Well, That Happened

A small collection of recent experiences that I've had as a rideshare driver.

> The pick up comes for a suburban house. I get a married couple in their '50s, going to a live music venue / nuisance bar on the waterfront. They are going there on the behest of their daughter, who is there and thinks they will like the band. The passenger is a firefighter of 30-odd years, and we don't have an awful lot in common, but the gig requires a certain amount of codeswitch. 

As they are leaving the car, the wife says to the husband, "Don't leave your gun in the car." My man makes a d'oh like noise and moves on, and later tips.

I live in America. I've done rideshare off and on for five years. Over 19,000 people have been in the car. It's likely not the first time that someone in the car has been packing heat.

Just the first time I've, well, known.

> Another passenger, this one masking and not liking it. "So, are you a big vaccine guy?" With attitude. I give it a moment, and with a little bit of tender in the voice, reply, "Of course. My wife is high risk, and I love her very much. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I knew that I gave her a virus."

It had a couple of advantages. It took down the snotty tone. It changed what could have been an awkward conversation. And it was also true, which made it easy to say. (And it distracted her, I think, from a quick re-lowering of the windows.)

> I've been doing more later at night, because several of my clients in the main hustle have gone dark. This mostly involves working in Trenton, the state capital of New Jersey and a place that has, well, a great deal of challenges.

As I'm heading south on Route 1, I steer the car through a debris field from a recent accident. Police and fire haven't arrived yet, and I'm not exactly an EMT, so I just move on through it to get my fare to their destination. The next ping involves me heading back up Route 1 on the north side, about 10 minutes after the drop off. One of the cars involved is flipped over and burning so hard that I can feel the heat on the other side of the road. Still no police or fire, and no word about it on the news the next day. Things happen in Trenton.

> As the weather has been nice and many people in the area have decided to make a Polaris or dirt bike purchase, you often find yourself in the midst of road rallies. It's surprising how quickly this just becomes part of the scenery, honestly -- but you can imagine how it might not do much for the property values. (Also, the older I get, the more I want to spread the false meme that people who play their music very loudly for the benefit of others are, in fact, advertising their availability and interest in remarkable and unconventional sexual acts. Kind of like the old-school color of a man's handkerchief.)

> Drunk passengers on what they claim to be their first Uber ride (it's 2021; how is this possible?) ask several times if I ever have to deal with (profanity redacted). 

Thought, but not said, "Well, there's this ride..."

> Pick up from the Trenton train station. Single woman, with luggage, weeping and inconsolable. An aunt has been taken off life support, and the last train has left. There's nothing to do for her but take her back to her apartment... but at the risk of having things go worse, and because I can't help but try to help, I say something to the effect of the following.

My people, the Irish, have a saying -- that everyone passes twice. The first is mechanical, the second, the last time someone says your name. And that while I don't know my passenger or her aunt, the depth of her feeling for her loss tells me that she will be with her loved ones for a long time. In the cold light of day, it's trite, but late at night in an intimate setting, it helped.

I got her home and did two things that I haven't done since the start of the pandemic: carry her luggage and give her a hug. And feel just a little bit better about working a side gig late at night.

90% Of Rideshare Is... Rideshare

Obvious point: it's not always a dream to do this gig. Yesterday especially. But first, context.

Five years ago, my family took a trip with our kids.

It was to a place we've been to a bunch of times, Knoebels. That's a family-run amusement park in central Pennsylvania, and a pretty magical place. Free to enter, free to park, good and relatively cheap food, great roller coasters, manageable wait times for rides, everything done right. We've made a ton of memories there, from the good (tricking people into taking a drenching water ride by slow-playing the impact, waterslides at sunset, the smile machine that is the Phoenix roller coaster) to the bad (fleeing during a flash flood, having a kid come down with a stomach illness during their birthday). It's our place, and never more so than five years ago today.

As night fell and we rode a slow chair lift down the valley, the park under us, the kids in their own cart in front of us, it felt very poignant. They were 16 and 11 years old, closer to the end than the beginning for us as parents of dependent people. It felt like the future was going to be OK, and that we had done a good job as parents and providers.

When I was in that ride, I had (what felt like) stable full-time employment. There was a college fund and no credit card debt. I hadn't ever worked as a rideshare driver. While I worked as a consultant and supplemented my income as a sports blogger (back when that sort of thing was possible), my nights and weekends were mostly free. I could take the family out for the occasional trip. I complained about things because that's what humans do, but looking back, I really shouldn't have.

Fast forward five years and... well, things have changed.

The kids are now 21 and 16, and still home, lives delayed due to pandemic and other circumstances. I've had a number of adventures in my professional life, some great, some terrible, none particularly steady. Rideshare became a consistent source of income, sometimes to help pay down debts, sometimes to be the only income coming on. Our medical benefits have been at risk and intermittent, and while the end of the mortgage is in sight, the end of credit card debt is not. I've kept up with the bills for the most part, accomplished some things, kept the more important parts of my health, but man alive, I should have been more grateful back then.

Four and a half years ago, when a gig ended without warning, I started ridesharing when I realized it would pay more than unemployment, and sitting around waiting for the phone to ring was pointless when the phone was, well, right there in the car with me. I've now done slightly over 19K rides since, and over 8K hours in the app, likely 10K hours in the harness, what with breaks and drives home and so on. It's been done so many days and nights, it sometimes feels weird not to do the second shift. If I sit down to watch a game, some part of me is figuring out how much that's costing, in terms of lost income.

There's an old saying, mostly attributed to a person that doesn't need further notoriety, that 90% of life is just showing up. As a rideshare driver, that's especially true. If I drive when I'm happy and engaged with life, versus times when I'm struggling with concerns that have nothing to do with the gig, there is an impact. My tips go down, and my ratings might suffer a little. My body might hurt more, and I might not really want to be doing this today, but the numbers are the numbers, and what needs to be done will be done. Sacrifices will be made. A sad hour doing rideshare brings in more income than an hour not doing rideshare.

Yesterday, the 21-year-old took the 16-year-old and two of their friends with them to Knoebels. They masked up during a pandemic while being fully vaccinated; God knows what the other park participants did. I drove over 10 hours in the app to pay for that and other thigs, and will likely do something similar today, given how it's a holiday and the rest of the week is going to be heavily compromised with other duties. 

We all have stuff to bear, choices to make, and much to do. 

And while I would have rather been with my kids yesterday, the better (note: not easier) choice was to be with my passengers instead.

Showing up, indeed.