This is the fourth and final chapter of a four-part series. Well, maybe.
Read PART I here.
Read PART II here.
Read PART III here.
Driving for Lyft rekindled an old love affair.
Stuck behind the wheel navigating a quilted labyrinth of arterial side streets, blasting through intersections both vehicular and interpersonal, being required to perform a menial task within a wonderland of disparate anonymity stoked fires thought extinguished long ago. Memories of my affection, fuzzy and faded, came back into focus.
My old flame Las Vegas became reignited.
Some time ago, I can’t recall when, I lost consciousness of why exactly I moved to Las Vegas. When exposed to her charms from afar, the corsetted city in a cavalcade of colors was that mysterious, alluring, unattainable, and even forbidden temptation — the pretty girl from high school you couldn’t get, gradually morphing into a compulsive, all-consuming obsession. An obsession, because I couldn’t have it, and yes, we do obsess over what we can’t have.
But then, once we get it, the obsession dissipates or the obsession transforms into something else. It’s that way with food and wine. It’s that way with sex. It’s that way with material possessions. It’s that way with just about everything in our lives — even the cities where we live. Once the forbidden fruit gets tasted over and over, when those sizzling dice inevitably crashed into the rail of reality and seven-out, old temptations become tedious and tiresome. All seductresses age. And, we evolve. We acquire new tastes. Perceptions are transient. All dreams are momentary and fleeting.
Years ago before I moved to Las Vegas, I had a conversation with Ed Hill that I’ll never forget. Ed Hill, who has no idea how meaningful that 5-minute discussion was that happened 20 years ago, has been an advantage player his entire life. Never worked a day, except for gambling, which of course is the toughest job anyone can ever have. Before taking the plunge, back when I was thinking of moving to Las Vegas, Ed Hill was bitching to me about — you guessed it — living in Las Vegas.
“I just want to get the fuck out of here,” Ed Hill snapped.
I looked at him like he was from outer space. I thought Ed Hill was crazy. The man never worked. He lived in a nice house that was totally paid for. He led a dream life. And yet, he wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge. Well, by February 2019 — I’d turned into Ed Hill.
Sequestered into a cushy car seat bombarded constantly with imagery of casinos I no longer look at nor see, and the scent of foods I try to ignore, alternating situational interruptions invade my space. Windows rolled down with cool 65-degree breezes whisking through the cozy Nissan’s interior, I’m reminded again and again with each conversation that floods of people come to this peculiar place with no natural reason whatsoever to exist — to live, to work, to play, to escape, to enjoy, to explore, to reinvent themselves, to temp fate — indeed, they come here from all over the world.
According to my Google search, there are 559 cities on earth with a million persons or more. Las Vegas is but one of 559. I’ll bet my last borrowed dollar that most of us can’t name anywhere close to half of those mega-cities, but just about every literate adult with a television set or an internet connection on any continent or remote island or iceberg or canoe has heard of and thus has some concept of Las Vegas. Over the course of their lives, some long and others bittersweet, many will eventually make it here to Las Vegas to discover for themselves if reality matches the illusion.
For some, it does.
For others, it doesn’t.
What follows are my Days 21 through 28 delivering doses of reality while getting hooked on my own supply.
Day 22 (Mar. 11) — If all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players with their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, then driving for Lyft presents the ultimate opportunity to star on a pauper’s Broadway.
“Where are you from?
“How long have you lived in Las Vegas?”
“Why did you move here?”
“How long have you been driving for Lyft?”
In no particular order, often in scattershot repetition, those are the top four questions I get asked during every ride. Sometimes I get asked all four questions on the same trip.
Riders are just trying to make casual conversation. Trying to be friendly, attempting to fill an awkward, empty silence with feigned curiosity. In Las Vegas — “Where are you from?” is the typical cocktail party banter. Other places, it’s “What do you do for a living” — especially among circles of men. But in Las Vegas, since most people come from someplace else, the quickest moniker of identity stems geography, with all its inherent stereotypes.
Strangers asking questions isn’t so much born from sincere curiosity as a launching platform. People really want to talk about themselves. They desire to share their problems. Admittedly, my patience with this quickly wears thin. Hey, I’ve got my own problems. I don’t bore you with my shit. So, get your weight off my shoulders. You think you got issues? Hell, I’m driving for Lyft.
I’m no amateur therapist. I’d rather sit in silence and vegetate with my own thoughts than engage in small talk. In fact, I love silence. Why move air with your mouth and make sound waves when just about everything sputtered will totally be erased from memory just seconds later? That’s small talk. And, I hate small talk.
Here’s the problem. I’m presently engaged in the quintessential occupation which demands small talk. Driving and being stuck with people. Strangers. It’s like being vegetarian and working in a slaughterhouse. I just wasn’t born for these times. I sure wasn’t born to be a Lyft driver.
Well, after complying with their expectations and dishing out the same stale true story so many times I wanted to stick my face out the window and vomit, I’m now ready to play an entirely new role, only with a zesty and albeit risky twist.
And so for this and many reasons, I began experimenting with playing alternative people and parts. Different personalities. Hey, why not? The masquerade of being someone totally different on each and every ride became an amusing game for me created to pass the time, just harmless self-amusement. It also became increasingly fun and even dangerous thing to do, playing a different role to entertain and even challenge myself, so as to not go crazy stupid parroting the same leftovers to one ten-minute stranger after another.
Most everyone who reads my stuff already knows parts of my bio and that won’t be retold here. It’s the official talking point I stuck to during the opening act week one of driving. But after regurgitating knee-jerk replies, I figure it might be a lot more fun to morph into the Man of a Thousand Faces and Voices.
“Where are you from? New Orleans! Dallas! Las Vegas! Illinois! Maryland! Belfast!
“How long have you lived in Las Vegas?” All my life! I just got here two months ago! I moved here after Katrina. When I was a kid.
“Why did you move here?” I decided to retire! I got offered a new job! I got tired of the hurricanes. I got offered a new job. The Irish potato famine.
“How long have you been driving for Lyft?” Two months! Six months! Two years! Way too long!
Was this charade dishonest? Perhaps. But it’s not like anyone’s checking my credit report or hooking me up to a lie detector test. This isn’t exactly Grand Jury testimony. While driving, I can play any role I want. It’s like standing in front of that mirror when you’re a lonely kid pretending to be Batman for five minutes. And I did my Batman impression more out of self-preservation than anything else.
If forced to sit here and play the uncompensated nightly role as “Max the Las Vegas Entertainer” (by the way, I changed my Lyft Driver name to “Max,” in homage to Mr. Shapiro) then…..here’s my mantra: THEY. ARE. GOING. TO. GET. THEIR. SHOW.
Naturally, I had to be clever and careful. Each answer had to be artfully polished, crafted to fit in some narrative that might establish rapport with the rider so as to extract the biggest possible tip. But this wasn’t about money, really. Don’t wince. Save the self righteousness, please. Poker players do these sorts of acts all the time. So do salespeople. So do politicians. It’s called empathy. It’s all part of the bluff. It’s part of life and the stage we work and live on daily.
See, the goal was to connect, even though I’m not particularly interested in making any real connections. If someone gets in the car and they’re from Philadelphia, well then, I can be “Max from Washington, D.C.” Because they will probably commensurate with this persona and we can spend the next few minutes arguing about the Eagles versus Redskins or bitching about the traffic on I-95. But if a couple of good ole’ boys from Georgia roll into the back seat, then I don’t want to be from anywhere near The District, because everyone hates people from Washington, even Washingtonians hate each other, and because they figure you’re part of the swamp and so instead I tell them, “Metairie!” Or “Mandeville!”
“Yeah, I went to LSU but dropped out. Hey, you sure kicked our asses! Georgia — now that’s a football program!”
That tasty chestnut shelled in bullshit is smoked bacon rolled in pecans to most male Southerners, utterly obsessed with anything to do with college football. Get them talking about the SEC and that kills ten minutes and then presto! — I don’t have to say another word the rest of the trip while they bitch about Alabama and Clemson. Then, I can daydream about what I’m going to say in my next blog. Win-win.
“You’re from Chicago? Wow, what a coincidence! I grew up in Aurora!”
Okay, that’s kinda’ true. I lived in the Chicago suburbs for like a year when I was two when my dad was an Air Traffic Controller at O’Hare. The important thing is to establish a rapport, make a connection, and needlepoint the tip like Betsy Ross plugging the red, white, and blue.
My most creative “act,” which was a riot to pull off, was playing an immigrant from Belfast, North Ireland. Since I’ve heard just about every interview ever conducted with singer Van Morrison, I’ve somehow managed to craft a fairly convincing Northern Irish Belfast accent, which sounds kinda’ like a gruff Liam Niessen only with severe nasal congestion after slamming four shots of Jameson. I figure there’s no way in the fuckery of Ulster to get called down on my Belfast accent by any American. I sure as shit wouldn’t try this with an Irish tourist, however.
“I’m Irish, came to Boston, and landed in Las Vegas. Lucky me!”
That ditty came in particularly handy during St. Patrick’s weekend.
Doing my Shakespeare in the Parking Lot landed me in trouble just once….and it was embarrassing as hell. A 30ish woman got in the car and started bitching about her kids. That got old fast.
“Do you have children?” she blurted out.
Before I could fully think my answer through fully, I retorted with words which seemed to have a life of their own, which I could not control. “Yeah, two kids.”
“How old are they?”
“Umm……six and nine.” Don’t ask me why I invented those numbers.
“Where do they go to school?” Oh shit, I don’t know any of the local schools here. Now, I’m really fucked.
“Ahh, uhh………(seconds pass)……..Woodrow Wilson, I think.” I figure most cities have a school named Woodrow Wilson, right? Isn’t there a Woodrow Wilson Elementary here somewhere?
Next ,there was a prolonged pause.
“We don’t have a Woodrow Wilson Elementary anywhere in Las Vegas. I work for the district. You don’t know where your kids go to school?”
Caught in my dumb lie, I mumbled something else thoroughly unconvincing, abandoning the very first commandment of bullshitting that when you’re stuck in a hole — stop digging. She didn’t speak to me the rest of the way and the next eight minutes of dead air stank of uncomfortable silence. She frowned as she exited and I didn’t get a tip. So, I guess she caught on. Call this my Ishtar moment in performance art. Gee, I should have pretended to be from Belfast. She might have swallowed that line of bullshit.
Daily Tally: 16 rides = $130.30
Day 23 (Mar. 12) — I expected to run into lots more gamblers. But I didn’t run into gamblers. During this driver-journalist immersion-experiment, the subject of gambling came up no more than a few times in hundreds of rides. A couple of guys asked me about scores when their smartphones were dead, or they made passing comments about a point spread. But almost no one spoke about any form of gambling. They talked about everything else, except gambling, in fact. Honestly, that was a shocker. For a city that’s purportedly built on gambling, it’s odd gambling came up so infrequently.
Awareness that people don’t come to Las Vegas anymore to gamble anymore became increasingly obvious. They can gamble back at home, since 40 states now have casinos. If gambling is part of the plan, then they sure don’t talk much about it. While this is admittedly an unscientific summation, when combined with plenty of other evidence, non-gambling tourists comes as both a revelation and a warning. The Las Vegas gambling scene is in serious trouble. I wish I could bet the “don’t.”
An exception was a rider who I picked up at about 8 pm on this busier-than-expected Tuesday night. A young man, late 20s, got into the car. Immediately, I sensed he was pissed. He’d just busted out of the daily $70 poker tournament at the Rio. Seriously. Seventy bucks.
“Shit! I really needed the money. Dumbass called me with Ace-Five and caught an Ace on the river. Fuck!”
Oh man, Da Nang flashbacks recurring again. PTSD — which for me stands for Poker Traumatic Stress Disorder. But now, I’m hearing bad beat stories inside the Lyft car. I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.
This bad beat bullshit goes on way too long.
“Played four fucking hours and was two away from the money. Got dealt pocket Jacks cracked by some old fool with an Ace.”
Please. Please. Don’t let this guy recognize me. I want nothing to do with this. If I could pull off an Arabian impression, I would have attempted it. The poker player rambles on about his bad luck for the next 15 minutes which seemed much longer, of course, because that’s how it works with bad beat stories and we hit every goddamned traffic light between Tropicana and Centennial.
Now, what I’m about to tell you is 100 percent true: Inexplicably, this passenger needed to raise his rent money and was counting on cashing in a poker tournament, a tournament mind you, with 20-minute rounds. This would have been funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
Maybe this Lyft-driving gig is just as hopeless. Raising rent money driving for Lyft? Fuck it, what time’s the next Rio poker tourney?
Daily Tally: 15 rides = $184.04
Day 24 (Mar. 13) — Sometime around 9 at night, I get another ride. It’s a pick up from the arts magnet school, near downtown. For gifted kids. A young girl, perhaps 15 or 16, scoots into the back seat.
This ride is longer than expected — about 12 miles to Sunrise Mountain, in far east Las Vegas.
The girl has her smartphone in her hand and plays a video to herself much of the ride which includes the classic rock song, “Heartbreaker,” originally sung by Pat Benatar. She plays the song three or four times. The singer doing the Pat Benatar cover is outstanding. I mean, she’s really good. I can’t see her since she’s in the back seat and it’s dark. But this doesn’t stop me. One does become attuned to the skill of eavesdropping.
From what I can deduce in this limited time together, the song was performed earlier that night at the arts center and she was revisiting the show.
“That sounds great! Did you attend the show, tonight?” I ask.
“Yes — that’s me. I got to sing ‘Heartbreaker’ for my school.”
Damn. She nailed it. Moments later, the girl’s phone rang. She answered. Paraphrasing their one-sided discussion:
“Oh Mom, you should have been there! You should have been there! It was great! It was unbelievable!”
I couldn’t help but listen in. The voice on the opposite end of the phone wasn’t audible, but the conversation made it clear to me the girl’s mother was forced to work tonight and could not attend. She couldn’t attend her daughter’s performance. And the girl was, well, awesome.
“Oh, I wish you could have been there! You would have loved it! It was amazing! Oh, I wish you could have been there.”
She repeated that line several times. During the short conversation, there was never a reference to any father, nor any other family figure. Just a young girl, and her Mom. But Mom, like a lot of Moms in Las Vegas, had to work. She missed the show.
I’m still haunted by that conversation. Parents out there by the hundreds and thousands missing key junctions their children’s lives. Probably a struggling mother through no fault of her own trying desperately to survive and doing her best to raise a teenager, which is not an easy thing to do in Las Vegas, especially in 2019. Forced to work the night shift. Maybe a second job. And missing life.
Past Pecos, we pull into the broken down parking lot of a worn down, dark building with peeling paint chips. It was an apartment complex with puddles in the pavement and kids playing outside, way too late at night, schooled by neglect and probably destined for trouble. Her ride was completed.
The car back door opened.
“Excuse me,” I mustered up enough fortitude to say. “You are REALLY good. Stick with it. Work hard. You have talent. And from what I could hear, yeah — you were awesome.”
“Thank you, Sir. Goodnight.”
A real Heartbreaker.
Daily Tally: 16 rides = $144.41
Day 25 (Mar. 14) — An earlier than usual start to my day includes a rare accompaniment with the lovely Marieta who sits in the front seat as my passenger, navigator, and co-pilot. This is totally against Lyft’s policy. But fuck it. It’s my lease. It’s my time. It’s my ride. It’s my space. And as an “independent contractor,” which is what I’m called in the eyes of this cutthroat company, I’m doing things my way. They want to pay me a decent wage with benefits and make me their employee, okay, then I’ll follow the rules. But this is my fucking turf.
We run a few personal errands and end up in Centennial. Then, a call comes in for a pick-up. A stylish woman, mid-30’s, gets in the back seat. She’s holding a small white dog, a Maltese. Cute dog. The dog riding in the car, not a service animal, represents the second company rule I’m violating. Two violations on the same ride. Now, that’s impressive. Hey, when you’re an outlaw, might as well go for broke. Why rob a 7-11? Let’s stick up a bank.
I like dogs. So, I’m letting the pet ride. Remember — my rules. Well, the dog is a sweetheart, but Marieta and I learn quickly this ride is going to pose a challenge. The rider is picked up at 4:31 pm. She informs that she MUST be at an office in Henderson by the close of business — which is 5:00 pm. That means I have precisely 29 minutes to make it through rush-hour midday traffic, with a major highway under construction, over a distance that clocks in at 22 miles. According to my GPS, the estimated time of arrival is 5:11 pm. There is no way I can complete this trip within the time frame. Mario Andretti couldn’t drive this route by closing time.
But I like challenges. I love to tackle the impossible. So, let’s fucking roll!
“Can you make it? This is an emergency. I have to get there before 5!”
Sure Lady, no problem. Got a helicopter and a machine gun?
Of course, I didn’t really say that. But she wants me to drive 22 miles in 29 minutes which is supposed to take 40 minutes on the normal drive. It’s impossible.
Incredibly, everything goes perfectly for the first 12 miles. Like clockwork. Like Moses doing that Red Sea thing. Every lane opens. Every light turns green at the right moment. We drive 80 mph in the HOV lane and get all the way to Downtown Las Vegas. Another ten miles to go and I still have a window of like 13 minutes. Man, I love this smell of napalm, I really do love it so. Then, straight ahead past the downtown exits heading south towards Henderson, out of nowhere…..fucking WHAM!
We hit dead-stop traffic which means I-95 has morphed from a racetrack into a parking lot. The dream is over. We won’t make it. Sorry, Lady.
The woman with the dog is none too happy about this. Now, I’m thinking — what to do? Drive on?
“If you want me to try the side streets, I will. But there’s no way to make this by 5 pm. You have to understand that.”
The woman can’t conceive of this problem she created by not planning accordingly and then abruptly instructs me to make a U-turn.
“Okay, then just take me to my juice place.”
Huh? Excuse me? Did she say “Jews place?”
“Take me to my juice place. I want to get a juice.”
With Marieta silent and not wanting to poke the bear, the woman commands me to drive ten miles due north to a nondescript strip mall, where there’s some Jumba Juice store. The woman gets out, while we babysit the dog, lapping in the back seat with nothing to drink the last 45 minutes. Then, she returns to the car with a large juice, and it’s now time to drive another eight miles back to her apartment.
By this time, I can’t get rid of this passenger fast enough, but the fare ends up being fantastic financially — close to $30, which is the biggest fare of my entire 400+ passenger hauling experience. Of course, she’s a stiff. No tip. I might have tried one of my stories with her, but that wouldn’t have worked, and besides, Marieta might have completely lost it.
Daily Tally: 16 rides = $198.46
Day 26 (Mar. 15) — Until tonight, I’d never heard of an “escape room.” Don’t laugh. I still have much to learn.
Four twentysomethings cram into the car — the max ridership not counting dogs, of course. I’m instructed to drive to a run down warehouse nestled off Industrial, near what used to be called Naked City before some rich developers carved it up, gentrified it, and re-branded the area “the Arts District.” It’s 11:30 at night.
Umm, where are you headed? I think everything around here is closed.
“We’re going to an escape room!” Next, there’s giggling.
The four of them smell like dope. Skunk weed.
Not wanting to show my ignorance and give away the fact I have no fucking idea what they’re talking about, I drive to some lot littered with broken glass with no cars in it and buildings covered with plywooded windows and barbed-wire chain link fences.
Um, are you sure you have the correct address?
“Yep, this is it! This is the escape room!”
I’m figuring this must be a sex thing, a swingers club, some S&M joint. That’s it. Yep. That’s what an escape room means. All this is running through my sick confused mind.
One guy gets out and while everyone else stays in the car waiting. He can’t find the entrance.
Suddenly, a faint light bulb turns on and a side door to a warehouse opens. The four of them start giggling again and stream for the entrance. I don’t know whether to hang around and be a good Samaritan if this situation goes South quickly, or hit the gas and get the fuck out of here. The four dopers step inside the building and the door closes and the light bulb goes dark.
I blast the gas.
Three minutes later, I Google “ESCAPE ROOM” and learn what this actually means. Here you go, old people: LAS VEGAS ESCAPE ROOMS
Daily Tally: 13 rides = $135.63
Day 27 (Mar. 16) — Until this Saturday night, my Lyft driving experiences had been completely impervious to any danger. Perhaps naively so. Maybe I was just lucky.
I’d driven in every part of the city. Knowingly picked up pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Never an incident. Not once a problem.
That would change in a frightening way late on what was to be my second to last day of driving.
At 3:15 am on my way home for the night, I received a notification to pick up at PT’s, a locals’ bar near the Rainbow and Charleston intersection. This appeared to be a typical ride for this time of night. Someone likely had too much to drink and did the responsible thing by calling for a Lyft car.
As I pull up, I’m met outside in the parking lot by a muscular man who looks to be in his early 30’s. He’s yelling vulgarities at another man standing at the front door. Then, another man runs inside the bar. This all happens way too quickly.
After many hours driving out on the streets, I wasn’t paying attention to the argument. My task is simple — pick up the rider and get him on his way, arriving home safely.
The muscular man gets in and takes the front seat next to me. This happens in perhaps one in ten rides. I don’t really like front-seat passengers because it usually means I have to talk to them, and it just seems a little more intimate than something I want at 3:15 am with a complete stranger.
As we pull onto Rainbow, I look over and see his hand is bloody. The man announces he’s been in a bar fight and wants to leave for home.
Okay.
The Lyft app automatically maps out each rider’s destination and I see the inebriated man who’d just been involved in a bloody brawl will be traveling to the far side of northeast Las Vegas, some 20 miles away. This means I’ll be spending far more time inside the car with this man than I wanted to. I’d wrongly presumed he was probably a neighborhood local and just needed a quick lift home, perhaps only a few miles. But I was going to haul him to the opposite side of town and be stuck with a drunk and apparently dangerous man in the seat right next to me.
I don’t like this ride. I don’t need this job. I don’t want this risk. But I’m stuck.
Some small talk was attempted, him mostly talking, and me nodding along with the occasional verbal affirmation. The longer he talked the more he worked himself into a lather. The man became increasingly upset. He made a number of derogatory comments about Mexicans and told a story that he’d been thrown out of the Social Security Office for fighting that same day. This wasn’t a story I wanted to hear. Not at 3:15 am.
“Every fucking Mexican in there was getting free money from the government and I couldn’t even get a goddamned Social Security card that I lost because I didn’t show a birth certificate,” was the gist of man’s complaint.
He rambled on about Mexicans and then brought up his combat experience. “I was five years in the Army fighting and did two whole tours,” he said. “And I can’t even get my fucking Social Security card?”
Well, I decided then and there this wasn’t the time to let him know I’d voted for Bernie Sanders. I wan’t exactly keen on arguing him about sanctuary cities. I’m brave. But I’m not stupid. This isn’t the time nor the place nor the guy with whom to argue politics. Whatever steam this pressure cooker of a disturbed man wanted to blow off, I’d sit there, staring straight ahead, holding the wheel, bite my lip, and say absolutely nothing. Dude already had been in two fights that day and I didn’t want to end up as the third leg of his angry trifecta.
About 15 minutes into the ride, there’s an astonishing development.
“Where the fuck are you driving?”
What? I’m going to….[whatever the address written on the GPS says].
“No! That’s wrong! That’s my old address! I live…..[some address in the opposite direction].”
The man, angry and obviously inebriated, had tapped the wrong destination on the app. So, I’d blown 15 minutes driving in the wrong direction, and the man finally came to his senses and realized something was wrong.
Again, this wasn’t the fare to dispute or argue about. Just get this guy home, close the door, and be done. I don’t even give a fuck about eating the ride at this point. Just let it be over.
For the next 15 minutes, the disturbed immigrant-hating vet rants about everything on his mind. This is the longest ride of the Lyft ordeal, made much worse by sitting within inches of the uncertainty, a sort of village next to Mount Vesuvius. There was not telling if and when it might blow.
The ride ends sometime after 4 am. It’s a sigh of relief to see the disturbed individual out of the car and stumbling towards his front door.
This incident still bothers me. I wish there was something I could have said or done to help him. But one can’t do therapy from the seat of a car at 4 am. It was clear this man was in serious pain and had severe troubles. But rather than judge him, I felt sorry for him He’d clearly fallen through the cracks. He was an emotional casualty due to lots of circumstances, perhaps some beyond his control. Immigrants and hate and drinking and bar fights had become foils of frustration.
I hope that man can get some help. I really do.
Daily Tally: 18 rides = $231.33
Day 28 (Mar. 17) — It’s Sunday — my final day. My contract is over. A week loaded with drama ends with not a bang, but a whimper. Nothing interesting happens. Nothing at all. Gee, I wish every day of driving could have been like this.
For the past month, abnormal became normal and when that day finally came when nothing dramatic happened, that was the outlier. My night became my day. Normal is unusual.
I’m finished as a Lyft driver. Done with it.
I think.
Daily Tally: 13 rides = $112.22
POSTSCRIPT: I return the leased Nissan Altima to the Hertz rental center, located near the Airport. On my way back home, needing a ride, naturally — I call for Lyft.
An older man in a mini-van picks me up and begins driving. Two minutes into the ride, it happens:
“So, where are you from?” the driver asks.
Purgatory has no escape.
“Belfast,” I answer — in the most obvious American accent imaginable.
“Belfast? Where’s that? Ohio?
“Yeah — Belfast, Ohio,” I say.
Later on, I learn there actually is a Belfast, Ohio. This time, I got lucky.
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WEEK 4 RESULTS:
Total 56 hours driven and 117 rides given….$837.94 in earnings including tips and bonus after $274 rental car cost deduction…..minus $149 spent in gas….equals $12.11 per hour. 
Note: Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback posted on social media. In a follow-up article, I’ll post my final thoughts, which will include my recommendations for both drivers and riders.
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