A lot of notable adventures happen to me in the bufu hours of the morning... Mostly consisting of smoking too much weed. From January 2016 to July 2018 I drove for Uber and Lyft way too much for anyone's own good and had plenty of conversations with passengers.
The second day of my Lyft driving ventures I picked up a passenger from River North and drove him to Gage Park at 3:30-4:30am. This guy proceeded to tell me his life story... And pull out a chillum and some weed. For the next hour he's packing bowls and we're passing it to each other as I'm driving around Chicago at fuck o'clock am and am "working". When he gets out of my car, he thanks me and I go home because my car wreiks of weed.
Towards the end of my driving ventures, I had a 6 person Uber XL ride and all of a sudden it smells like weed vape in my car and I audibly say something. The person asks if he can smoke it in my car and I tell him, "only if you share"!
I also had a few unpleasant misadventures as well...
1. I was driving as usual at night owl o'clock on a Saturday night and I ended up picking up a drunk older man who appeared to be between 40 and 50 years old in an Uber pool at around 3:30am in the oh so lovely River North. He got into my car and looked super sloppy drunk, enough to where I thought someone his age should have his shit together more than he did. He told me his address and I proceeded to tell him I had another passenger to pick up because he requested a pool. I arrived at the second person's destination and waited for a bit. The drunk man in my car was being impatient and I ended up contacting the person I was waiting for a couple times. They didn't answer and I ended up canceling on them. I don't like canceling on people, but as I was waiting for this passenger, he fell asleep in my back seat and was snoring rather loudly. The fact this person seemed like he had a "tude" and was snoring made me feel super uncomfortable. I turned up the volume to my music and fled to his house as fast as I can without attracting cops or risking my safety. About 10 minutes later, I see his address, blaring, bold, and purple outside of his building. "Hey, I think we're outside your place now", I exclaim to him loud enough not to startle him and point to his building on Adams Street. He thinks we're on Lake Street; I pull closer to the intersection to make sure I'm not mistaken and listen to his back seat driving. A minute or two later, he realizes he was wrong and gets out of my car. How awkward...
2. I ended up on the far south side in Pullman/Roseland, then Hammond, Indiana at the Horseshoe Casino. I've never been there before and had peemergency so I figured I'd give myself a grand ol tour while I'm at it. On my last stop, I wanted to check the buffet and upstairs out and run into this beautiful floral sculpture. As I'm snapping photos to put on Instagram, a lady's glasses fall off and her man asks me how to distribute an epi pen. I was the only one around and had zero idea how to use it. Then the lady wanted an ambulance, so I made my first ever 911 call. Security shows up to the scene and I wait to make sure the lady is ok. She begins puking. Gross! The ambulance and security arrive super fast because security didn't realize I called them. Tehehehe. The lady is ok. As we're waiting the security guard begins hitting on me and asks for my number. I was tempted to give him a fake number because this dude looked 15 years older than me and I wasn't interested. At least he was being nice and respectful. He wasn't creepy. I give him my number and am not gonna answer his call. But why does being a good samaritan mean getting hit on by the head of security? Weird... At least there's faith in humanity and nice men around. When I'm ready and know it's right I'll pursue, but for now I'll go home with a gold star, pretty pics of flowers, and knowing the right man will come along who I am interested in mutually will happen at some point!
3. Oh boy, driving St. Patrick's Day weekend (the weekend Chicago dyed the river, not the actual day of St. Patrick's Day) on that Saturday. What a great idea, even though I wanted to make some money. It was about 1:30am and I had just finished taking 2 people celebrating a 21st birthday to the Mad River bar in River North who could apparently handle their liquor than the next 2 people who would come in my car. I received another request from the Mad River bar. When the men who looked to be around my age (early/mid 20s) entered my car, the "I feel like this person may get sick in my car" senses were acting like fire alarms going off in my body. I knew those people were super sloppy double dare drunk, enough to know next time to never let people that wasted in my car ever again. And instead of the usual 10 or 15 minute drive, they wanted to go from River North to Arlington Heights by Mitsuwa Marketplace. I had to get the hell out of there fast because I have a fear of people tossing their cookies in my car. I flew down the expressway as stealthy as if my car had rocket boosters. I also made sure to drive as close to the shoulder as possible so I can pull over if needed and kept my trash bag handy. A few miles down the highway, one of the passengers alarmed me I need to pull over; thankfully, I had just got my brakes replaced and froze from 80 to 0 in 4 seconds. He opened the door, tossed all of his cookies outside of my car, and we were back on the road a couple minutes later. The other passenger fell asleep. A half hour after that, I finally dropped both of the people off and called my friends to tell them what happened. Fuck that.
Time to go home! No more Uber. Ever again!
