Childhood, an innocent time where we’re bombarded with television shows of animation, puppets, and people in costumes. This brings me to my first customer. A British bloke who owns a gift shop in town. He made a point to call me a kiwi, because he saw that I was an Aussie. He has a kiwi on his staff and calls her an Australian all the time just to push her buttons. I said he better be careful or he could have a lawsuit on his hands. A New Zealander, in South Australia sued a boss for calling her a kiwi once, about a year or two ago. Just silly in my opinion. I steered the conversation another direction about his home country. Where he was from and does he have any cool stories to share? You’re probably wondering why the childhood reference? Well my passengers cousin was one of the Bananas on Bananas in Pajamas. He was apparently B2. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking B1?” “I think I am B2, it’s weird connections time!” It’s not what I expected. I’m yet to have a famous person in my car. Just people who look like famous people or have a weird connection with somebody famous. Meanwhile people in Florida a few weeks ago had Will Smith randomly driving for Lyft. Ha nice one. I could only imagine what people would done seeing the Fresh Prince driving people around. What a cool surprise for passengers.
My next passenger was an expert on petrol. His father was a veteran and was rather strict on him growing up. He literally goes around the country testing the fuel quality from unleaded to diesel. His son does it too and gets paid a pretty penny for the work. When I told him I was an archaeologist by trade, he told me about how he was on a mates property at undisclosed location looking for gold and ended up stumbling across a bloody great big Mastodon. It was near a river bed. Not understanding the local laws at the time he excavated the whole skeleton. Eventually he told a museum of the find. He got no money for the discovery and wanted to know if he could. I said to him “that’s not how that works, if you had found gold it might have been finders keepers, but even then the federal government would have most likely acquired the property immediately”. Opals were discussed at length also. Including Cooper Pedy an underground city in Australia where opals are in abundance. Well they used to be anyway.
Ping! Another customer a coffee distributor from Tony’s. He travels the world finding the best coffee for this local coffee company. I asked him if he had a favourite country he had been to. It was Ethiopia. He loves the people and enjoys the scenery there. The coffee that is grown there is also one of the highest in quality. How can I do this I wandered? I love traveling, then I realised I really don’t like coffee that much unless it is full of sugar.
My next passenger has a husband who is a national poker player who was planning a trip to Vegas. She on the other hand works in HR, but was intrigued about my other job as a travel consultant. She wanted to plan a trip with her hubby to Vegas soon. I said I could help at the time and didn’t really know what would happen with this blasted coronavirus.
Following on I picked up a regular who works at lube shop in town. He only gets $14/hr, but he doesn’t do anything too above him. His seniors get $19/hr and have been working for 20 years in the lube industry. Servicing cars from Fords to Toyota’s.
Finally I had a couple of people who wanted to go to Denny’s. One of the passengers was from Nevada and was planning a trip to Australia soon. I gave them advice on where to go and what to see. They thanked me and tipped me well.
Uber had 3 rides and Lyft 2 trips. More antics to come.
