Trip length (pool): 19 minutes / 28 minutes. Trip distance (pool): 7.7 miles / 9.1 miles.
Fare (pool): $19.55 / $21.88 (3.5x Surge)
Song of the
trip: "Mountains" by Biffy Clyro
So most New Year's, I only get one truly memorable story. This year, however, it's a Blue Light Special, and you get two for the price of one. (You are paying me for this, yeah?) Just after I dropped off the people who may or may not have been Russian gangsters that I told you about before, I got a call from someone who needed to go back down to Los Gatos. They were forgettable, but right after that, I found myself in the fortunate spot of being in downtown Los Gatos just ten minutes after bar close.
Drivers have mixed feelings about Los Gatos. Sometimes you can hang around and there is the very definition of nothing going on and you'll have wasted half an hour. Others, Los Gatos Bar & Grill (or one of the three or four other places to drink late in downtown Los Gatos) has some kind of crazy turnout, and when they shut down, there's an insane demand for drivers which can propel it into surge zones that any driver is happy to have, mostly because it's guaranteed to be a several mile drive at that rate, which is what we all want.
Okay, maybe you aren't familiar with surge pricing, so let me give you a quick rundown. When there are more people calling for cars than there are cars available, the system in the area goes into what's called "surge pricing," meaning the amount passengers pay goes up, as does the amount the driver's make. You'd think we'd see that go to peak for New Year's, but as of late, surge has been bottoming out, which is why a lot of senior drivers have been tapping out. Having to work twice as hard to make half as much isn't to anyone's liking. Really, what the rideshare companies need to do is raise the base fares, and also set there to be a dynamic adjustment system based on the local price of gas, but they are doing what's called "minimum viable product," and only developing features when they absolutely, positively have to.
Drivers have an almost negligible ability to affect surge pricing, but we still do it anyway. Mostly, that consist of drivers knowing when huge attendance events are letting out (say, San Jose Sharks games at the Shark Tank, or events at Levi's Stadium or Shoreline such as Wrestlemania or Taylor Swift concerts), and turning off for, say, the first five minutes or so after it's let out, to let surge prices bubble up a little bit more. Doesn't always work, but the smartest drivers all do it, specifically so we can maximize the hell of having to live through the traffic of those events, because, you see, we're paid far better by the mile than we are by the minute. (I think the ratio, last I looked, was that six minutes of my time was worth about the same as driving one mile, but that's for a single fare trip. Pool trips, well, let's just say the companies prefer them a lot more than the drivers, because they can obscure how much you're being paid for the trip a LOT more.) Because of the ratio of mile-versus-minute, drivers never want to be sitting still.
All that is really just a long way of telling you how excited I was to see the surge pricing at 3.5x in downtown Los Gatos, and how delighted I was that it was a Pool call. Sure enough, as I'm pulling up in front of Los Gatos Bar & Grill to pick up someone named Ernest, the phone beeps again, telling me another rider's being added to the trip. I pump my fist as Ernest staggers over towards the car. "Ernest?" he says, climbing into the back seat without even waiting for a response.
"No, I'm Billy, but you should be Ernest. Are you?"
He squints at me for a second suspiciously, and I can actually hear the sound of the hamster sighing before it takes a short sprint on the treadmill inside the guy's mind and then he melts into a goofy grin and nods drunkenly. "Aw. I gettit. Yeah bro, that's me."
"Cool. We're going to pick someone else up a few blocks away and then we'll be off." I tap to start the trip, and the app tells me the next pick up is just down four blocks and around the corner, so I take the car down and off the main drag into the residentials, where I see there's a white Tundra with its blinkers on. I'm looking for a Nelson, and sure enough, the pick up point is right next to that truck, so I sally up along side of it and turn on my blinkers. Two men get out of the truck, one who looks to be in his fifties and one who I would certainly card were I a bouncer at a club. The older man hugs the younger man and then returns to his truck, getting back into the driver's side, as the younger man walks over, sees Ernest balled up against his door, and then walks around to the other side, climbing in. "Billy?" he asks.
"Yeah, you Nelson?"
"Nelson's my uncle. He called for the ride for me to get home."
I nod. It's not an uncommon occurrence. "Just gotta check and make sure you're the person who's supposed to be getting in." I tap the button, confirming he's gotten in, and see I'm looking about 20 minutes drive for my first drop off, and mentally pump my fist again.
"Does that happen often?" Nelson's Nephew asks me.
"More than any driver would like. Sometimes I have to threaten to beat them up if they don't get out of the car and go find the driver they actually called."
He laughs a little bit, but Ernest has his headphones in, and isn't paying attention. "Ever had to make good on those threats?"
I tip my head a little. "Come close a couple of times, but haven't had to lay down an asswhooping yet."
"Aren't you worried about them reporting you if you do?"
"How?" I laugh. "I'm not their ride, so they don't have any information about me other my license plate, and you know they're too drunk to remember that."
"Tight." He actually sounds amused by that, but the conversation dies there, and he turns to look at his phone, much like Ernest.
I've been driving for a few minutes now, and I'm starting to get a little nervous, because the map system took me right over CA-17 and we are still heading east, to my dismay. The fog has rolled in hard and heavy, and I'm on Kennedy Road, heading up into the goddamn mountains.
Los Gatos exists in this weird spot in Northern California in that if you head southwest out of downtown Los Gatos, you're going to end up in the mountains. If you head southeast, you're going to head up in the mountains, but different mountains. If you head northwest, you're going to head up into yet a different set of mountains, but at least you're heading towards Saratoga, and there's a main road you can follow. If you head northeast, well, you're taking CA-17 like any other sane individual back towards what can affectionately be called "semi-civilization," which is to say Campbell and eventually San Jose.
If you head straight east, however, you are either taking Kennedy Road or Shannon Road, neither of which is a particularly wide road, nor in any way lit. There will be signs warning about deer every so often, but for the most part, you're on a well-paved path through the goddamn mountains. Shannon Road is less windy and climbs less, so of course, we're on Kennedy Road instead.
Fog is uncommon in the south Bay, certainly when compared to San Francisco and its surrounding boroughs, but it still happens, and on this New Year's, the mountains were swamped with it like a John Carpenter flick. I have my brights on, and still I can barely see more than a car length ahead of me, so I have to keep the speed well below what I'd like to be doing.
And then I see the dropoff point coming up, so I start to slow the car, and eventually I bring it to a stop, right on top of the pindrop on the map. I can see nothing but fog, trees and road in any direction. No driveways, no houses, no mailboxes. Nothing. "Okay, we're here." Neither person in the back looks up, so I tap on my hazards out of habit. I don't know that they'll do any good, but then again, I also haven't seen another car for the last fifteen minutes, so I'm not too worried. I pop the dome light on and look back over my shoulder, raising my voice. "Ernest? This is you." Both guys pop their earbuds out and it's clear neither of them heard me, so I repeat myself. "Ernest? The map says we're at your destination."
Ernest turns and looks out the window. "Are you sure?"
I shrug. "This is the destination you selected, and it's a Pool fare, so I can't change it to anywhere else for you."
He opens the door and steps out, but doesn't close the door, walking a few feet in one direction, then crossing in front of the car to the other side, still far from steady on his footsteps. Then he seems to find a mailbox, I think? "Got it," he says, "I'm up this hill I think. Thanks bro."
Nelson's Nephew reaches across the car and grabs the car door to pull it shut as Ernest disappears into the fog, towards what I hope is his house? Or his friend's house?
"If he's not in the right place, how long before someone else picks him up?" Nelson's Nephew asks me.
"God help him if he isn't where he's going. It'd take a new driver twenty minutes or so to get here, and I'm not sure that guy would be conscious that long," I say as I turn off the blinkers and shift from park back to drive.
"Have I mentioned how glad I am it's you driving through this fog and not me?"
I laugh. "Just remember that when you're considering tipping."
"My uncle's paying for the fare, but lemme give you a few bucks in cash," he says, as we start to pull out of the fog and turn onto Shannon Road, where the road widens a little bit.
"My man."
So most New Year's, I only get one truly memorable story. This year, however, it's a Blue Light Special, and you get two for the price of one. (You are paying me for this, yeah?) Just after I dropped off the people who may or may not have been Russian gangsters that I told you about before, I got a call from someone who needed to go back down to Los Gatos. They were forgettable, but right after that, I found myself in the fortunate spot of being in downtown Los Gatos just ten minutes after bar close.
Drivers have mixed feelings about Los Gatos. Sometimes you can hang around and there is the very definition of nothing going on and you'll have wasted half an hour. Others, Los Gatos Bar & Grill (or one of the three or four other places to drink late in downtown Los Gatos) has some kind of crazy turnout, and when they shut down, there's an insane demand for drivers which can propel it into surge zones that any driver is happy to have, mostly because it's guaranteed to be a several mile drive at that rate, which is what we all want.
Okay, maybe you aren't familiar with surge pricing, so let me give you a quick rundown. When there are more people calling for cars than there are cars available, the system in the area goes into what's called "surge pricing," meaning the amount passengers pay goes up, as does the amount the driver's make. You'd think we'd see that go to peak for New Year's, but as of late, surge has been bottoming out, which is why a lot of senior drivers have been tapping out. Having to work twice as hard to make half as much isn't to anyone's liking. Really, what the rideshare companies need to do is raise the base fares, and also set there to be a dynamic adjustment system based on the local price of gas, but they are doing what's called "minimum viable product," and only developing features when they absolutely, positively have to.
Drivers have an almost negligible ability to affect surge pricing, but we still do it anyway. Mostly, that consist of drivers knowing when huge attendance events are letting out (say, San Jose Sharks games at the Shark Tank, or events at Levi's Stadium or Shoreline such as Wrestlemania or Taylor Swift concerts), and turning off for, say, the first five minutes or so after it's let out, to let surge prices bubble up a little bit more. Doesn't always work, but the smartest drivers all do it, specifically so we can maximize the hell of having to live through the traffic of those events, because, you see, we're paid far better by the mile than we are by the minute. (I think the ratio, last I looked, was that six minutes of my time was worth about the same as driving one mile, but that's for a single fare trip. Pool trips, well, let's just say the companies prefer them a lot more than the drivers, because they can obscure how much you're being paid for the trip a LOT more.) Because of the ratio of mile-versus-minute, drivers never want to be sitting still.
All that is really just a long way of telling you how excited I was to see the surge pricing at 3.5x in downtown Los Gatos, and how delighted I was that it was a Pool call. Sure enough, as I'm pulling up in front of Los Gatos Bar & Grill to pick up someone named Ernest, the phone beeps again, telling me another rider's being added to the trip. I pump my fist as Ernest staggers over towards the car. "Ernest?" he says, climbing into the back seat without even waiting for a response.
"No, I'm Billy, but you should be Ernest. Are you?"
He squints at me for a second suspiciously, and I can actually hear the sound of the hamster sighing before it takes a short sprint on the treadmill inside the guy's mind and then he melts into a goofy grin and nods drunkenly. "Aw. I gettit. Yeah bro, that's me."
"Cool. We're going to pick someone else up a few blocks away and then we'll be off." I tap to start the trip, and the app tells me the next pick up is just down four blocks and around the corner, so I take the car down and off the main drag into the residentials, where I see there's a white Tundra with its blinkers on. I'm looking for a Nelson, and sure enough, the pick up point is right next to that truck, so I sally up along side of it and turn on my blinkers. Two men get out of the truck, one who looks to be in his fifties and one who I would certainly card were I a bouncer at a club. The older man hugs the younger man and then returns to his truck, getting back into the driver's side, as the younger man walks over, sees Ernest balled up against his door, and then walks around to the other side, climbing in. "Billy?" he asks.
"Yeah, you Nelson?"
"Nelson's my uncle. He called for the ride for me to get home."
I nod. It's not an uncommon occurrence. "Just gotta check and make sure you're the person who's supposed to be getting in." I tap the button, confirming he's gotten in, and see I'm looking about 20 minutes drive for my first drop off, and mentally pump my fist again.
"Does that happen often?" Nelson's Nephew asks me.
"More than any driver would like. Sometimes I have to threaten to beat them up if they don't get out of the car and go find the driver they actually called."
He laughs a little bit, but Ernest has his headphones in, and isn't paying attention. "Ever had to make good on those threats?"
I tip my head a little. "Come close a couple of times, but haven't had to lay down an asswhooping yet."
"Aren't you worried about them reporting you if you do?"
"How?" I laugh. "I'm not their ride, so they don't have any information about me other my license plate, and you know they're too drunk to remember that."
"Tight." He actually sounds amused by that, but the conversation dies there, and he turns to look at his phone, much like Ernest.
I've been driving for a few minutes now, and I'm starting to get a little nervous, because the map system took me right over CA-17 and we are still heading east, to my dismay. The fog has rolled in hard and heavy, and I'm on Kennedy Road, heading up into the goddamn mountains.
Los Gatos exists in this weird spot in Northern California in that if you head southwest out of downtown Los Gatos, you're going to end up in the mountains. If you head southeast, you're going to head up in the mountains, but different mountains. If you head northwest, you're going to head up into yet a different set of mountains, but at least you're heading towards Saratoga, and there's a main road you can follow. If you head northeast, well, you're taking CA-17 like any other sane individual back towards what can affectionately be called "semi-civilization," which is to say Campbell and eventually San Jose.
If you head straight east, however, you are either taking Kennedy Road or Shannon Road, neither of which is a particularly wide road, nor in any way lit. There will be signs warning about deer every so often, but for the most part, you're on a well-paved path through the goddamn mountains. Shannon Road is less windy and climbs less, so of course, we're on Kennedy Road instead.
Fog is uncommon in the south Bay, certainly when compared to San Francisco and its surrounding boroughs, but it still happens, and on this New Year's, the mountains were swamped with it like a John Carpenter flick. I have my brights on, and still I can barely see more than a car length ahead of me, so I have to keep the speed well below what I'd like to be doing.
And then I see the dropoff point coming up, so I start to slow the car, and eventually I bring it to a stop, right on top of the pindrop on the map. I can see nothing but fog, trees and road in any direction. No driveways, no houses, no mailboxes. Nothing. "Okay, we're here." Neither person in the back looks up, so I tap on my hazards out of habit. I don't know that they'll do any good, but then again, I also haven't seen another car for the last fifteen minutes, so I'm not too worried. I pop the dome light on and look back over my shoulder, raising my voice. "Ernest? This is you." Both guys pop their earbuds out and it's clear neither of them heard me, so I repeat myself. "Ernest? The map says we're at your destination."
Ernest turns and looks out the window. "Are you sure?"
I shrug. "This is the destination you selected, and it's a Pool fare, so I can't change it to anywhere else for you."
He opens the door and steps out, but doesn't close the door, walking a few feet in one direction, then crossing in front of the car to the other side, still far from steady on his footsteps. Then he seems to find a mailbox, I think? "Got it," he says, "I'm up this hill I think. Thanks bro."
Nelson's Nephew reaches across the car and grabs the car door to pull it shut as Ernest disappears into the fog, towards what I hope is his house? Or his friend's house?
"If he's not in the right place, how long before someone else picks him up?" Nelson's Nephew asks me.
"God help him if he isn't where he's going. It'd take a new driver twenty minutes or so to get here, and I'm not sure that guy would be conscious that long," I say as I turn off the blinkers and shift from park back to drive.
"Have I mentioned how glad I am it's you driving through this fog and not me?"
I laugh. "Just remember that when you're considering tipping."
"My uncle's paying for the fare, but lemme give you a few bucks in cash," he says, as we start to pull out of the fog and turn onto Shannon Road, where the road widens a little bit.
"My man."
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