started messing around with this again.  Tonight was a little different.  Made the trip from Jollyville to downtown and the trip took us up East 6th Street.  There was not very much going on there at all.  Compared to Sunday nights in the past, it was beyond sad.  The rider stated that many of the bars were bankrupt and that there had been a lot of changing of ownership.  He also said there has been talk of completely blocking off the street and making it pedestrian only.  He sounded like a person who was "in-the-know" but I have no way of verifying that.  After dropping the rider off I continued down West 6th Street and it was much more impressive.  It had a very good vibe in the air.

I had engaged in a good conversation about restaurants with the gentleman that was going to Fogo de Chao.  We agreed that there are lots of good restaurants in Austin and he stated it was because we all like that "hippie shit" that is everywhere here.  He also told a story of a $150 steak that a certain restaurant serves that is in no way worth $150.  He was on a first date with a lady, and she commented about the $150 steak.  He told her that it was not worth that price and guess what she did anyway?  I laughed and he stopped me saying that "wait, there is more".  He said that she only ate 3 bites of the steak.  At the end of the date, she said that she had fun and that they should go out some more.  He told her "NO" which offended her.  He then elaborated as to what one could expect in the future from a lady who only ate 3 bites of a $150 steak.  I must say that he made a good point as he presented his case to me.  Predicting the future from a $150 steak had never crossed my mind.

I had told my wife that I was only going to accept one more ride, but I did 2.  I am glad I did because the last one was a home run from the Hilton downtown out to some apartments behind Bass Pro Shops near the outlet mall in Round Rock.  It was the longest trip of the evening.

Stats: 

- 2 hours and 50 minutes driving

- 45 miles

- 7 trips

- $85.00 before late tips

- 5 Restaurants

- 2 Hotels

- 11 people

- 2 pieces of large luggage

- 1 four-letter word (wow, that has to be some kind of record)