First time taking Lyft on our own today. We took Uber when we were in San Francisco a few years ago, but one of our kids arranged that. SWMBO installed the Lyft App a couple of days ago and arranged for a ride to the airport. $50 more or less. Last time I checked parking at the Economy lot at PDX was $10 a day, so it’s going to cost us a few bucks more, but no schlepping bags onto the shuttle bus, nor driving for miles to the back of beyond to find a parking space, plus I don’t have to remember where the heck I parked the car.
The Lyft driver was entertaining. Born and raised in St. Johns, he’s lived in Seattle and Las Vegas and now lives in Cornelius with his brother and two yappy dogs. He trained as a chef and a front-end software developer, but he makes more money driving for Lyft than he can make in either of those two occupations. He rents his car ( a Mazda 3) from Hertz for $209 a week, but Lyft gives him a rebate of $180 if he gives 105 rides a week. Lyft takes 25% off the top of the fare plus $2.50 per ride. He puts 50,000 miles on his car every year.
When he was a kid, it was a popular sport with street racers to go up on the Fremont bridge in the middle of the night, like 3 or 4 in morning, block off all lanes while one guy would do donuts in the middle of the bridge. Eventually thiis activity made the national news.
Lombard is popular with street racers because it is a long straight section with no traffic lights and, so far, no cameras. Street racing has dropped off recently, possibly because the police take a dim view of it.
I sometimes wonder why it took Uber and Lyft so long to get going, but now that I think about it, I realize thay depend on their customers having smart phones, so they had to wait until a sizable percentage of the population had them.
Taxis are really a criminal racket. Don’t know if all cities follow New York’s model, but New York is (was?) a real mess. To operate a taxi, you needed a medallion, and medallions cost $70K. The vig on that is going to be a couple hundred bucks a week, which really cuts into the amount a driver can earn. So I am glad taxis are going the way of the coffee cartels.
Our flight left PDX around sunset, so there was absolutely nothing to see, not that there would have been anthing but water anyway. There were two babies on the flight. One was pretty quiet, the other screamed and cried about half the time. Some of his rants sounded like ‘I bite you’. There was a child sitting behind us who sneezed a few times and whenever she did, it sounded like a shreik.
Where does all the noise come from? We’re cruising along at 500 knots and the noise level in the cabin is a dull roar. You can’t understand someone speaking quietly unless they are right next to you. Yes, jet engines are very loud, but is all the noise coming from the engines? Or is some of it coming just from the air rushing over the fuselage at 500 MPH?
They distribute tablets to people who want to watch movies. The seats have USB outlets on the back for charging your phones. The pocket on the back of the seat in front of you is now made of coarse netting instead of solid fabric.There is also a second pocket near the top that holds the magazine, menu, air sickness bag and safety card. This pocket has a single support strap to hold the materials, so it isn’t really a pocket either. The seats only recline about two inches. Not hardly worth bothering with. The headphones they distribute with the tablets are disposable. Can’t be bothered with cleaning and sanitizing them I guess. One overhead luggage bin appears to be dedicated to small oxygen cylinders.
How did Captain Cook discover the Hawaiian islands? The big mountain is 3 miles tall, so from the top of the mast of a sailing ship you should be able to see it from 150 miles away, which means there would be a 300 mile wide window where they would have been able to see it. But what are the odds? A few miles north or south and they would have missed it completely. Weird, man.
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