I’m originally from a small town on Lake Michigan called Benton Harbor. But I’ve been in the Cincinnati area for the past 30-something years. I went to high school here. In my previous career, I was an operations manager, and I worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies, but I had some health issues I had to deal with. After getting back healthy or somewhat near healthy, almost two years ago, I picked up driving with Lyft. Even before I started, I would just take long drives. I just like to drive. And I thought, “I can drive, do what I like, but also get paid for it.”
My most memorable pickup was real early on. It was late at night, and I had a request for a pickup at the airport. I don’t know if you’ve been through the Cincinnati airport, but it is actually in Kentucky. So I drove out there to pick the person up. And this was back before Lyft made changes to the app. So when you accepted a ride, you didn’t know exactly where you were going or how much money you were getting for the ride.
She got into the car, and then I swiped, and it was taking her to Lexington, Kentucky. From the airport to Lexington was an hour and a half. So I was just like, man, it was late. But I would have really felt bad if I told the lady, “Look, I can’t take you. It’s too far.” So we were talking back and forth and come to find out that we both watched a lot of cooking shows. We were talking about Bobby Flay, and I told her, “Hey, I heard of this podcast that he has with his daughter, Sophie.” And so I asked her, “Hey, would you mind listening to this podcast?” And she was like, “Yeah, let’s check it out!” So we listened, and throughout it, we would have conversations about some of the things they were talking about. And then we also talked about some of our own experiences with different foods and different places where we have eaten. And it made the trip go by a whole lot faster than what I expected.
So we drove to Lexington, we had conversations, and I just found out many interesting things about Lexington. I have been there a few times because I’m into horse racing. A lot of the big horse farms are located in Lexington. If you fly into Lexington, you’ll see big statues outside the airport of racehorses. And then you also notice around the town, a lot of the streets are named after famous horses from the past.
When I dropped her off and helped her with her bags, she gave me a crisp hundred-dollar bill for a tip. So it was a cool ride, man. Like I said, at first I was just a little bit disturbed because it was late, you know what I’m saying? But once the trip started, and we started conversing, and then we started listening to the podcast, I mean, it was enjoyable. It went by really fast. When you have someone in the car with you, and you guys are having a great conversation, time tends to fly. You know what I mean?
