Uber/Lyft escapades

[SneakyDave]

I'll document some good stories here of riders I've had.

 

One night driving around, I got a call from a group of friends on a sailboat, stranded on a lake, wanting a drive home. Luckily they could get to the dock on the sailboat in complete darkness for me to pick them up, but it was quite an adventure nonetheless.

 

We have a triple A baseball team here for the KC Royals, and I live near the hotel where a lot of the visiting team plays. I've driven around a few big leaguers, transitioning in the minor leagues, between the hotel and the stadium. I don't pay much attention who they are because I don't follow very much baseball.

 

I had an old drunk farmer almost creamed my car at a casino one night, while driving a couple there. He was flying down the parking lot and didn't see my car, coming within a foot of t-boning me. He jumped out of his truck in coveralls, screaming about my driving ability, and immediately threw up all over himself. I tried to avoid him, but he followed me out of the casino and onto the interstate. I was more scared for the out of town riders I had, than for myself, because they didn't want to be dropped off anywhere where the drunk farmer could confront them. I called 911 to report him, but he gave up following me around for a while.

[Sheldon]

Look forward to reading these Dave!

[SneakyDave]

Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting today. It's kind of a big deal in town with a lot of businesses catering to the shareholders and gawkers for the event.

 

Not as busy as past years because it's now a livestream event:

https://finance.yahoo.com/brklivestream/

 

But there was a lot of demand last night, I probably stayed busy driving for about 6 hours. A lot of Chinese shareholders flying into the airport. I must have picked up 12 of them. None of them could speak a lick of English. Half of them were looking for a Chinese restaurant, but they only ones around the area they were staying were chains such as P.F Changs.

 

I picked up 2 women from the free cocktail event that Berkshire Hathaway was giving to shareholders, and they complained about the types of liquor they had to drink and how they had to eat in a tent. It was cold and rainy, so they were kind of put off by the experience, but I reminded them that it was free.

[Paul]

but I reminded them that it was free.

LOL, I'm sure they appreciated that.

[SneakyDave]

Who turns down free booze!?

[Paul]

I wouldn't... and I wouldn't complain about it either.

[SneakyDave]

I had an impromptu karoake scene in the car the other day. A couple of women were going to a Prince tribute at a bar, so luckily I had some Prince tunes available that we could sing while on the way there. They didn't mind driving around the block a couple of times to finish "Beautiful Ones".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNrKXLlh4o

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNrKXLlh4o

 

 

I can't sing as high as I used to.

[SneakyDave]

One of the fun things about driving people around are the number of great little restaurants and dive bars that I pick up people from, or drop off.

 

I'll post s picture of it later, but not too far from me is a little watering hole called 'Blind Dave's Bar'. It sounded like the perfect place I could get a refreshment.

[SneakyDave]

I had a weird guy the other day I picked up. It was during the early evening and he didn't appear to be drunk, but he was really chatty and wanted to be referred to as 'Balls'. He even spoke to himself in the third person as 'Balls'. Maybe he was a tweaker, I don't know what his deal was.

 

Anyway, then it gets weird. I drove him to his house to the airport, then he said he left a bag at his wife's house that he needed to get, so we go pick that up, which wasn't the original pick up place.

 

Then while leaving his wife's house, a woman comes out the house, tells me to stop, and says she needs to go to the airport with 'Balls'. So I let her in, wondering why the guy let me leave her house, if she needed to go to the airport with him.

 

So back on the way to the airport, for about 15 minutes, the couple say absolutely nothing to each other or me, even after all this crazy chattiness from Balls previously. I even tried to break the ice, confirming the airline, etc, but complete silence.

 

Maybe they were fighting or just didn't care for each other, but it was weird.

[SneakyDave]

Had my first celebrity ride Friday night. Hannibal Burress (the comedian best known as the one outing Bill Cosby as a rapist) was in town, and I had the pleasure of driving him from a point A to a point B, lol. I didn't realize it was him until later when I heard from driver that he had a 3 night show in town.

[SneakyDave]

Thought this was pretty funny, Shaq poking a little fun at himself:

 

"You know about free throws?"

 

[Sheldon]

I'm taking a trip to the Midwest.

 

I want to be able to leave you 1*.

[SneakyDave]

Early this morning, I had about 12 riders. 4 of them were young men glued to their phone playing the new Pokemon Go mobile game. I guess it was just released this week, and is the latest fad.

 

It's similar to Niantic's Ingress, but that's all I really heard about it

[SneakyDave]

I tried some early morning ridesharing this morning, and it disappoint.

 

One rider was a professional poker player, Tony. He was flying to LA for a poker tournament for the week (can't remember the name of the Casino). He had won the event a couple of years in a row a few years ago, and then he got into marriage and tax problems, and gave up on gambling to get through that mess. This was his big return to reclaim his crown.

 

Another guy was a little weird. As soon as he got in my car, picking him up from work and taking him home, he struck up a conversation about the game of Monopoly, and how he considers himself to be an expert Monopoly player, both in "house rules, and traditional rules". He also told me that the Playstation 2 console has the "loosest" Monopoly game, meaning it's the easiest to "beat" the system, I guess. He had a distrust for PC/Online versions of Monopoly, and he prefers "live" games with people, or playing against a console system that doesn't get online updates. At least that's what I got from the conversation. He also let me know that he has a number of valid questions into Hasbro, asking them what should happen in certain scenarios using traditional Monopoly rules. One question that hadn't been answered (after years of waiting) was that if you're going by the strict board rules, and you have hotels on properties, and for whatever reason, you need to sell those hotels, and then have to get houses back from the bank, which must be some kind of requirement, what happens if the bank has no houses to replace the hotels?