For our “Meet Your Driver” series, Rev asked several Lyft drivers to write about their lives, in their words. These are their stories.

I’ve always loved flying. I was a military brat, so I was all around the world with my dad, just seeing military stuff all the time. I used to walk around with my hands out like wings, and I would line spoons up on tables and pretend they were knobs on an airplane. My cousins nicknamed me Luis the Jet. 

About a decade ago, I started building a flight simulator. I used a very powerful computer that I had built and two monitors. One day when I was building it, my wife took me on a trip. She let me think we were going to Best Buy for a simulator part. We drove for hours. Just to get an idea of how far it was, we live in New Jersey, and we drove [out of the state and to the other side of Manhattan] to Long Island. We passed so many Best Buys. I really thought we were getting something from one store that we couldn’t get anywhere else. My wife said, “You’re going to be happy when you get there.” When we got there, it was an airstrip. She had gotten me an introductory flight.

Looking back on it, the instructor lied to me and told me what a great pilot I was. But whether I believed him or not, I fell even deeper in love with aviation. I went back, and I said, “Take my money. Here you go. Let’s go again.” I went again and again. I also finished building my flight simulator.

Flying is an extremely expensive hobby. I started scrubbing planes so I could make up the cost. For my wife, it was scary seeing how much money I was spending. But on the other hand, flying requires being healthy. I was eating healthier, I was jogging, and scrubbing airplanes was good exercise. So my wife was delighted to see me taking care of my health.

After I got my private pilot license, I started taking my friends and my family flying all around New York City. Because they’ve grown up with a father as a pilot, my kids absolutely love flying. My wife does not. I have plenty of videos up on YouTube of us flying, and you can see the fear in her face. 

I stopped flying airplanes about a year and a half ago. I started feeling like something wasn’t right. I went for multiple checkups and tests. Then I had an MRI. That’s when my doctor gave me some grim news. I was diagnosed with bladder cancer and given a short amount of time to live. My doctor gave me the option to have quality of life and not fight it, or to fight it. I chose to fight it. 

I had more than 70 rounds of chemo, two operations, and about 40 treatments of radiation. Just about two months ago, my cancer went into remission. I still have a tumor in me, but it’s not metastatic. It’s shrinking. 

I began using my flight simulator again about a month ago. I’m looking forward to getting back to flying. I have a friend who I used to fly airplanes with all the time. He’s going to join me when I start again. We’re just waiting another couple of weeks for things to warm up so we can get back out there.