Where were we? Ah yes, the fifth trip of day 4... what a trip that was.
Day 4, Trip 5...
Pickup in Beacon Hill. Tiny streets, always fun to navigate... managed to find a decent spot to pull in though, not too far from the magical pin. Took a couple of minutes, but a pair of riders showed up right as I was thinking about making a call or text.
Aside: Uber recommends you don't contact riders for at least 2 minutes after you've arrived. They notify riders via the app when you arrive, and (and I agree with this from experience), people don't love getting an "I'm here" call when they've already been told you're here.
Anyway, two guys hop in, and boy are they bros. Everything about them has that vibe, which is fine - not necessarily the guys I'd regularly hang out with, but hey, I'm not hanging out, I'm driving them. I have to admit, I at least made an attempt to affect a bit of the bro attitude myself to make them happy (or maybe as a self-defense mechanism, I'm not sure :)). I confirm the destination in Eastie, and right away they ask if we can stop at a liquor store.
Sure, there's nothing wrong with stops, I ask if they've got one in mind, and they say they don't, but they'll holler if they see one. I can tell this is a priority for them, so while waiting at a light I plug "liquor store" into Waze and look what we've got on our route. Conveniently, there's one right across from the TD Garden, which we're very close to - easy peasy.
I pull in, and as I'm negotiating to a reasonable place to stop (there's all sorts of construction), one of the riders informs me that he works for National Grid, so if anyone hassles me I can just say my rider works for National Grid and it'll be fine. I'm not quite sure how expects that to work, but hey, okay. He heads in, comes back with a couple of twelve packs, and we're back on the road.
As we're pulling out, National Grid Guy asks if he can smoke in my car. I decline, and after "I'll do it out the window" is rejected, he offers me a beer in exchange for letting him smoke. Uh, no. I think I lose my attempt at bro-ish-ness at this point and say yeah, definitely no then, I'm kind of driving here. Okay, fine, no big deal.
It seems the bros don't want to talk to each other, so they just keep talking to me, asking about where I'm from, where I live... and when I say the South End, it's hilarious, because they have no idea what the South End is. First they think it's like Quincy or Braintree, then I'm like no, it's part of Boston, then I foolishly try to pre-emptively point out it's not the same as Southie, and they're like so Dorchester, Mattapan? No... JP? No... I can't figure out how else to explain it, but that's okay because they just keep talking, telling me how they remember when they played hockey for a North End team how they'd play the South End team and all those Southie kids (no...) would be all worked up to play them. Sigh.
Finally, after it feels like forever, we get to the drop-off. As we're pulling up, National Grid Guy tells me he's totally going to give me a tip for being so great about the liquor store, even though he never tips Uber drivers. Oh, and he had promised that earlier too (not that I expected or requested it, mind you). But it's okay, his streak remained solid, because he and his friend just hopped out of their car with their beer, and no tip left behind. Shocker!
Trip count: 5. Trip earnings: $13.41 (and no tip)
It was about time to get some gas, so I decided Eastie couldn't be any worse than anywhere else for gas prices, and had Waze take me to a reasonably priced station. I stayed online for some of the way there but then went offline to make sure I didn't lose credit for declining rides.
Post-gas, came back online and started navigating roughly back towards downtown, thinking I might wind up paying the toll to get back on my own, when I got my next ride.
This one was a super-local - woman just heading not too far down the street to the Shaws. She saw the forecast calling for rain and didn't want to risk her usual walk, which seemed reasonable. When Waze took me on the highway she was a bit confused, but it basically just skipped some lights on the local drag, and she was cool with it - I did offer to go the surface route if she preferred though. She ended up getting out before the Shaws, apparently seeing one of the other stores made her think of something else she had to do. Quick and easy.
Trip count: 6. Trip earnings: $3.75
Since the Shaws was on my mind, I decided to make a pit stop of my own there to use the bathroom and grab a drink. Offline for a few minutes, then back in business, again cruising towards the tunnel, lamenting the toll, when boom, ride request!
This one was a kind of tricky "find the rider" situation. It was in a very dense area, with somewhat high traffic. I pulled in around the pin, but after a minute or two started second guessing myself, and ended up banging a U-turn and pulling to the other side of the street. That seems to have worked out, because the riders found me quite soon thereafter.
And I really mean riders plural. Turns out this had been an UberXL request, and after helping them with bags, I noticed that there were four people piling into the back seat, in addition to the one riding up front with me! I offered to put the second row of seats up, but they just asked if it was okay for them to sit like that, and I said sure, if they were comfortable that was fine with me.
Turns out they were in for quite a ride - the destination was Foxborough! It turns out they were heading down to stay with some friends and take in some Copa América matches. The trip went fine, though it was quite a long one - there was a good bit of traffic on I93 southbound. We chatted a little bit about traffic and things in the area, but mostly the riders chatted amongst themselves, mostly not in English (I suspect Portuguese or Spanish because they were talking about the Brazil vs Peru match).
One interesting thing I noted about myself during this ride - while the front seat rider was on his phone a decent amount, I kept feeling paranoid that he was checking my route and making sure I wasn't taking them the wrong way. In retrospect this is probably more because that's what I often do to Uber drivers in unfamiliar cities - the glimpses of his phone that I caught when looking over seemed to be texting and the like, not following me on the map.
51 minutes and 31 miles later, we arrived - I ended up going past their destination and having to make another quick U-turn, because it was a house that kind of jumped out at me. They had no complaints though, and I ended the trip and helped them with their luggage. When I got back in, I could hardly believe the estimated earnings!
Trip count: 7. Trip earnings: $79.93!
The downside of such a big trip is that I didn't really see a ton of demand in Foxborough, nor did I get pings on the highway on the way back. I basically decided to call it a day and head home for groceries and dinner, unless I got a ping on the way back. Well, eventually I actually did.
Last ride of the daytime stint was a pickup in Dorchester. Unfortunately I got the request right as I was passing the exit that would have been convenient for the pick-up, so I had to take the next exit and hunt down a place to turn around. Eventually I made it there though, and picked up a rider heading to Back Bay Harry's, which was pretty ideal for me and my plans to head back to the South End.
I wasn't sure we'd get there without hassle due to the Pride Parade earlier, but it turned out okay, things were generally back open by this time (it was after 4:30pm). There were still some rocking street parties and other things going on, but we were able to get there just fine. A pretty quick easy trip.
Trip count: 8. Trip earnings: $8.78
Day 2 Daytime trip count: 8
Day 2 Daytime earnings: $143.94
Day 2 Daytime time online: 4hr 49min
Off to the grocery store, home for dinner, and up next... out again for a few trips in the evening!
This one was a kind of tricky "find the rider" situation. It was in a very dense area, with somewhat high traffic. I pulled in around the pin, but after a minute or two started second guessing myself, and ended up banging a U-turn and pulling to the other side of the street. That seems to have worked out, because the riders found me quite soon thereafter.
And I really mean riders plural. Turns out this had been an UberXL request, and after helping them with bags, I noticed that there were four people piling into the back seat, in addition to the one riding up front with me! I offered to put the second row of seats up, but they just asked if it was okay for them to sit like that, and I said sure, if they were comfortable that was fine with me.
Turns out they were in for quite a ride - the destination was Foxborough! It turns out they were heading down to stay with some friends and take in some Copa América matches. The trip went fine, though it was quite a long one - there was a good bit of traffic on I93 southbound. We chatted a little bit about traffic and things in the area, but mostly the riders chatted amongst themselves, mostly not in English (I suspect Portuguese or Spanish because they were talking about the Brazil vs Peru match).
One interesting thing I noted about myself during this ride - while the front seat rider was on his phone a decent amount, I kept feeling paranoid that he was checking my route and making sure I wasn't taking them the wrong way. In retrospect this is probably more because that's what I often do to Uber drivers in unfamiliar cities - the glimpses of his phone that I caught when looking over seemed to be texting and the like, not following me on the map.
51 minutes and 31 miles later, we arrived - I ended up going past their destination and having to make another quick U-turn, because it was a house that kind of jumped out at me. They had no complaints though, and I ended the trip and helped them with their luggage. When I got back in, I could hardly believe the estimated earnings!
Trip count: 7. Trip earnings: $79.93!
The downside of such a big trip is that I didn't really see a ton of demand in Foxborough, nor did I get pings on the highway on the way back. I basically decided to call it a day and head home for groceries and dinner, unless I got a ping on the way back. Well, eventually I actually did.
Last ride of the daytime stint was a pickup in Dorchester. Unfortunately I got the request right as I was passing the exit that would have been convenient for the pick-up, so I had to take the next exit and hunt down a place to turn around. Eventually I made it there though, and picked up a rider heading to Back Bay Harry's, which was pretty ideal for me and my plans to head back to the South End.
I wasn't sure we'd get there without hassle due to the Pride Parade earlier, but it turned out okay, things were generally back open by this time (it was after 4:30pm). There were still some rocking street parties and other things going on, but we were able to get there just fine. A pretty quick easy trip.
Trip count: 8. Trip earnings: $8.78
Day 2 Daytime trip count: 8
Day 2 Daytime earnings: $143.94
Day 2 Daytime time online: 4hr 49min
Off to the grocery store, home for dinner, and up next... out again for a few trips in the evening!
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