53. Better Late Than Never

I had a scheduled ride to pick up from one of the resorts in town to take to the airport. I got to the hotel a little early, because sometimes the passengers are already ready and want to get to the airport with a cushion. The clock ran down to their scheduled time, and I had not heard from them. If you are somebody who regularly reads my posts, you will know about the waiting window we have for passengers. The window passed after five minutes and then I was told by the app that I was allowed to cancel the ride and would earn a cancellation fee. 

But this passenger was going to the airport and I didn’t want them to have to try and find another ride, especially as the resort was a little out of the way, and it would probably take some time for another driver to get there. So, I decided to wait.

It was a good thing I did. Someone came rushing out of the hotel after ten minutes andasked me my name, told me theirs, and thanked me so much for waiting. 

It was a couple from Texas heading back, who had misplaced their phone and were looking for it while I was waiting. 

They got into the car and thanked me up and down for waiting. I was glad I did, because they were very cool people. They were from Austin, so, at least, the coolest part of Texas.

They apologized for being so late and thanked me again for waiting. They had been in town for a wedding, and had a really good time. A lot of fun for them. As I had said, they were very cool, and we engaged in conversation. It was a  back-and-forth talk, which I rarely engage in as most of the time, I let the passengers talk. They asked me If I talked to passengers a lot and I told them that I normally let them talk and I listen. Our conversation started with the usual where are you from, how long have you done this, etc. type questions. 

They asked me if I normally work days and I told them that I normally work nights. The male partner then said, “you must have some interesting stories to tell while working the night.“

I replied, “I do, indeed, and the more interesting ones I post on a blog.”

They asked me the name of the blog, and I told them. They asked me how the blog came about and I told them I started it on Facebook and was then encouraged to create the blog. I told them that a podcast was next and I laughed and told them o was joking. They said I should. I told them that I worked to keep it discreet and ambiguous. I rarely used real names or locations. I did tell them of the one time I used the real person’s name and said that I would not be afraid if he found me. I feel him and I still have unfinished business. For more details on that, you can check out the earlier blog.

The female partner said she had done some ridesharing a few years ago, but it freaked her out. She didn’t like driving to strange locations or having to follow directions on a GPS. But what she didn’t like the most was how she had experienced a number of creepers that she had picked up as passengers. She recounted one passenger who told her how he loved her boots and then went on to talk about how much he loved feet.

I told her that there were a number of creepy men out there, and most of the drivers I saw on the road at night were men. But I did see a lot of women drivers during the day. She told me, “no offense, that I would prefer a female driver to drive me around.“

“No offense taken,” I replied.

They did ask me about some of my more interesting rides.  I talked about the lady who was sleeping with her ex-husband who was married to a new younger bride, and how the ex-wife hated her ex-husband and the new bride, and yet continued to sleep with him. You can see that blog earlier, and I remind you it is NSFW.

They asked me if I mostly posted about the bad rides. I told them, “No, I prefer to write about the good rides. I get a lot of good passengers. 99% of the people I  pick up have been good.“

I dropped them off at the airport, and as the woman got out, she told me she wondered if she would be reading about them in the blog later on.

I told her, “I do like to write about the good passengers I drive. So, you might just see a story about you.“

And here we are.

52. The Rescuers

OK, which ride do I share with you from this past Halloween weekend? 

How about the one where I picked up two very sweet older ladies from a comedy show they had gone to see on Saturday night. They were very talkative all the way to their home, telling me they were former teachers, who appreciated ride sharing as it allowed them to go out for an evening of fun, because neither of them could drive at night anymore. They were very interesting, but… nah. 

How about the McDonald’s employee I picked up at the end of his shift who was very enthusiastic about his job. He talked incessantly about McDonald’s, really selling me their product. He told me about their new sauces to ask for, especially the spicy jam which went really good on McDoubles. He said they had run out of the Halloween boxes, which was three days before Halloween, but they were a very popular item as all the kids loved them (and so did collectors). He let me know the Mc rib was coming back in a few weeks and was sure to be a best seller again. His story? Nah.

OK, then, how about the high school Halloween party I stopped at where they wanted to cram six kids into my car. I told the kid who called for the ride that I only carry four and he got very upset. He insisted that he had ordered an XL version and I told him I was just regular sized. He then swore up and down that he had ordered an XL and I should give them all a ride. I told him no, he then cursed me out and told me to cancel the ride. I drove off before I got out of the the car and was gonna try and cancel him. Considering he had a horde of high school football player types with him, I think it was better that I didn’t. Well, there’s not really much more detail about that story is there?

How about the pair of drunk young ladies talking about the boys they were either looking to spurn or to have sex with… wait. There were about four sets of them. Forget that. 

So, let me share with you the ride I picked up from one of the fancy resort hotels. As I pulled into the resort, there was some huge event going on. The parking lot was full. Cars are parked along the side roads and the front entrance was lit up with fancy lights. Cars in fro t of me dropped off well dressed guests. 

I picked up two gentlemen, and asked them if they were part of the festivities, which they said they were not. But they did say they had a party of 30 people with them and would be at the hotel all week.

As I was driving along, I could overhear the two men talking about why they were there. They were talking about the assignment they had for next week and who would be doing what. One of them asked the other if it was always like this, so I’m guessing it was his first time out. The other one, who sounded more like a superior or a supervisor, said that people were always hooking up during the show. Well, t that was definitely intriguing. A show? People hooking up? 

I had to ask. I told them I could not help but overhear their conversation, and was curious as to what show they were talking about. I said, with all the “hooking up“ it sounded like a show like “The Bachelor.” I wondered if they were filming a new season here. The guy who seemed like he was in charge said, “Not quite, but that show does get a lot of people hooking up.” 

He told me the name of the show, which I will not say, so as not to get him in any immediate trouble. Let’s just say the show was about renovating certain, drinking establishments and saving them from failing. 

I asked if he meant that that his team was hooking up with the people they were helping. Both men told me that they meant that the crew was all having sex with each other. They tended to that doing that a lot as the show required them to be in close quarters for several weeks at a time and it was inevitable that this sort of thing happened. They filmed several episodes over three to four month intervals and would then have some time off before the next season.

They had just come here from another city where they had been at four other establishments over a course of 3 1/2 weeks. Due to the nature of the job, they didn’t really get out much and so all of their downtime was spent at whatever hotel the company put them up at. And they said the company always put them up at really nice properties. Definitely, one of the perks of the job, they told me. Always nice to be at a property where it was nice to hang out and this one had five swimming pools, a golf course, and a full spa, and they were on the company credit card.

They told me that they had gotten here this morning, and as it was a Saturday, it gave them a little downtime. That’s why they were heading out with a rideshare to have some fun in the city. They said they would be doing all the planning for the show tomorrow and then be at the establishment on Monday. 

I asked them about the people they helped. Was it staged at all? Were these places as bad as they seemed with people as dumb as they seemed? They told me that, while it might seem staged, that everything they showed on TV was for real. The ridiculous way the people acted who they were trying to help was on the money. They would be total morons on camera.

Anybody being filmed had to sign a waiver saying that it was OK. The show would have cameras all over the establishment filming constantly. And still, the people who were working at the establishment acted like jackasses.   They told me the employees normally thought they were being cool and showing off for the camera. Not thinking that their actions would totally show why the establishment was failing, which is why the show was being filmed there. 

The crew of 30, I was told, were all purpose. They did everything: the renovations, the camerawork, were film crew, talent wranglers, everything. The supervisor had mentioned how he and three crew members once spent four days in a freezer, having to change out a bunch of pipes that had corroded, because the owners had not taken care of the plumbing. He said everyone does everything. 

They asked me how was the social life of the city. Since they asked to be dropped at a random location downtown that sounded fun to them, they asked to get my input. The previous city they had come from seemed a little too wild for them. A lot of people they met were definitely looking to hook up with the crew. Sometimes to get camera time, other times, just to… y’know. 

While it all seemed like attractive offers to them, they thought if things were this easy, they must come with down sides, oh, like chlamydia. I told them that the city they had been in was very was much more urban than here. I would imagine the people approaching them were looking to score with people in the television industry. 

I told them that this city was more relaxed, that the people here would think that it was cool that they were making a show but wouldn’t have sex to get on camera. Well, then I pointed out that there were a lot of university students in the Greek system who might. I told them that it didn’t mean they couldn’t find that type of fun, if they were looking for it, though. It’s just that the people they would meet up with here would be doing it because they wanted to not because they wanted something… if that made sense. 

I reminded them that it was Halloween weekend. They should have no trouble having finding any fun. I was sure that there would be plenty of college students out and about. There was a big game Saturday night and when that was over, the two should explode. 

As I was dropping them off at a bar downtown, I told them they would have no issues finding a good time. Both men were very upbeat with fun senses of humor, and were obviously enjoying the chance to get out for a night. 

I considered asking them if they hiring any locals to help them while they were in town to work on the program. Maybe earn some extra money on a television set. It had been awhile but I think I still remembered how to work a set. But my days of working behind the scenes on a TV show were behind me. Doubt I had the stamina for it anymore.

I never asked them the name of the establishment they would be helping renovate. I figured I might see the episode one day I told them that I didn’t really watch the show that they work on, but I have seen clips of it while scrolling through my television menu. It was intriguing to me because I wondered if the owners and workers of whatever establishment they helped truly listen to the advice they had been given. I heard a lot of times that the owners would sell the business shortly after they are helped because the resale value goes up after appearing on television. They said that it did happen quite often, but not always. They do follow up episodes on places they helped. Almost all of them were going even better than expected.

As they got out, they thanked me for the information about the local scene. They were looking forward to a week in this town. I told them that I would look for the episode and that I hoped their new assignment wasn’t too bad. Maybe the people they were helping would actually listen to them. The supervisor laughed and said “That wouldn’t be good television, now would it?”

He had a point.

51. A Fanilow

I picked a couple up today, who looked to be in their 50s. They were on their way to Vegas for the weekend. They seemed a little old to be engaging in Vegas type shenanigans, especially on Halloween weekend. They told me it was their first time ever going to Vegas at Halloween, and so they packed costumes. They were going to get away for a few days and they loved Vegas.

These days, I tend to play an easy listening mix on my car stereo while I am driving rideshare. When Barry Manilow’s “I Can’t Smile Without You” came on, the wife got very excited. She explained how much she loved Barry Manilow, and I told her that  I, too, was a Fanilow. 

Her husband, who was not as enthusiastic about Barry as his wife was, mentioned that they had tickets to see him last year. I told him he was on my list of people to see, and I was surprised when I recently found out that he was still performing. Heck, I was surprised he was still alive!

The wife said they had traveled all the way to Vegas and planned an entire weekend around seeing Barry. They had gotten all the way through the metal detectors at the concert when they were told it was canceled because Barry was not feeling well. The wife said she spent the rest of that weekend very angry about that fact, and the husband confirmed it as he said she took it all out on him. She reminded him that he didn’t have to go, if he didn’t want to. He told her that he will remember that for the next time. She boldly told him that there would be a next time… she will see him!

As I had said to them earlier, I was surprised he was still alive. The wife told me that he was alive and even had grandkids, somethings she was very curious about… “how did he have grandkids?!?“ I laughed, and said, “maybe he adopted?“

At that point, we started talking about all the celebrities who had passed away recently. Last week, the actor who played the bailiff on the TV show “Night Court“ died. The wife was surprised to hear that. The husband went on to say that Suzanne Somers had also died recently. A lot of the people we had watched on TV when we were younger, watching them in first run shows, mind you, not reruns, were all dying.

Some of the names that came to mind for the couple were Lisa Marie Presley, Tony Bennett, Alan Arkin, Richard Roundtree, Jimmy Buffett, Tina Turner, Raquel Welch… the wife did remind us that Wayne Newton was still alive, and she had never seen him but with all this talk of people dying, she was now going to see about catching his show the next time they were in Vegas.

The husband said it was kind of scary that all these people he remembered watching in movies in the theaters or on programs on TV were all gone. It made him feel old. I commented back to him, “Hey, you’re going to Vegas on Halloween weekend. You can’t be that old yet!” He laughed .

The wife said they could still catch a Barry Manilow show, hopefully before he dies. The husband told her that after the last time, she could go on her own. 

I almost volunteered to go with her.

50. Secret Agent Man

I picked up a passenger who told me he was on his way to a training assignment. I figured training people how to telemarket or something. Our initial conversation was polite chitchat. I don’t remember much of the beginning. He said he was from Northern California. He enjoyed the scenery here, but was used to it being a lot greener. We did have rain the day before, and he had commented that he had heard that it didn’t rain much here. I told him that it didn’t, but whenever it did, it just seems like everybody complained. He said California had a drought, and then a lot of rain and snow last winter that people complained about and he could never understand why they did. I said the same thing. When it’s hot, they complain that they want a cold, when it’s cold, they complain that they wanted hot. It was all just polite conversation.

It wasn’t until he started talking about government that I really started listening.

He said he was here training new agents. I wasn’t quite sure what kind of agents he was training, and I didn’t ask. He did say his training was more on the paperwork side of things. He said that side of government always seems to get ignored in the fancy TV shows. 

At that point, I did ask him what kind of agents he was training. He said he was with the ATF. This did make me think he was training men to break into the rooms of drug dealers, gunrunners, or moonshiners.

I asked him if his job had a lot of action. He said that’s mostly a myth about most government agencies. What you see in the movies and TV shows is a very minor part of their work. Most of the time is spent on tracking and tracing and investigating, and when they finally have a lead that they are definitely sure of, they will send in a team. But most of the work is done from the offices. I said they should make a show about that. Spend most of the episode showing how they track down the criminals and in the last five minutes, show them getting busted. He asked if I had ever seen “Zero Dark Thirty” and said that was more what the job was like but the agents weren’t as hot as Jessica Chastain.

He started talking about guns and tracking, illegal sales, and how they spent months, sometimes years, tracking them through paperwork: where money was coming from, where it was going to, etc. 

He told me that there were militias out there with lots of guns, but that most of the reports we have heard are exaggerated and that they were hardly a threat to the government.  He started talking about guns in California, as that was where he was from. Most people there didn’t have guns because of the laws. I said I had lived in the Central Valley where I thought most of them had guns. He said there was a lot of drug activity in the area and a lot of guns but that the government had more and bigger guns.

He asked me if I knew that California was the fourth largest economy in the world. Not in the United States, but in the world. I told him I had heard that. I told him that I had lived all over California at some point, in northern and southern and central. I told him that I had one time heard that California had wanted to split into three states with those three sections separated. He had heard the same thing and laughed. He said, with the gun laws in California, and most people not owning a gun, it would be pretty hard for them to split up. It’s the same as if they wanted to secede from the country. They could make the threat, but they wouldn’t have the fire power to back it. I asked him about states like Texas or Florida seceding, as they all seemed to have guns in those states. He said that most people in those states did indeed have guns, but again not the kind of guns that the US government has.

In talking about California, and having mentioned my time in the Central Valley, I asked him, since he was with the ATF if he could verify a rumor for me. I had heard that the Central Valley was pretty much the meth capital of the United States. He told me that it wasn’t a rumor, that it was fact. Especially the corridor between Fresno and Bakersfield. Inside my brain, I laughed. I was going to ask him about the representative from Bakersfield who recently lost his position as House Speaker and who seemed to ignore the meth issue in Kern County, but I still wasn’t sure which side of the political spectrum this passenger was on.

As we talked about the things he was training people on, the investigating and paperwork stuff, he brought up all the corruption in government. He said that people seem to think about all the dirty cops in the world, but need to realize that the biggest corruption is at the top, and the closer a federal employee was to the White House, the more corrupt they probably were. He said it’s because those people talk to people of influence and so companies and lobbyists and billionaires will grease those palms to get them to speak for them and vote their way. Whatever a corrupt street level agent might do is nothing in comparison to what their superiors were doing. 

It made me think about all the stories of corrupt cops. He said it’s always further up the chain where it’s the worst. He says it was unfortunate, because a lot of people go into law enforcement with a positive attitude and see what is happening and find themselves caught in it.

He did say that the ATF was probably the least corrupt of all the alphabet agencies. If you wanted to see the big corruption, again, it started with those closest to the White House. He was talking about agencies like the CIA, FBI, DEA…  those agencies were a lot of money exchanged hands and was unaccounted for and had little oversight. 

I said that the cops and agents on the lower level aren’t paid enough, probably leading them down the path of corruption. He said that there could be a lot of reasons, but mostly it’s because they’re recruited from those on the higher level to become a part of the corruption. He mentioned that the problem was that the way the government paid people was not incentive based. They were all based on grades and scales. So a good agent would be paid as much as a bad agent, and there was no bonus or incentive for doing your job better. He also mentioned how they were budgeted in a way that it was impossible to offer any incentive to employees. It was not like they could take money from the arms budget and give that to agents. they had to spend the money where it was allocated. There were some folks who found ways to spend the money in such a way that it benefited their people, but it just tended to enforce corruption.

He said he was about 15 years from retirement. He was living in San Jose, where it was ridiculously expensive, especially for a government employee. His wife had lived in San Jose all her life, while he had originally been from Tennessee. I told him that I had picked up a security specialist from Tennessee a few days ago, who identified himself because of his accent, and that the ATF agent had a much lighter accent. He said he had been in California for nearly 20 years now, but was ready to get out. He said the agency was willing to transfer him, and he was looking at a four year plan to move somewhere. 

He was looking at transferring to Houston and so had his wife looking at houses in the area. She was amazed how much cheaper the housing outside of Houston was in comparison to San Jose. I told him that I thought the tech industry had basically ruined the Bay Area by forcing high prices for everything, especially real estate, and he was in total agreement with me. He said that a starting job at someplace like Apple was probably around $375,000, and needed to be for them to even be able to survive. No way the government was paying anybody that kind of money, not even the President. And yet these people come in office making $100k salaried bit leave office years later as millionaires. 

I nodded my head a lot to the things he said, and was in full agreement. He said he had been clean his entire career. I told him, as he was climbing up the ladder, and reaching retirement, maybe he should use his influence to get some of that lobbyist money. He laughed, thankfully, as I did not want to insult him, and said he did not have it in him to schmooze up to those kind of people. I thought of how that had been my problem when I was living in LA and tryong to make it in the business. I had no ability to schmooze or suck up to people. And this man gave me some faith that there are good people working in the government.

We just need more of them. A lot more of them. A lot more of them that work near to the White House. And inside the White House as well.

49. Norwegian Wood

I picked up a man today with a large solid case. I asked if he was a photographer as I thought the case was carrying camera equipment and he said, in a thick Tennessee drawl, that he was a security consultant. And he was on his way to a client. And this was his gear.

As if to explain the accent, he told me he had only lived here for six months and was originally from Nashville. But the company he worked for transferred him to be head of their west coast operations and so here he was. They gave him a house (a really nice one!), a vehicle (gas included), and an expense account. I was truly impressed. He was in his 30’s and did not have a tone of braggadocio but spoke with full sincerity. 

He moved out here with his Norwegian wife who he had met in a Nashville bar six years ago. They were both divorced and hit it off. She was from a rich Norwegian family and he was just a southern boy. He couldn’t believe his luck. He said her first car was a Maserati and he told her he probably couldn’t match that and she was ok with that.

He really liked living here but had noted that the homeless were kind of an issue. Maybe that was because the population wasn’t that large to begin with and so they stuck out. His mom had been a drug addict and so he understood the plight of many of them. His new job had him visiting cities all across the west and he had enjoyed them all. I told them I had lived in the Bay Area and heard the homeless problem had gotten pretty tragic out there.  He said he definitely felt the presence but no worse than other cities he had been to. He felt that maybe it had been exaggerated. You could turn the wrong way down a street in any city and find yourself neck deep in transients. 

This brought him back to his mom. He said he didn’t have a great family life. He now had four kids and a wife who was a step away from Norwegian royalty but he grew up in a very troubled home. His wife was very family oriented and had talked about wanting to go back home to be closer to family. And he was ok with that. He had visited Norway on a number of occasions and loved her family and would go with her, no problem. 

But, in the meantime, his job was security. He said he used to make bombs but his conscience got the best of him and he had issue making weapons of destruction. And this took him to the current crisis in the Middle East. And I was definitely interested in hearing his thoughts. 

He was against the killing of innocents. On any side. He felt it was the leaders that put all the innocents in the crosshairs. And they should be the ones who have to shoot it out face to face and not make the women and children serve as human targets. Hamas’ actions were unforgivable and they should pay. Doesn’t mean that a whole city should be razed to the ground. The Israeli government knew that they were putting their citizens in danger and pulled back defenses to leave them even more vulnerable. 

He was very passionate about this. Too many victims as the scapegoats for leaders. It’s why he quit his previous lucrative job of bomb making. He felt he was making weapons for the leaders and there were too many innocents who were caught in their blasts. 

He talked about how each major news agency paints their side with no room for grey. Fox News fully supports the Israeli side and their “all Muslims are terrorists” rhetoric while CNN just shows the Palestinian victims with no talk of the Hamas criminals who kidnapped, raped, and beheaded Jews. 

His wife was a counselor and felt a lot for people and he hated that she was always watching the news, flipping back and forth between channels, being affected with what she was seeing. They tried to watch more neutral news such as BBC and they got a feed from Norway, but the Norwegian news was much more graphic in their coverage than anything in the US, and which was always censored to some point. 

He was quiet for a moment and then went on to say his next assignment was going to be in Reno. He had never been and so he was excited and he was going solo. Most of his travels he had gone with family including San Francisco and Las Vegas. He was looking forward to checking out Lake Tahoe. The one thing he missed from Tennessee was nature’s green. It always made him feel at peace. When he was in the Bay Area, they drove down to look at the Redwoods and he was in awe of the big trees. He said that Norway had a lot of unspoiled natural beauty even for the half the year it was freezing.

Yeah, he told me, if the wife wanted to move back to be closer to her loving family, he would have no problem with that. Being with a loving family in a natural wonderland away from tragedy and dying innocents… he would have no problem with that.