My first time. . . in Uber (The Importance of Meeting Ernest)

Ernest -- 11 month Uber Vet.
Patch says he's trained to haul sick people. Nice to know.

We were at Danny's condo this morning with our granddaughter Emily. Kathleen needed to get going with Emily; Stan could stay and visit with Dan. What to do? We had driven together in Kathleen's VW bug and now we needed another car so everyone could stay on schedule.

No problem. Stan whipped out his iPhone with the Uber app. . . and said he'd try out the service just to see what would happen. It was a nice Sunday afternoon; a good day to get kicked to the curb.

Didn't happen. After a few minutes in Danny's lobby getting the app organized and then having the whole frustrating mess freeze up, suddenly the app went into gear and like magic it was telling me the price ($15.99) and that Ernest was five minutes away on the freeway, that he'd done this 3,000 times before, and here's his picture and vehicle.

I asked for the cheap ride. Here's what I got.

Exactly 5 minutes later Ernest showed up in front of the building, told me to get the back, and away we went. Ernest is a black man with a hairy face, so naturally I had my reflexive bias against him, but we quickly overcame that during our animated conversation over 15 miles. I got to tell my stories, then he told his, and the best I could make out was that he was a conservative Christian who listened to too much talk radio, and has a bias against journalists.
So much for my predispositions. The ride was over almost before it began, I tipped him $5 and went inside. There on my home email was a nice note from Uber, hoping I had enjoyed the experience, (I sure did), an opportunity to grade him and write something (I did) and a statement indicating the charge that would be put on my credit card. Done.