So a while back I found myself in need of Uber. It irritated the fuck out of me because my car was in the body shop at the time. I didn't want to download the app, but I had no choice. I tried to get Uber, but for some reason the are-you-a-robot question kept deciding that yes, I am indeed a robot. It's one of those things where you're supposed to select every square that has stoplights in it. Or buses. Or boats. Whatever it was, I kept failing it, and I knew for a fact that I was getting them right. There were no ambiguous squares like you usually get.
Fuck Uber. I signed up for Lyft instead, and they're absolutely stellar. They also have some interesting drivers. I usually appreciate silence during such a ride, but the talkative guys have been kind of weird and had a lot of experiences that I wouldn't have expected.
One guy, for example, was born in Jamaica but had lived in Europe for a while before moving out to the Pacific Northwest before moving to little ol' Elmhurst to be a State Farm rep. Kind of an odd job for someone who has traveled the world that much, but it seemed to make him happy. He actually lived a few blocks from my work and told me I was the first ride he'd ever delivered to his own neighborhood. Small world.
Another guy talked to me about workouts. This was back when I could still exercise, and I was describing what I usually did. He told me this crazy story about how he would do animal moves for his own workout. He'd lunge like a cougar, for example. I thought he was out of his mind, but the very next day, as I was watching the news, they did a piece on Chris Hemsworth's workouts, and holy shit, he was doing the exact same thing this Lyft driver was talking about.
Another guy talked about his brushes with the law. We were approaching a turn on Palmer in Elmhurst where it was prohibited to turn left between 3-6. It was 5:35, and he started to make that turn. I advised him that cops keep a close watch on this part of town because almost everyone ignored the traffic sign. He was fine with that. And then we got pulled over. The cop eventually let him off with a warning, and as we drove away he said, "It always makes me nervous when they look at my license. I'm Mexican, and so is my name. If they can get past that, they look back up at my face. I can pass for white, so they don't try to deport me or anything."
And then there was the time I legitimately thought I was being kidnapped. This was when my bad foot was still broken, and I had every expectation that it would heal. I needed a ride from my office to the train station, and this little old lady picked me up. She didn't say a word to me the whole time, which I usually appreciated, but when she started deviating from the usual route I started wondering. Well, maybe she knows a way that's less congested. But then we kept going north, away from the train station. And she didn't show any signs of turning back toward my destination. She didn't look like much, and I thought I could take her in a fight if necessary. I'd already missed my train and the one after that, so I finally asked where she was going. She pointed vaguely at her phone. I had to give her directions so I could at least get home in time to eat and sleep before getting up to do it all over again. I finally got home, but wow. You hear horror stories about these situations, but you never think it will happen to you.
You know. Like Letters to Penthouse.
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