October 16, 2025 • 48 mins
An unflinching, darkly comic ride through the streets and subcultures of Los Angeles, Chasing the Surge follows a former cop as he trades his badge for a rideshare app. What begins as a side gig during the pandemic unfolds into a panoramic portrait of life after midnight—through heartbreaks, confessions, petty crimes, personal reinventions, late-night weirdness, and fleeting moments of grace. A mix of raw memoir and immersive reportage, the book captures the untold stories of passengers and driver alike, while mapping the subtle ways the job remakes the man behind the wheel. By turns gritty, hilarious, and unexpectedly moving, Foster’s debut cuts through stereotype and surface, revealing the hidden heart of the modern city—one unpredictable ride at a time. Publisher: BookFuel James and Raymond chat about the book and much more! Website: www.hitechcj.com Social Media: https://x.com/policeofficer https://x.com/AmerHeroesRadio https://www.linkedin.com/in/police/ https://www.facebook.com/lawenforcement http://www.youtube.com/@policewriter https://www.instagram.com/police_lieutenant/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
So everybody out there, you know what ride shares are, right.
I remember before the pandemic, I was getting mad at
taxis for a while because you get in the car
and it was like five dollars already charging a left
on nowhere, all these sir charges or whatever. I was like, okay,
I'm tied to taxis. And then some of my younger
(00:28):
friends were like, this is thing called ride share. So
if you get drunk, go and get drinking, you just
d take these cars. I'm like, so I'm going in
somebody's car, they're a regular car to have them drive
me around. So when I first heard this back then
in LA, they were sidecar. Remember a sidecar. We were
(00:52):
in Lyft. Now I come from New York where we
have the Leaking Town cars. They're very famous people. You know,
you hire a driver or whatever. But I know this
seemed different. Well, now I use it all the time.
And this person, okay, went from being an LA detective, right,
you're detective correct.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I was the lieutenant of police.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Lieutenant police left the police force, decided to become a driver,
which happens in LA.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
A lot. There's a lot you don't know who your
driver is.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That's one of the great things about driving you and
getting in the car because you can talk to I mean,
I've met all kinds of people and who are driving
these cars in LA.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
And he said, you know what, I got a lot
of stories. Let's talk about them.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's what he did. As the thing is a book out.
So I just came out last month called Chasing the Surge.
We'll explaining folks, you know what the surge means. What's
about that ten thousand rides into American nights. It's funny,
it's serious, it's all kinds of stories, and we're gonna
talk to them about it and congratulate them. My guest
is Raymond E. Foster.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Hi, Raymond, Hey, James, thank you for having me. Glad
to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
First of all, thank you for your service. I come
from a police LA police family, so I do so.
I just I mean, that's it's not an easy job.
I you know, you said everything you want, you handled
all that. Where are you watch? Secondly, graduation on the
book book is not So before you even talk out
(02:22):
the book itself, we're gonna go back, go back. So
when okay, so when, so when did you hear about
uber and Lyft and all that with out things I
told about it. For me, it was for the pandemic.
But when did you learn about those kind of ride shares?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, probably the same time that you did. I retired February,
it'll be twenty two years ago. So in two thousand
and four I retired when my first book came out,
Chasing the Surge, actually my ninth book. And so I
heard about ride share driving. And I just come back
from a consulting gig in the Caribbean. I lived in
the Caribbean for a couple of years, working for the
(03:01):
European Union. Uh. And I always looking for something else
to do. And I and I talk about this in
the book. I had these these, you know, as a kid,
these ideas of the perfect job, astronaut, jet pilot. They
were top of the list. I'm a little old for
that now, so those have kind of fallen off the list. Uh.
And then garbage truck driver. I always thought that would
be an awesome job when I was a kid. Cab
(03:23):
driver and movie usher, and I thought that those were
the movie ushers. They get to see the movies, the
cab drivers. And so the uber thing came out and
I looked at that I'm like, wait a minute, somebody
gets into my car. They called it ride share, and
it's not ride share, it's person it's your car. It
becomes a cab. You're not sharing, You're not sharing the
(03:43):
ride with anybody. You will you know, as a driver,
you're gonna do pool rides. And pool rides are just
a nightmare by definition. Uh So probably the same time
you did. Uh And I bought a car, uh specifically
for the purpose and sign up.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And I didn't have the intention at that time, but
after the first ride, the very first ride, it dawned
on me what was going to happen and what could
potentially happen with this uber gig. And so that's where
the book starts.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Do you like driving?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I do?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Okay, So I know that's you know, have some Do
you like driving? That's our that's the day because for
you to go from I mean, I'm sure you drove
a lot, you were at the LAPD, but it's kind
of like now you're saying you retire, you look at
something to do. Now you like you gotta like driving?
Push you in LA what you gotta like driving?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah? I as a matter of fact, when the pandemic
cleared up around in twenty twenty one. Twenty twenty two,
I took a road trip and drove to Maine to
see a couple of my kids and drove back. I
love to drive, and so the idea of driving and
after the after I decided what I was going to do,
which was essentially, you know, I'm a great technical writer.
(05:02):
If you look at my other books there they're textbooks
and their or their technical writing. But I always wanted
to write fiction. And after that first night, I realized
I could go around and I could collect stories, and
I could teach myself to tell stories, to write dialogue,
to frame a scene, and then to teach myself to
(05:24):
write fiction. And this book I thought of as a bridge.
And you know, this book was hard to do. It's
been ten years that making, five years of driving and
five years of struggling with a manuscript. And so that's
that's what you have there is the original manuscript, James
was one hundred thousand words that when there's about sixty
(05:46):
I literally cut forty percent of that out of it
as I began to chop away and try to learn
to write in the voice I wanted.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So you're saying your first eight books were all technical books.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, yes, they're all. As a matter of fact, a
book came out six weeks prior to Chasing the Surge
called The Temple Within, and the Temple Within is an
exploration of Freemasonry. The philosophy is a Freemasonry because I'm
also a Mason. And then I've got a leadership book.
And you can see right over my shoulder there, I've
got four of the books displayed. The other one was
(06:20):
a textbook on technology. Uh. And so they were all uh.
I call it technical writing. You know, textbooks, there's there's
still a story, but it's not quite the same as fiction.
And I wanted to teach myself because I I've already
begun to write fiction. I want to there's a there's
a series I want to write. I want to write fiction,
(06:40):
and I needed to do it well and I needed
a way to learn to do it.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay, So years on the force, You're like, I'm retired.
I went to you went to the Gribbian. All right,
you said you want to get something started. So when
did you start driving? You said I would Pandemic Star
opening up.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
No, I started driving five years before the pandemic started,
so let's say twenty fifteen. Yeah, it would have been
twenty fifteen. Originally the idea was just to gather and
have stories. And then I thought, well, I can get
to a thousand, and then I got a title for
a book, right, A thousand rides, And then I didn't
have quite an I didn't. I began to chase the
next story, right, and then I got the well, I'll
(07:25):
go to five thousand, and then I'll go to ten thousand,
and the pandemic put a stop to the driving. I
probably would still be chasing the damn stories because you
know one was better than the next.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, it reminds me of a taxicab confessions, folks. I'm
aging myself you guys for that show, all that kind
of stuff, just because it's one of those things where
we assume, and probably rightly so you see it here
at all. I mean, you're you're just you don't know
who you picking up, where, where you're taking them, what's
gonna happen in the car, what the conversations are on
(07:59):
the phone, where they're saying to each other, where they're
saying to you. I've made friends of some of my drivers.
Actually they're in the creative space. Everybody's trying to make it,
of course, right, So I got to know there was
a driver first, and then later you know, now we're friends,
so I'm sure we assume and I'm and you can
you can say this. You saw, you heard this all
kind of stuff, didn't you these years.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I did, and you know this. So as I wrote
this the first pass I wrote at this. The first
time I wrote this, it was a collection of story.
Some of them were interesting, some of them were not.
But it was disjointed. It didn't come together. The second
time I wrote it, it was the same way. The third time.
I realized there's there's some uber rants in here, ranting
(08:42):
about what it is to be a right shair driver.
And I was at the same time wrapping up this
other technical book and this other book. This is a
book in philosophy, really, and it dawned on me the
problem was that the rides aren't the story. The story
is me. Remember when I get into this, I'm a
(09:02):
my training right and nature is when you call the
police officer, right, they get to a location, you're in
a crisis of some kind, they figure out a solution
and then there, they impose that solution on you, and
if you don't like the solution, they're going to make
you do it anyway. They're gonna, however, they make you
do that. Right. You can't do that as a reight
(09:23):
shair driver, right, So you end up with a problem
because there's gonna be a lot of problems and you can't.
You have to learn a whole new set of skills.
And the other thing is too, I started to drive
very late at night because even like police work, the
freaks come out at night. Man, I mean just kids.
(09:45):
I say that when the when lights go down, you know,
the the what shines is the weirdness. And so I
started driving later, late at night, which I enjoyed anyway.
But then I had some advantages. And some of the
advantages were it's one thing you learn as a cop.
You you hear more by shutting up, right, and so
(10:12):
just to let people talk. And I guess what I
had to learn too was not to not to not
to spin them up, not to intervene whatsoever, let it
run its course. And sometimes that started to edge towards
what felt like dangerous and other times, uh, sometimes it
wasn't gonna work. But you know, just let it run
its course. I just you're absolutely right. And I was
(10:33):
a silent witness in the front. I was a witness.
Occasionally I would have to take some action, but normally
I just watched the whole thing parade by me.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. You just you're sitting there
an observer, and well as you're just driving. You're driving,
so you gotta pay attention. You're driving, they're having whatever
they're having in your because I know as people just forget,
I guess they don't care they're in cars or whatever.
They just they just their lives continue. And you like,
I really don't want to hear all your business. I
don't want to hear all of it, but you do it.
(11:06):
It's crazy, and it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I think. I think some people are exhibitionists with their
relationships and so they want they want to witness to
all of it. And but a large percentage of people,
the driver is a piece of furniture. You're not a
human being to that person in the back. And and
those rides mostly don't make the book because they're boring. Right,
(11:32):
you can tell when somebody you're just the driver. I
don't want to know who you are. I don't want
anything about you. I don't want to engage you in conversation.
There's one part in the book that slows down a
little bit, and one of the one of the reviewers,
the editorial reviewer, said, this slows down a little bit.
At this portion, I go, yeah, think of that's what
right chair is like. Man, it's slow. You're grinding right
(11:54):
after ride after ride after ride after ride, and you
know you're grinding. Uh, it's not. And if you don't,
if you're not, you don't have somebody. If the if
the app's not on right, you're not making money. No
so and and I haven't driven for five years. And
I'm certain Uber has changed, but probably not that much.
(12:17):
But when I was a very early adopter, when Uber did,
they did a lot of crazy things, and I talk
about that a little bit, but I dropped most of
the rants about Uber because what's the difference.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Oh, I think I think Uber and left, which are
left there's no sidecar anymore or whatever. I'm probably the
same as when you left five years ago, and I
got cute. A couple of things whatever have changed, but
mostly the same and out the way mout o.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
The thing's all over la down.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I'm afraid of getting one to get it one, you know,
so I I it's yeah. I was like, yeah, I'm good.
I'm not gonna be yeah, I'm gonna be right that
anytime soon. I'm afraid of the robots. I'm so scared
of them. I'm not ready. But for you, so you
drove for a while, you got to gather all these stories?
(13:13):
Is there anything?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Oh? I want to say? This? Was it? Were you?
How hard?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
You said it was a hard book to write? That's
what I'm saying. I can see that. How do you
discern what stories got in the book? Or what stories
psychn make? I'm sure you had so many you can
choose from you probably how did you discern from going
super outrageous to like I said it was, or boring?
You know you get those? How'd you gauge all of that?
(13:41):
You have a bunch of story ideas and go okay
that yes that you know?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
How'd you do it?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Well? I approached the writing technically from the same standpoint
as that do most of the projects. So what happened was,
you know, as I was going along, I got the
idea I first began to take notes, but that wasn't convenience.
So what I did was if we got let's say
that I gave you a ride and you did something
that was kind of out of the ordinary or might
be useful in explaining something like people do things that
(14:09):
aren't out of the ordinary. There's one thing I call
cya uber rides. People will order an uber like a
block from their home, and so they can get out
of an uber, but they got dropped off by somebody
else at that corner. They just don't not want mom, dad,
or their spouse to know. And so you would get
those and so that kind of ride, I might use
(14:33):
you as an example, and I would. So what I
would do is I would then after the ride, I
would record it on an app on my phone. I
just would say what had just happened. And then every
once in a while I would just transcribe those. Ultimately,
when the pandemic hits, I pay someone to transcribe all
of those, just transcribe all the words and they give
them to me. And then what I do is I
(14:54):
would go through them and identify let's say, three or
four keywords in each one that kind of relate to it.
I put all that in a spreadsheet, and it began
to they began to form up themselves. Because chronologically it
chronologically is necessary to talk about my development, but chronologically
is boring book wise. So the first story you read
(15:15):
in the book actually happens a couple of years in
and you can tell because I handle that way differently
than when I Then I dial it back and say, okay,
a lot happened then, but here's what happened the first time,
and the first time you can see that these people
set my teeth on fire with their shenanigans, right, because
(15:38):
that's not what I intended to get, was this thing.
And so over time I begin to develop, and that
part of the development also takes place in the writing. Again,
I chop, chop, chop, and then I have to write
about myself, and then I have to become more honest,
because then I looked at some of these situations, I go, well,
you know what, I'm partially responsible for that. I said
(16:01):
X to a person because they were a NOTTHEAD and
I just could say it, and so I had to
be honest. You know that I did that. I could
have done that better. Oh I learned this, Uh, and
so that became a little more shading to the writing.
So that was the process, and the stories were selected
(16:21):
to further along the character development, which is me, and
to engage the reader. You.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So basically the book gets the through line of the
glue of the book is shield you are. You are
at the base level. That's what we're following at along
the way.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
You get these stories, right, that's it, that's it sense
and yeah, and we don't leave the car because that's
where I am. The other thing I did was I decided.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Other stuff in the car leave. I don't think who
cares what was happing outside?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Uh? I. Also then the last past, the one that
worked the best, was I just decided to write in
a film noir voice. And so somebody wrote a review
of it. It hasn't hit Amazon, but they said it
was a Raymond Chandler reimagined in the gig economy. Okay,
they got it right, They got they got the voice,
(17:23):
and they got the they got what was going on.
And I decided to do that m because I like
the voice.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Sure, book wherever you want, that's all say. I know,
that's that's so funny. I like that's it's because you know,
I guess we are following you. You need an anchor
in a book and a story, so we're following you
and then all the shenanigans that enter your space. That
makes sense, right, yes, yes, I think please go ahead,
(17:55):
please please?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
No, Well, I'm the I think me. Originally see one
past writing this uber was the character, and that you could.
I wrote it that way, and it was okay. I
wrote one Past. It was all collection of stories and
tried to gloom together but finding bridges and passages. It
was just like a collection of anecdotes and it was stupid.
(18:18):
It was just trash. And then when I wrote it
ubers As, the character was less trashy. And then I
wrote it, okay, how about from the point of view
a frustrated uber driver because most of it was really
frustrating me and pissing me off. Then that didn't work.
And finally when I was I had wrapped up this
last philosophy book in January and I didn't have a
title for it. I'd written one hundred thousand words. It
(18:39):
was perfect. Man. I took my wife says, best writing ever.
Did four hundred and fifty five page work, three hundred sources.
It's just a beautiful piece of work, but I didn't
have a title for it. I'm like, I just struggling
to figure out title. And there's that other book sitting
right there. And again my wife says, well, what's going
on with that other book? And I said, I'm just
so frustrated with it, and I opened it back up,
(19:01):
and that's when the final pass came out of me.
And I also realized another thing. Just as I was
chasing the best story and the pandemic finally stopped me,
I was chasing the best version of the book, and
all I was doing was giving new versions of the book.
And so there's lots, there's lots going on in in
(19:23):
my world as the writer.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, wow, I love it. Well, you said you shaved
it down from so what was what was the shaved down?
Was it story?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Was it story ease or was it development? Like what
were you shaving down? Basically?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
All right, So there's a long there's long passages uber
at the time and I don't again don't know what's
going on now, but at the time, as an example,
I do, I do talk about this. I was in
one accident, right, and in that accident, the whole process
was automated, amazing amazingly disconnected from me, amazingly disingenuous toward me.
(20:12):
Even the writer was kind of weird. So I'm like
the whole process ubers just didn't care. I was just
a number. And the other thing is you have to
understand ubers out. It's a disruptive technology by its nature.
It's out breaking rules, right. And at the same time,
there's these other people, primarily called the police, who are
(20:33):
enforcing rules. So you're the Uber driver and you're in
this organization. So how these rules are meeting each other
and you're in the middle. And then like for a
while is you had to pick up every call otherwise
they would they would discontinue you. So you had to
pick up everyone, no matter how far away it was.
And then yeah, and then there was there's all kinds
(20:56):
of things that developed over time that made you so angry.
Like here's it was so frustrating if you dropped the pin, right,
you drop the pin, and you know what dropping a
pin is thin. The writer drops a pin in a
gated community, all right, and they don't give you directions
to get into the gate. They don't they don't give
(21:17):
you a phone number, nothing right, and you get there
and Uber doesn't show you arriving until you become within
a certain distance from the pin. So I can get
to the gate and it shows me not arriving and
the writers inside waiting for me and getting angrier. I
can't contact them, so I can. You know, I would
(21:38):
do things like try to drive around the gated community
to get as close as I get to the pin
to try to try to stop it. And finally what
you would have to do is just let it expire,
and of course you take a hit in your record.
These things were very they were frustrating, and you know,
I'd write these long rants about this. Another one that
(22:01):
happened that I didn't make the book. There's an airport
pick up at the Antara Airport and there's a long
line and there's no parking and no stopping, and there's
a police officer right there with a ticket book in
his hand, and I can see the writer who's waving
at me, and so I wave, I'll be right there.
(22:23):
He walks over to the car with his luggage and
wants me to stop. The police officers looking right at me,
daring me to double park in traffic. So what I
do is I pull forward and the writer start. When
I finally get up to him, because he has to
walk up to me, he immediately begins to be rap me. Okay,
he begins to be rape me, and I look at him.
(22:45):
You know what I'm done with you? I said, no ride,
and he goes, you can't not give me a ride.
I'll give you no stars. I go, I haven't accepted
the right, idiot. You can't not grade a ride you
didn't take, so you can you can f off and
go back, stand back on the curb. And now I'm
now so now I've lost her. You're an idiot. You're
trying to get me a ticket, and I because, and
(23:07):
I start the conversa. Here's what I say. When I
get out of the car, James. I said to me,
I'm really sorry to pull forward, but that cop was
there with a ticket book and he would have given
me a citation for stopping. So I apologize. He goes,
I don't care about that, he said, I don't care,
you should have stopped to give me. I just looked
at the guy like, okay, never mind. Know we're done.
So I didn't I cut that out because well that's
(23:28):
a boring story. So if it got a boredom or
it was a rant about Uber being it cut it,
cut it down. And if I got to flowery with
my scene sets, I cut that back to. So, yeah,
(23:49):
a lot of work on it. I took an axe
to it. Then I took a scalpel.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well, I think the thing is, you know, if you
left certain things in it would do a kind of book.
You want to do a book about Uber and that's
something quite different, right, you want to do a book
about the Salacio side. Right, there's the book two, Like
there's you could have went any directions, so I could
you say, You're like, I've kind of wanted like a
collection of story. It's about it's about me just following
(24:13):
along with me and how these stories come out and
inform your rides, your nights, your nights you're out and
about doing these rides and it forms all that.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, and the chapters came to getting much better. One
of them is Loving the Rear View Mirror. That's the
title of the chapter, and that is about, uh, some
of the romantic escapades that go on within the car
between the writers, everything from people having sex in the
back seat to people wanting to have sex in the
back seat, to people breaking up, literally breaking up in
(24:44):
the car. Oh uh yeah, all kinds of craziness. And
I just watch and then some of them it's about
crime because people actually committed crime in the car. Uh.
But at one point a guy used the Uber as
the getaway car for you uh, and I had to
(25:05):
go back to the scene and explain that I was
not the getaway driver, but I knew where the suspect was.
So all these things went on, and they make for
good stories.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. You tell me, okay,
coind of rapid fire. And this is actually a suggestion
for one of my fans.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So I told to you I was gonna do this,
this kind of story. They're curious, all right.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Hey, So Raymond One as a as a former cop,
huh did you feel safe for driving ubers?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
That might uh?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
You know, I twenty years ago, when I retired, twenty
two years ago, I started teaching at university and I
didn't take a handgun with me on the campus. Then
I moved overseas and I lived in a third world
country where I couldn't have a handgun, and so my
CCWMT has actually been expired for about fifteen years. I
don't carry a gun now on the job. I was
in three gunfights and so so, and I've said for years,
(26:01):
you know, it only takes one gun to have a gunfight,
and don't matter who brings it. Uh, And so there
have people gotten in the car with guns. And there
were times where we were on the edge. But that
was not I wasn't fearful. I was excited because when
(26:25):
you get to my age, man, I'm gonna push at seventy. Now,
there's nobody's good anything exciting anymore.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
So I I didn't feel unsafe, but I knew when
I was unsafe.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I got it like that. Or two, where'd you go pee?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Oh? Everywhere? Man?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I asked him to ask him because always gys where
do they pee when they're out in a ball like
And I know some of my friends, like black go
to Starbucks, I buy a coffee, I go pee, or
I go here.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you, James, and
this is in this This story didn't make the book
because it's almost a rant. One of my favorite things
to do to go pee was hotel lobbies to walk into.
And what I what I would do is I would
pull into the drive and I would get out of
the car and I would walk in and I would go, hey,
(27:22):
where's the lobby restroom. They'd say it's over there now.
And I write a long passage on how that exemplifies
white privilege because as a as an older white guy,
they presume I'm in, I'm a I'm staying there, whereas
if I was twenty years old or I was a
person of color, they would not do that. They would
question me or they would say something different. And that
(27:44):
didn't make the book because it got too preachy. But
but there were also lots of alleys, and there were
lots of quite frankly off of Sunset Boulevard in the
McDonald's parking lot, just stepping outside the car in the dark. Uh,
And I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, I don't know that one where that is yes,
So there you go. People they want me to want
meybody want me to ask you that. I was like,
I don't know, they do, I don't they do out
there and already answered you already answered. Another question was
that you have been in an accident at least once right.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, one time.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, he's folks food because your driveway. Where have you
eaten a lot of places just because of vicinity? Like
I'm here a real chow, this is place over here,
I'm here in Pasadem Like have you had a lot
of places?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Well, you know the best part about that about the
uber was I got to revisital Okay, I got to
go down to I think I stopped down at Gadbury's
once or and I stopped at that was over at
Langer's Deli off of Oh yeah, I don't yeah, And
so these are places I went when I was young.
(28:53):
I stopped at the pantry before they closed it one
night because I could, Uh, so I'm all over you
know the chicken place over there off of the near
the airport. I can't think of the place of the
giant chicken.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Oh so I stopped.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, I stopped everywhere because I was out and about
and so a lot of times it would depend on
my mood. But I might say We're gonna sit down
and have a nice meal, or I'm just gonna grab
del taco and get you know, at that time the
ninety nine cent tacos need them. But the thing you
had to do. Now, there's two things about the Uber.
(29:30):
If you keep the interior clean and after every three
or four rides, you got to spray it down with
air freshener and you got to wipe everything down. But
you don't eat inside of it because it's gonna smell
like whatever food you had. And at the time, I
quit smoking three years ago, so at the time I
was smoking, and I was a two pack of Day's
smoker for forty years. So the thing is I had
(29:53):
to get out of the car rain or shine Man,
because then that's in the book. You hear me say
I got out of the car and the pouring ride
and had a cigarett. Yeah, well that's what you know,
that's the relief of stress. So and I had to
be really careful not to blow the smoke in the car.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Oh right.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
So the food was somewhat impacted by the driving, but
it did give me the opportunity to go wherever I
wanted to go and eat whatever I wanted to eat.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Oh sir.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Another one is didd you set times where you're like, Okay,
today i'm gonna drive six hours. I wanna drive eight
hours today, I'm gonna drive from morning to three, I
said you a lot. I'm gonna start at techlock at night,
so too, did you always set times you went.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Out If I didn't have something going on in the
evening at the Masonic Lodge some Monday nights. I generally
didn't drive on Monday nights. Thursday night at the social
light end at eight thirty, so I'd probably leave there
and go at nine o'clock and start to drive, and
I would drive through the night. Sometimes that's just driven
by uber. If you get a ride to San Diego
(30:54):
at you know, one o'clock in the morning, but you're
going to San Diego and you're not gonna be home
for until three or four, So I drove it night. Uh.
If I got home by three o'clock in the morning,
I actually stopped at twenty four hour Fitness for a
couple of hours hit and I would get to bed
about five am and get up around noon. So that's
(31:14):
pretty much the target for a few years.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Have you ever been hit on while driving?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oh yeah, that's just great story of the book. But
not not always by women, That's.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
What I'm saying. The matter in LA I'm sure guys
find you attactive too. Shit I'm like, why.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Not, there's one of the that's one of the stories.
It's an early story. It's an early story, and I
talked about it and it was he was really aggressive
about it too, very very very aggressive, and to where
he says, do you ever experiment?
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Okay, okay, And.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
He's sitting right next to me because I hate that
front seat, man, I made I made a rule. You
don't get in the front seat anymore. I hate the
front seat. I'd rather be shot in the back of
the head than have you sitting next to me. I
swear to God. Uh so, he says, are you and
this isn't the book. I'm not going to give the
whole thing. Yes, can I do you mind if I
curse on your problem? Yes, he says. He says, here
(32:18):
experiment And I look at him. I go, you mean,
like with a chemistry set? And he goes, no, no,
you know, sexually. And I look at him and I go, so, uh,
I'll just change the conversation. Hey, you know what, I says,
what do you do for a living man? He goes,
I'm an actor. I go okay. Well, I go, okay, good,
what kind of movies are you? And he goes, well,
I'm a gay porn actor.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Oh wow, wow, okay, that's good.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Hey yeah, no, yeah no. First he starts out with, hey,
it's dark around here, we can pull over. And then
he finally says, do you do you experiment? And I say,
what do you mean like Chmistry said? He says no, sexually,
to which I look at him and I stopped the
car and I turned to him and I said, you
mean like the animals, and he goes, he just looks
(33:03):
at me and he goes, you know, those choosy cows.
Fucking sweet man. He scoots back against the door and
I just drive off. Doesn't say a thing for fifteen minutes,
and then he gets out of the car. So I
turned the tables on him because he was really making
me uncomfortable and you know, violating my personal space. And
(33:26):
I just went right back at him. And I'm kind
of known for that quite frankly, so that came very naturally.
That's the other thing about writing these some of the stories,
some of people say, why don't you tell cop stories?
And I'm like, well, number one, most of the stuff
that happens you're not going to believe. Oh got it,
(33:46):
You're just not going to believe it. And some of
the stuff in uber that happens is just not believable, right,
I got that too. Unless you understand the true depravity
that the human beings could sink to, you're not going
to get it. So that's yeah. I've been hit on
a couple of times. There's another there's another story in
there where I don't know if she was hitting on me.
(34:08):
I don't. You can read the story for yourself, and
she's touching me and her husband's in the car and
the whole thing's going sideways and I'm trying to figure
out what the hell's going on. But you can read
that in a book.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, reading the book, folks, I say, we get some
little tilly stuff in there reading the book. No, But
I mean I always I always just wanted to too,
because you're driving and some folks that could be they
have had some drinks and I've done a little drugs
and I've done it, you know whatever, or it's attracted
to you. I mean, it's like for some reason you're
in that position because you're like you're you're the driver.
I don't know, I mean, I don't mean, it's one
of those weird things. I think that happens to people.
(34:39):
It's like a profession that they're like just like get
turned on by a or something.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Well, you know what, you go as a man, you
go through phases attractive wise, and you get to a
point where woman to be attracted you, she's got to
have a daddy fetish.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, you're a daddy, dad daddy.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
You know at this point, she's got to have a
grandpa fetish.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
And the toad they're out there, trust me, they're out there.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And then I've got some I've got a friend. I
tell them, well, you know, you're probably looking for women
that have a mummy fan. So that's something to look
forward to.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
I've had, I've had.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I was at some you know, the produce sections that
sprouts their whole foods, and I get that. I love
the gray beard like and I just never thought in
a million years that was something that people would be
attracted to. Everybody's like trying to die. They're just you know,
but I so you like me, we don't die. It's here.
I earned every every gray hair, I always say, but
I when they go, it's so set your salt and peppers,
(35:37):
so I'm like, okay, I'll take it. I mean, anybody
hit somebody, I'll take it. I'm like, I'm like, i'll
take it.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
But i just go.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
That's interesting that they like the older look now and yes,
and I know some folks like the older, the cougars
and all that. It's all out there, you know, we
living longer, we live longer. Raymond a little longer.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Longer gets it, and they all get in the car.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yes, I do, so I talk side. Taking a little
bit back toe is just fun stuff. Back to the
grabbing fire. Okay. When it comes to eating, like you said,
you don't eat in the car, But it comes to
drinking and coffee or juice or water, do you drink
that in the car while you're driving?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Uh No, But I will have a cup of coffee
usually afterwards. I'm drinking coffee now because the warm liquids
are good. When you're speaking for a long periods of time.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Yes, yes too.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah so no, No, you're very so.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You're very much like I don't want any crazy smells
my car that'll offend anybody, because maybe peop don't don't
like coffee or whatever you like, or juices or they're
just like it's very clear.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Just the air is fine. Yeah, whatever smelling stuff, give it.
That's it. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, Also, there's you got to realize that they're gonna
get somebody's gonna get in the car. At three or
four people you pick up, suddenly there's no personal space left.
So your drink holders or their drink holders. Oh yes,
you know, every thing becomes it just becomes more complex.
So I generally avoided that.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, makes sense, that's what it makes sense. Next one,
was there a distance you were like, no, that's just
too far.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
No, only no, because remember I was chasing this I
was chasing this book. And so you know the white
whale of uber driving is the trip to Las.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Vegas, right right, that's yep, that's what. Yes, Las Vegas.
It was what we said Riverside friends like Riverside. It's
so far away enough from La But yeah, I heard
Las Vegas. Las Vegas are palm springs where two always
heard those are like.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Oh it did lots of palm springs, right, yes, oh yeah,
and lots of San Diego. I did one one to Bakersfield,
oh wow, yeah, and so what I would you know,
It just depends I got one. I picked up at
Ontario Airport and he wanted to go to Big Bear, right,
And I knew going up to Big Bear that coming
(38:03):
back down there were you're not going to get any
rides coming back this one. That's that's you're dead heading
all the way down. But I picked him up in
a four time surge. And so he got in the
car and I go, hey, he goes, I want you
big Bear, Can you drive? So I'll drive you, brother,
But let me tell you something. This is gonna be expensive.
He is four times a normal rate and the search
thing and he looks at me, he goes, not a
(38:24):
big deal. Okay, all right, sounds good. He had to
get up to his family who were skiing up there.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
And he's got money, he spent money, but he do
he saw the sur he saw what was costing. He
was like, I gotta go.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, and I and I would and I would tell
people that you know, hey, this could be pretty expensive,
you know, and we don't want to go.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Okay, have you gotten Did you ever get a Las
Vegas trip?
Speaker 2 (38:46):
No? I never did, never got I.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Know what person they got it, But I always wonder
you get there, do you stay for a while and
gamble a little bit, and he come back, I knew, well.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
You know, here's a thing. You can't drive up there
legally once you cross the state line, right, you know,
you're Uber. This is the other thing that this is
a whole rant I dropped. You have to understand that
there's a thing called gap insurance with driving the Uber.
With Uber covers you from the moment you hit the
(39:19):
pin that the customer or the client or the writer
is in the ride until you hit the pin there
out of the ride, okay, but when you're driving to
the ride, it's a gray area. But if you're not,
if you got the app on and you're available and
you're driving around, you're not covered by Uber. That's your
personal insurance. And if you don't have gap insurance for
(39:42):
your personal insurance, you're not covered at all. They knew
you were a new if you're driving Uber, and so
remember this is early before people had worked all these
issues out. That probably worked out now, but at the time,
as a driver and as a as a person who
has things to lose, you know, that was a question.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
How many times times? How often? How often did you
have to clean your car?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Oh? Well, yeah, I told you every three or four rides,
but serious cleaning, uh, every every other day, every other day.
Somebody would It might be a dog. We had a
stupid thing, bring a blanket with you, you can put
it down for the dog. It's a bullshit, man, that
(40:33):
doesn't work. They might, you know, somebody might just a
lot of people just smell bad. Some people, yoh yeah,
I've had people that the stink is probably still in
the car. Yeah, it was bad man. And you know what,
I loved it though if I picked him up on
a pool ride, because then the other pool riders have
(40:56):
to get in.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
And oh my god. I know.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I told one story about that where I picked up
a stone crazy lady who smelled like and I described
the smell and then I had to pick up these
other pool writers and all the interaction that went on
that was hilarious. So smelling, yeah, and then some people
they ask everyone, I've been sick in the car. Absolutely,
that's in the book I talk about that. Uber did
(41:21):
develop a thing where you take pictures and they send
you They build a client for that. So yeah, you
have to clean the car after every day, but probably
every three or four days after a specific ride that
was just messy.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
You use that say you bought a car, so you
use a car just for.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah, I did, and I sold it right afterwards. And
the other thing is it was a manual transmission. So
of all the ten remember I had ten thousand rides,
which means that's ten thousand writers. And some people would
ask me what I was doing. I'd tell him I
was writing a book, and oh, I want to see
when it comes out. So I'm certain that somebody listening
(42:01):
to one of these podcasts is going to go, you
know what I remember? Well, actually, Shannon Farrell from k
if I got into the book. Once she got in
with the with her sidekick and the other guy who
does the news who goes KFI. I can't remember his name,
but uh, we take a selfie and then I have
(42:23):
a big Twitter following, so I flap it on Twitter
and then I tag her Twitter account and actually I
just sent her a thing with a book and say,
you know, you're not didn't make the story, but I
didn't eventually write the book. So I would get all
kinds of people in the car.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
A boy telling us anybody famous, Well I just did.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I'll say everybody else that you know, people might know
I might say say the names.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
I'm just curious.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
No, no, nobody else. And now, well, okay, true, there
might have been somebody super famous got in the car.
I don't know that I would know. With popular culture,
you know, the would just be another writer.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm like, yeah, I don't
know everybody. I'm all these singers and I'm like, I'm
probably I know these are at all. That's funny. Uh
And it was one last one.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
It was.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Here They were like, oh, that's the last one. Is
there you find any similarities between being a cop and
being a.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Driver, Well, yeah, I guess. Uh wait. I tell people,
if you want to know what it's like to be
a police officer and take exactly how to figure out
what it's like. I want you to sit on your
couch and watch television for twelve hours. But I want
you to have a friend who comes into the room
(43:56):
and every once in a while they blow a whistle.
When they blow the whistle, you get out of the
off the couch and you run down to the end
of the block. You run back to the couch, You
sit down and watch TV until they blow the whistle again.
And everyone what's going to happen is there after the
second or third time, They're just going to walk into
the room and your heart's going to begin to race
and you're good, blood pressure is gonna rise, and the
adrenaline is going to be able to flow, begin to flow.
(44:18):
And so a lot of that anticipation and that that
that hyper alertinism that comes from being in patrol. You
get that driving uber too, because sometimes people get in
the car and they'll do things. I took a guy
out and he was clearly doing reups right now. Your
average uber driver is not going to realize what's going on.
(44:40):
In fact, and it's in the book the third time
and I go, hey, you know what, I'm not getting
paid enough to do your reaps. You want to know
where the story goes, read the rest of the book.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
But so there was some There was lots of crossover
for for me, and I knew I knew la very well.
Right As a matter of fact, somebody would say there
was something going on, and I would do some kind
of maneuver to get away. How do you know that?
And I go, I used to work around here. I
know the backstreets. So that helped a lot. I had
(45:11):
a lot of dealing with people who were in crisis.
A lot of people the Uber and crisis, so that
helped a lot. So yeah, there were some similarities between
the work, except Uber didn't pay nearly as well.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Of course, folks.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
The book is called Chasing the Surge, And for those
who don't know what the surge is, it's usually at
a certain time the prices go up.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
That's a surge search pricing you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
So it changing stars, ten thousand rides to the American Nights,
two hundred and sixteen pages out now, Kindle, hardcover, empire back.
Go to Amazon. You know I was always say run,
you have to run, just on your phone, tablet, computer
and pick it up. I'm looking at right now, right
now on kidl it's nine niney nine, folks, I say
go get it right now. The hole to do that whole,
(46:01):
I guess Amazon saleh prayer Back is about twenty bucks
and hardcovers thirty not bad, nice little book, I say,
get it. Thanks to just publish their big fuel. Or
I can be publishing the book, of course and think
you're written for being on a show. If they want
to follow you, say, but they want to follow you,
what can they follow you.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Two things you can do, you know, I'm an profession
early adopter to technology that I might handle. On Twitter
or axis police officer is it whin? Yeah? And on
Facebook it's backslash law enforcement. That's I got my Facebook
at camp By twenty five years ago when you could
pick it. Yeah, I used to get all the search
(46:39):
WARRT requests that is. So if you want to follow
me at Facebook, it's backslash law enforcement. On LinkedIn, it's police,
it's police officer. Instagram it's police underscore. Lieutenant YouTube is
a police writer. So there's all kinds of ways. My
website is high TECHCJ dot com Tech Criminal Justice. Have
(47:02):
that for twenty five or thirty years. We're more for
get into an author's site. So my blogs, contact information
and links to the books are there. Thank you so much. James,
had a great time with you.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Same here reading. Come on, folks, we're still doing it.
Books are not out of fashion, and we're seeing more
and more men are reading these days. That's been a
recent talking recent talks about that reading handheld books, physical copies,
physical media is in right now. I go to record
stores all the time still, Yeah, I buy records I
(47:34):
don't call them violot Calm records and there's books are
really important out there and these are fun. It's fund
stas something different and some fun. And most of us
ride share so we know what this is like. We
get all these things, so run out and get it.
That's why I'm on the show route and get it now.
I'll put all the links in the descriptions. You can
get it easier than that. Also, this show is on
(47:56):
audio and videos, so we're everywhere you want to be.
So if you want to go to the gym or
walk the dog, or walk the baby, or walk the cat,
I don't you walk in you can. You can listen
to us on Apple, Audible, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Deezer where everywhere
under in between the pages, that's in between the pages
with James Lott Jr. Uh, there's in between pages out there.
(48:18):
It's not me, it's with James Lot Jr. And that's
a lot with t t's dont forget that. The support authors, writers,
we need them. They're telling stories. This is the fun.
This is a fun book. So I want you guys
to go out there and get it. Chasing the Search.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
I'm James I Jr. You follow me.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
We're all the We're all James Junics are sold at
James I Jor and also spend your platforms. I made
it easy for you. Just find me at James Lot Junior.
It's easy for you. Everyone. We here on Thursdays. We'll
see you next Thursday.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
What I show
So everybody out there, you know what ride shares are, right.
I remember before the pandemic, I was getting mad at
taxis for a while because you get in the car
and it was like five dollars already charging a left
on nowhere, all these sir charges or whatever. I was like, okay,
I'm tied to taxis. And then some of my younger
(00:28):
friends were like, this is thing called ride share. So
if you get drunk, go and get drinking, you just
d take these cars. I'm like, so I'm going in
somebody's car, they're a regular car to have them drive
me around. So when I first heard this back then
in LA, they were sidecar. Remember a sidecar. We were
(00:52):
in Lyft. Now I come from New York where we
have the Leaking Town cars. They're very famous people. You know,
you hire a driver or whatever. But I know this
seemed different. Well, now I use it all the time.
And this person, okay, went from being an LA detective, right,
you're detective correct.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I was the lieutenant of police.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Lieutenant police left the police force, decided to become a driver,
which happens in LA.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
A lot. There's a lot you don't know who your
driver is.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That's one of the great things about driving you and
getting in the car because you can talk to I mean,
I've met all kinds of people and who are driving
these cars in LA.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
And he said, you know what, I got a lot
of stories. Let's talk about them.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's what he did. As the thing is a book out.
So I just came out last month called Chasing the Surge.
We'll explaining folks, you know what the surge means. What's
about that ten thousand rides into American nights. It's funny,
it's serious, it's all kinds of stories, and we're gonna
talk to them about it and congratulate them. My guest
is Raymond E. Foster.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Hi, Raymond, Hey, James, thank you for having me. Glad
to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
First of all, thank you for your service. I come
from a police LA police family, so I do so.
I just I mean, that's it's not an easy job.
I you know, you said everything you want, you handled
all that. Where are you watch? Secondly, graduation on the
book book is not So before you even talk out
(02:22):
the book itself, we're gonna go back, go back. So
when okay, so when, so when did you hear about
uber and Lyft and all that with out things I
told about it. For me, it was for the pandemic.
But when did you learn about those kind of ride shares?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, probably the same time that you did. I retired February,
it'll be twenty two years ago. So in two thousand
and four I retired when my first book came out,
Chasing the Surge, actually my ninth book. And so I
heard about ride share driving. And I just come back
from a consulting gig in the Caribbean. I lived in
the Caribbean for a couple of years, working for the
(03:01):
European Union. Uh. And I always looking for something else
to do. And I and I talk about this in
the book. I had these these, you know, as a kid,
these ideas of the perfect job, astronaut, jet pilot. They
were top of the list. I'm a little old for
that now, so those have kind of fallen off the list. Uh.
And then garbage truck driver. I always thought that would
be an awesome job when I was a kid. Cab
(03:23):
driver and movie usher, and I thought that those were
the movie ushers. They get to see the movies, the
cab drivers. And so the uber thing came out and
I looked at that I'm like, wait a minute, somebody
gets into my car. They called it ride share, and
it's not ride share, it's person it's your car. It
becomes a cab. You're not sharing, You're not sharing the
(03:43):
ride with anybody. You will you know, as a driver,
you're gonna do pool rides. And pool rides are just
a nightmare by definition. Uh So probably the same time
you did. Uh And I bought a car, uh specifically
for the purpose and sign up.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And I didn't have the intention at that time, but
after the first ride, the very first ride, it dawned
on me what was going to happen and what could
potentially happen with this uber gig. And so that's where
the book starts.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Do you like driving?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I do?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Okay, So I know that's you know, have some Do
you like driving? That's our that's the day because for
you to go from I mean, I'm sure you drove
a lot, you were at the LAPD, but it's kind
of like now you're saying you retire, you look at
something to do. Now you like you gotta like driving?
Push you in LA what you gotta like driving?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah? I as a matter of fact, when the pandemic
cleared up around in twenty twenty one. Twenty twenty two,
I took a road trip and drove to Maine to
see a couple of my kids and drove back. I
love to drive, and so the idea of driving and
after the after I decided what I was going to do,
which was essentially, you know, I'm a great technical writer.
(05:02):
If you look at my other books there they're textbooks
and their or their technical writing. But I always wanted
to write fiction. And after that first night, I realized
I could go around and I could collect stories, and
I could teach myself to tell stories, to write dialogue,
to frame a scene, and then to teach myself to
(05:24):
write fiction. And this book I thought of as a bridge.
And you know, this book was hard to do. It's
been ten years that making, five years of driving and
five years of struggling with a manuscript. And so that's
that's what you have there is the original manuscript, James
was one hundred thousand words that when there's about sixty
(05:46):
I literally cut forty percent of that out of it
as I began to chop away and try to learn
to write in the voice I wanted.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So you're saying your first eight books were all technical books.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, yes, they're all. As a matter of fact, a
book came out six weeks prior to Chasing the Surge
called The Temple Within, and the Temple Within is an
exploration of Freemasonry. The philosophy is a Freemasonry because I'm
also a Mason. And then I've got a leadership book.
And you can see right over my shoulder there, I've
got four of the books displayed. The other one was
(06:20):
a textbook on technology. Uh. And so they were all uh.
I call it technical writing. You know, textbooks, there's there's
still a story, but it's not quite the same as fiction.
And I wanted to teach myself because I I've already
begun to write fiction. I want to there's a there's
a series I want to write. I want to write fiction,
(06:40):
and I needed to do it well and I needed
a way to learn to do it.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Okay, So years on the force, You're like, I'm retired.
I went to you went to the Gribbian. All right,
you said you want to get something started. So when
did you start driving? You said I would Pandemic Star
opening up.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
No, I started driving five years before the pandemic started,
so let's say twenty fifteen. Yeah, it would have been
twenty fifteen. Originally the idea was just to gather and
have stories. And then I thought, well, I can get
to a thousand, and then I got a title for
a book, right, A thousand rides, And then I didn't
have quite an I didn't. I began to chase the
next story, right, and then I got the well, I'll
(07:25):
go to five thousand, and then I'll go to ten thousand,
and the pandemic put a stop to the driving. I
probably would still be chasing the damn stories because you
know one was better than the next.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, it reminds me of a taxicab confessions, folks. I'm
aging myself you guys for that show, all that kind
of stuff, just because it's one of those things where
we assume, and probably rightly so you see it here
at all. I mean, you're you're just you don't know
who you picking up, where, where you're taking them, what's
gonna happen in the car, what the conversations are on
(07:59):
the phone, where they're saying to each other, where they're
saying to you. I've made friends of some of my drivers.
Actually they're in the creative space. Everybody's trying to make it,
of course, right, So I got to know there was
a driver first, and then later you know, now we're friends,
so I'm sure we assume and I'm and you can
you can say this. You saw, you heard this all
kind of stuff, didn't you these years.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I did, and you know this. So as I wrote
this the first pass I wrote at this. The first
time I wrote this, it was a collection of story.
Some of them were interesting, some of them were not.
But it was disjointed. It didn't come together. The second
time I wrote it, it was the same way. The third time.
I realized there's there's some uber rants in here, ranting
(08:42):
about what it is to be a right shair driver.
And I was at the same time wrapping up this
other technical book and this other book. This is a
book in philosophy, really, and it dawned on me the
problem was that the rides aren't the story. The story
is me. Remember when I get into this, I'm a
(09:02):
my training right and nature is when you call the
police officer, right, they get to a location, you're in
a crisis of some kind, they figure out a solution
and then there, they impose that solution on you, and
if you don't like the solution, they're going to make
you do it anyway. They're gonna, however, they make you
do that. Right. You can't do that as a reight
(09:23):
shair driver, right, So you end up with a problem
because there's gonna be a lot of problems and you can't.
You have to learn a whole new set of skills.
And the other thing is too, I started to drive
very late at night because even like police work, the
freaks come out at night. Man, I mean just kids.
(09:45):
I say that when the when lights go down, you know,
the the what shines is the weirdness. And so I
started driving later, late at night, which I enjoyed anyway.
But then I had some advantages. And some of the
advantages were it's one thing you learn as a cop.
You you hear more by shutting up, right, and so
(10:12):
just to let people talk. And I guess what I
had to learn too was not to not to not
to spin them up, not to intervene whatsoever, let it
run its course. And sometimes that started to edge towards
what felt like dangerous and other times, uh, sometimes it
wasn't gonna work. But you know, just let it run
its course. I just you're absolutely right. And I was
(10:33):
a silent witness in the front. I was a witness.
Occasionally I would have to take some action, but normally
I just watched the whole thing parade by me.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, that's that's the thing. You just you're sitting there
an observer, and well as you're just driving. You're driving,
so you gotta pay attention. You're driving, they're having whatever
they're having in your because I know as people just forget,
I guess they don't care they're in cars or whatever.
They just they just their lives continue. And you like,
I really don't want to hear all your business. I
don't want to hear all of it, but you do it.
(11:06):
It's crazy, and it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I think. I think some people are exhibitionists with their
relationships and so they want they want to witness to
all of it. And but a large percentage of people,
the driver is a piece of furniture. You're not a
human being to that person in the back. And and
those rides mostly don't make the book because they're boring. Right,
(11:32):
you can tell when somebody you're just the driver. I
don't want to know who you are. I don't want
anything about you. I don't want to engage you in conversation.
There's one part in the book that slows down a
little bit, and one of the one of the reviewers,
the editorial reviewer, said, this slows down a little bit.
At this portion, I go, yeah, think of that's what
right chair is like. Man, it's slow. You're grinding right
(11:54):
after ride after ride after ride after ride, and you
know you're grinding. Uh, it's not. And if you don't,
if you're not, you don't have somebody. If the if
the app's not on right, you're not making money. No
so and and I haven't driven for five years. And
I'm certain Uber has changed, but probably not that much.
(12:17):
But when I was a very early adopter, when Uber did,
they did a lot of crazy things, and I talk
about that a little bit, but I dropped most of
the rants about Uber because what's the difference.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Oh, I think I think Uber and left, which are
left there's no sidecar anymore or whatever. I'm probably the
same as when you left five years ago, and I
got cute. A couple of things whatever have changed, but
mostly the same and out the way mout o.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
The thing's all over la down.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I'm afraid of getting one to get it one, you know,
so I I it's yeah. I was like, yeah, I'm good.
I'm not gonna be yeah, I'm gonna be right that
anytime soon. I'm afraid of the robots. I'm so scared
of them. I'm not ready. But for you, so you
drove for a while, you got to gather all these stories?
(13:13):
Is there anything?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Oh? I want to say? This? Was it? Were you?
How hard?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
You said it was a hard book to write? That's
what I'm saying. I can see that. How do you
discern what stories got in the book? Or what stories
psychn make? I'm sure you had so many you can
choose from you probably how did you discern from going
super outrageous to like I said it was, or boring?
You know you get those? How'd you gauge all of that?
(13:41):
You have a bunch of story ideas and go okay
that yes that you know?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
How'd you do it?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Well? I approached the writing technically from the same standpoint
as that do most of the projects. So what happened was,
you know, as I was going along, I got the
idea I first began to take notes, but that wasn't convenience.
So what I did was if we got let's say
that I gave you a ride and you did something
that was kind of out of the ordinary or might
be useful in explaining something like people do things that
(14:09):
aren't out of the ordinary. There's one thing I call
cya uber rides. People will order an uber like a
block from their home, and so they can get out
of an uber, but they got dropped off by somebody
else at that corner. They just don't not want mom, dad,
or their spouse to know. And so you would get
those and so that kind of ride, I might use
(14:33):
you as an example, and I would. So what I
would do is I would then after the ride, I
would record it on an app on my phone. I
just would say what had just happened. And then every
once in a while I would just transcribe those. Ultimately,
when the pandemic hits, I pay someone to transcribe all
of those, just transcribe all the words and they give
them to me. And then what I do is I
(14:54):
would go through them and identify let's say, three or
four keywords in each one that kind of relate to it.
I put all that in a spreadsheet, and it began
to they began to form up themselves. Because chronologically it
chronologically is necessary to talk about my development, but chronologically
is boring book wise. So the first story you read
(15:15):
in the book actually happens a couple of years in
and you can tell because I handle that way differently
than when I Then I dial it back and say, okay,
a lot happened then, but here's what happened the first time,
and the first time you can see that these people
set my teeth on fire with their shenanigans, right, because
(15:38):
that's not what I intended to get, was this thing.
And so over time I begin to develop, and that
part of the development also takes place in the writing. Again,
I chop, chop, chop, and then I have to write
about myself, and then I have to become more honest,
because then I looked at some of these situations, I go, well,
you know what, I'm partially responsible for that. I said
(16:01):
X to a person because they were a NOTTHEAD and
I just could say it, and so I had to
be honest. You know that I did that. I could
have done that better. Oh I learned this, Uh, and
so that became a little more shading to the writing.
So that was the process, and the stories were selected
(16:21):
to further along the character development, which is me, and
to engage the reader. You.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So basically the book gets the through line of the
glue of the book is shield you are. You are
at the base level. That's what we're following at along
the way.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
You get these stories, right, that's it, that's it sense
and yeah, and we don't leave the car because that's
where I am. The other thing I did was I decided.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Other stuff in the car leave. I don't think who
cares what was happing outside?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Uh? I. Also then the last past, the one that
worked the best, was I just decided to write in
a film noir voice. And so somebody wrote a review
of it. It hasn't hit Amazon, but they said it
was a Raymond Chandler reimagined in the gig economy. Okay,
they got it right, They got they got the voice,
(17:23):
and they got the they got what was going on.
And I decided to do that m because I like
the voice.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Sure, book wherever you want, that's all say. I know,
that's that's so funny. I like that's it's because you know,
I guess we are following you. You need an anchor
in a book and a story, so we're following you
and then all the shenanigans that enter your space. That
makes sense, right, yes, yes, I think please go ahead,
(17:55):
please please?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
No, Well, I'm the I think me. Originally see one
past writing this uber was the character, and that you could.
I wrote it that way, and it was okay. I
wrote one Past. It was all collection of stories and
tried to gloom together but finding bridges and passages. It
was just like a collection of anecdotes and it was stupid.
(18:18):
It was just trash. And then when I wrote it
ubers As, the character was less trashy. And then I
wrote it, okay, how about from the point of view
a frustrated uber driver because most of it was really
frustrating me and pissing me off. Then that didn't work.
And finally when I was I had wrapped up this
last philosophy book in January and I didn't have a
title for it. I'd written one hundred thousand words. It
(18:39):
was perfect. Man. I took my wife says, best writing ever.
Did four hundred and fifty five page work, three hundred sources.
It's just a beautiful piece of work, but I didn't
have a title for it. I'm like, I just struggling
to figure out title. And there's that other book sitting
right there. And again my wife says, well, what's going
on with that other book? And I said, I'm just
so frustrated with it, and I opened it back up,
(19:01):
and that's when the final pass came out of me.
And I also realized another thing. Just as I was
chasing the best story and the pandemic finally stopped me,
I was chasing the best version of the book, and
all I was doing was giving new versions of the book.
And so there's lots, there's lots going on in in
(19:23):
my world as the writer.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, wow, I love it. Well, you said you shaved
it down from so what was what was the shaved down?
Was it story?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Was it story ease or was it development? Like what
were you shaving down? Basically?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
All right, So there's a long there's long passages uber
at the time and I don't again don't know what's
going on now, but at the time, as an example,
I do, I do talk about this. I was in
one accident, right, and in that accident, the whole process
was automated, amazing amazingly disconnected from me, amazingly disingenuous toward me.
(20:12):
Even the writer was kind of weird. So I'm like
the whole process ubers just didn't care. I was just
a number. And the other thing is you have to
understand ubers out. It's a disruptive technology by its nature.
It's out breaking rules, right. And at the same time,
there's these other people, primarily called the police, who are
(20:33):
enforcing rules. So you're the Uber driver and you're in
this organization. So how these rules are meeting each other
and you're in the middle. And then like for a
while is you had to pick up every call otherwise
they would they would discontinue you. So you had to
pick up everyone, no matter how far away it was.
And then yeah, and then there was there's all kinds
(20:56):
of things that developed over time that made you so angry.
Like here's it was so frustrating if you dropped the pin, right,
you drop the pin, and you know what dropping a
pin is thin. The writer drops a pin in a
gated community, all right, and they don't give you directions
to get into the gate. They don't they don't give
(21:17):
you a phone number, nothing right, and you get there
and Uber doesn't show you arriving until you become within
a certain distance from the pin. So I can get
to the gate and it shows me not arriving and
the writers inside waiting for me and getting angrier. I
can't contact them, so I can. You know, I would
(21:38):
do things like try to drive around the gated community
to get as close as I get to the pin
to try to try to stop it. And finally what
you would have to do is just let it expire,
and of course you take a hit in your record.
These things were very they were frustrating, and you know,
I'd write these long rants about this. Another one that
(22:01):
happened that I didn't make the book. There's an airport
pick up at the Antara Airport and there's a long
line and there's no parking and no stopping, and there's
a police officer right there with a ticket book in
his hand, and I can see the writer who's waving
at me, and so I wave, I'll be right there.
(22:23):
He walks over to the car with his luggage and
wants me to stop. The police officers looking right at me,
daring me to double park in traffic. So what I
do is I pull forward and the writer start. When
I finally get up to him, because he has to
walk up to me, he immediately begins to be rap me. Okay,
he begins to be rape me, and I look at him.
(22:45):
You know what I'm done with you? I said, no ride,
and he goes, you can't not give me a ride.
I'll give you no stars. I go, I haven't accepted
the right, idiot. You can't not grade a ride you
didn't take, so you can you can f off and
go back, stand back on the curb. And now I'm
now so now I've lost her. You're an idiot. You're
trying to get me a ticket, and I because, and
(23:07):
I start the conversa. Here's what I say. When I
get out of the car, James. I said to me,
I'm really sorry to pull forward, but that cop was
there with a ticket book and he would have given
me a citation for stopping. So I apologize. He goes,
I don't care about that, he said, I don't care,
you should have stopped to give me. I just looked
at the guy like, okay, never mind. Know we're done.
So I didn't I cut that out because well that's
(23:28):
a boring story. So if it got a boredom or
it was a rant about Uber being it cut it,
cut it down. And if I got to flowery with
my scene sets, I cut that back to. So, yeah,
(23:49):
a lot of work on it. I took an axe
to it. Then I took a scalpel.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well, I think the thing is, you know, if you
left certain things in it would do a kind of book.
You want to do a book about Uber and that's
something quite different, right, you want to do a book
about the Salacio side. Right, there's the book two, Like
there's you could have went any directions, so I could
you say, You're like, I've kind of wanted like a
collection of story. It's about it's about me just following
(24:13):
along with me and how these stories come out and
inform your rides, your nights, your nights you're out and
about doing these rides and it forms all that.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, and the chapters came to getting much better. One
of them is Loving the Rear View Mirror. That's the
title of the chapter, and that is about, uh, some
of the romantic escapades that go on within the car
between the writers, everything from people having sex in the
back seat to people wanting to have sex in the
back seat, to people breaking up, literally breaking up in
(24:44):
the car. Oh uh yeah, all kinds of craziness. And
I just watch and then some of them it's about
crime because people actually committed crime in the car. Uh.
But at one point a guy used the Uber as
the getaway car for you uh, and I had to
(25:05):
go back to the scene and explain that I was
not the getaway driver, but I knew where the suspect was.
So all these things went on, and they make for
good stories.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. You tell me, okay,
coind of rapid fire. And this is actually a suggestion
for one of my fans.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So I told to you I was gonna do this,
this kind of story. They're curious, all right.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Hey, So Raymond One as a as a former cop,
huh did you feel safe for driving ubers?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
That might uh?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
You know, I twenty years ago, when I retired, twenty
two years ago, I started teaching at university and I
didn't take a handgun with me on the campus. Then
I moved overseas and I lived in a third world
country where I couldn't have a handgun, and so my
CCWMT has actually been expired for about fifteen years. I
don't carry a gun now on the job. I was
in three gunfights and so so, and I've said for years,
(26:01):
you know, it only takes one gun to have a gunfight,
and don't matter who brings it. Uh, And so there
have people gotten in the car with guns. And there
were times where we were on the edge. But that
was not I wasn't fearful. I was excited because when
(26:25):
you get to my age, man, I'm gonna push at seventy. Now,
there's nobody's good anything exciting anymore.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
So I I didn't feel unsafe, but I knew when
I was unsafe.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I got it like that. Or two, where'd you go pee?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Oh? Everywhere? Man?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I asked him to ask him because always gys where
do they pee when they're out in a ball like
And I know some of my friends, like black go
to Starbucks, I buy a coffee, I go pee, or
I go here.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you, James, and
this is in this This story didn't make the book
because it's almost a rant. One of my favorite things
to do to go pee was hotel lobbies to walk into.
And what I what I would do is I would
pull into the drive and I would get out of
the car and I would walk in and I would go, hey,
(27:22):
where's the lobby restroom. They'd say it's over there now.
And I write a long passage on how that exemplifies
white privilege because as a as an older white guy,
they presume I'm in, I'm a I'm staying there, whereas
if I was twenty years old or I was a
person of color, they would not do that. They would
question me or they would say something different. And that
(27:44):
didn't make the book because it got too preachy. But
but there were also lots of alleys, and there were
lots of quite frankly off of Sunset Boulevard in the
McDonald's parking lot, just stepping outside the car in the dark. Uh,
And I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, I don't know that one where that is yes,
So there you go. People they want me to want
meybody want me to ask you that. I was like,
I don't know, they do, I don't they do out
there and already answered you already answered. Another question was
that you have been in an accident at least once right.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, one time.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, he's folks food because your driveway. Where have you
eaten a lot of places just because of vicinity? Like
I'm here a real chow, this is place over here,
I'm here in Pasadem Like have you had a lot
of places?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Well, you know the best part about that about the
uber was I got to revisital Okay, I got to
go down to I think I stopped down at Gadbury's
once or and I stopped at that was over at
Langer's Deli off of Oh yeah, I don't yeah, And
so these are places I went when I was young.
(28:53):
I stopped at the pantry before they closed it one
night because I could, Uh, so I'm all over you
know the chicken place over there off of the near
the airport. I can't think of the place of the
giant chicken.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Oh so I stopped.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, I stopped everywhere because I was out and about
and so a lot of times it would depend on
my mood. But I might say We're gonna sit down
and have a nice meal, or I'm just gonna grab
del taco and get you know, at that time the
ninety nine cent tacos need them. But the thing you
had to do. Now, there's two things about the Uber.
(29:30):
If you keep the interior clean and after every three
or four rides, you got to spray it down with
air freshener and you got to wipe everything down. But
you don't eat inside of it because it's gonna smell
like whatever food you had. And at the time, I
quit smoking three years ago, so at the time I
was smoking, and I was a two pack of Day's
smoker for forty years. So the thing is I had
(29:53):
to get out of the car rain or shine Man,
because then that's in the book. You hear me say
I got out of the car and the pouring ride
and had a cigarett. Yeah, well that's what you know,
that's the relief of stress. So and I had to
be really careful not to blow the smoke in the car.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Oh right.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
So the food was somewhat impacted by the driving, but
it did give me the opportunity to go wherever I
wanted to go and eat whatever I wanted to eat.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Oh sir.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Another one is didd you set times where you're like, Okay,
today i'm gonna drive six hours. I wanna drive eight
hours today, I'm gonna drive from morning to three, I
said you a lot. I'm gonna start at techlock at night,
so too, did you always set times you went.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Out If I didn't have something going on in the
evening at the Masonic Lodge some Monday nights. I generally
didn't drive on Monday nights. Thursday night at the social
light end at eight thirty, so I'd probably leave there
and go at nine o'clock and start to drive, and
I would drive through the night. Sometimes that's just driven
by uber. If you get a ride to San Diego
(30:54):
at you know, one o'clock in the morning, but you're
going to San Diego and you're not gonna be home
for until three or four, So I drove it night. Uh.
If I got home by three o'clock in the morning,
I actually stopped at twenty four hour Fitness for a
couple of hours hit and I would get to bed
about five am and get up around noon. So that's
(31:14):
pretty much the target for a few years.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Have you ever been hit on while driving?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Oh yeah, that's just great story of the book. But
not not always by women, That's.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
What I'm saying. The matter in LA I'm sure guys
find you attactive too. Shit I'm like, why.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Not, there's one of the that's one of the stories.
It's an early story. It's an early story, and I
talked about it and it was he was really aggressive
about it too, very very very aggressive, and to where
he says, do you ever experiment?
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Okay, okay, And.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
He's sitting right next to me because I hate that
front seat, man, I made I made a rule. You
don't get in the front seat anymore. I hate the
front seat. I'd rather be shot in the back of
the head than have you sitting next to me. I
swear to God. Uh so, he says, are you and
this isn't the book. I'm not going to give the
whole thing. Yes, can I do you mind if I
curse on your problem? Yes, he says. He says, here
(32:18):
experiment And I look at him. I go, you mean,
like with a chemistry set? And he goes, no, no,
you know, sexually. And I look at him and I go, so, uh,
I'll just change the conversation. Hey, you know what, I says,
what do you do for a living man? He goes,
I'm an actor. I go okay. Well, I go, okay, good,
what kind of movies are you? And he goes, well,
I'm a gay porn actor.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Oh wow, wow, okay, that's good.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Hey yeah, no, yeah no. First he starts out with, hey,
it's dark around here, we can pull over. And then
he finally says, do you do you experiment? And I say,
what do you mean like Chmistry said? He says no, sexually,
to which I look at him and I stopped the
car and I turned to him and I said, you
mean like the animals, and he goes, he just looks
(33:03):
at me and he goes, you know, those choosy cows.
Fucking sweet man. He scoots back against the door and
I just drive off. Doesn't say a thing for fifteen minutes,
and then he gets out of the car. So I
turned the tables on him because he was really making
me uncomfortable and you know, violating my personal space. And
(33:26):
I just went right back at him. And I'm kind
of known for that quite frankly, so that came very naturally.
That's the other thing about writing these some of the stories,
some of people say, why don't you tell cop stories?
And I'm like, well, number one, most of the stuff
that happens you're not going to believe. Oh got it,
(33:46):
You're just not going to believe it. And some of
the stuff in uber that happens is just not believable, right,
I got that too. Unless you understand the true depravity
that the human beings could sink to, you're not going
to get it. So that's yeah. I've been hit on
a couple of times. There's another there's another story in
there where I don't know if she was hitting on me.
(34:08):
I don't. You can read the story for yourself, and
she's touching me and her husband's in the car and
the whole thing's going sideways and I'm trying to figure
out what the hell's going on. But you can read
that in a book.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, reading the book, folks, I say, we get some
little tilly stuff in there reading the book. No, But
I mean I always I always just wanted to too,
because you're driving and some folks that could be they
have had some drinks and I've done a little drugs
and I've done it, you know whatever, or it's attracted
to you. I mean, it's like for some reason you're
in that position because you're like you're you're the driver.
I don't know, I mean, I don't mean, it's one
of those weird things. I think that happens to people.
(34:39):
It's like a profession that they're like just like get
turned on by a or something.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Well, you know what, you go as a man, you
go through phases attractive wise, and you get to a
point where woman to be attracted you, she's got to
have a daddy fetish.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, you're a daddy, dad daddy.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
You know at this point, she's got to have a
grandpa fetish.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
And the toad they're out there, trust me, they're out there.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And then I've got some I've got a friend. I
tell them, well, you know, you're probably looking for women
that have a mummy fan. So that's something to look
forward to.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
I've had, I've had.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I was at some you know, the produce sections that
sprouts their whole foods, and I get that. I love
the gray beard like and I just never thought in
a million years that was something that people would be
attracted to. Everybody's like trying to die. They're just you know,
but I so you like me, we don't die. It's here.
I earned every every gray hair, I always say, but
I when they go, it's so set your salt and peppers,
(35:37):
so I'm like, okay, I'll take it. I mean, anybody
hit somebody, I'll take it. I'm like, I'm like, i'll
take it.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
But i just go.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
That's interesting that they like the older look now and yes,
and I know some folks like the older, the cougars
and all that. It's all out there, you know, we
living longer, we live longer. Raymond a little longer.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Longer gets it, and they all get in the car.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yes, I do, so I talk side. Taking a little
bit back toe is just fun stuff. Back to the
grabbing fire. Okay. When it comes to eating, like you said,
you don't eat in the car, But it comes to
drinking and coffee or juice or water, do you drink
that in the car while you're driving?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Uh No, But I will have a cup of coffee
usually afterwards. I'm drinking coffee now because the warm liquids
are good. When you're speaking for a long periods of time.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Yes, yes too.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah so no, No, you're very so.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You're very much like I don't want any crazy smells
my car that'll offend anybody, because maybe peop don't don't
like coffee or whatever you like, or juices or they're
just like it's very clear.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Just the air is fine. Yeah, whatever smelling stuff, give it.
That's it. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, Also, there's you got to realize that they're gonna
get somebody's gonna get in the car. At three or
four people you pick up, suddenly there's no personal space left.
So your drink holders or their drink holders. Oh yes,
you know, every thing becomes it just becomes more complex.
So I generally avoided that.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Yeah, makes sense, that's what it makes sense. Next one,
was there a distance you were like, no, that's just
too far.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
No, only no, because remember I was chasing this I
was chasing this book. And so you know the white
whale of uber driving is the trip to Las.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Vegas, right right, that's yep, that's what. Yes, Las Vegas.
It was what we said Riverside friends like Riverside. It's
so far away enough from La But yeah, I heard
Las Vegas. Las Vegas are palm springs where two always
heard those are like.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Oh it did lots of palm springs, right, yes, oh yeah,
and lots of San Diego. I did one one to Bakersfield,
oh wow, yeah, and so what I would you know,
It just depends I got one. I picked up at
Ontario Airport and he wanted to go to Big Bear, right,
And I knew going up to Big Bear that coming
(38:03):
back down there were you're not going to get any
rides coming back this one. That's that's you're dead heading
all the way down. But I picked him up in
a four time surge. And so he got in the
car and I go, hey, he goes, I want you
big Bear, Can you drive? So I'll drive you, brother,
But let me tell you something. This is gonna be expensive.
He is four times a normal rate and the search
thing and he looks at me, he goes, not a
(38:24):
big deal. Okay, all right, sounds good. He had to
get up to his family who were skiing up there.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
And he's got money, he spent money, but he do
he saw the sur he saw what was costing. He
was like, I gotta go.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, and I and I would and I would tell
people that you know, hey, this could be pretty expensive,
you know, and we don't want to go.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Okay, have you gotten Did you ever get a Las
Vegas trip?
Speaker 2 (38:46):
No? I never did, never got I.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Know what person they got it, But I always wonder
you get there, do you stay for a while and
gamble a little bit, and he come back, I knew, well.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
You know, here's a thing. You can't drive up there
legally once you cross the state line, right, you know,
you're Uber. This is the other thing that this is
a whole rant I dropped. You have to understand that
there's a thing called gap insurance with driving the Uber.
With Uber covers you from the moment you hit the
(39:19):
pin that the customer or the client or the writer
is in the ride until you hit the pin there
out of the ride, okay, but when you're driving to
the ride, it's a gray area. But if you're not,
if you got the app on and you're available and
you're driving around, you're not covered by Uber. That's your
personal insurance. And if you don't have gap insurance for
(39:42):
your personal insurance, you're not covered at all. They knew
you were a new if you're driving Uber, and so
remember this is early before people had worked all these
issues out. That probably worked out now, but at the time,
as a driver and as a as a person who
has things to lose, you know, that was a question.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
How many times times? How often? How often did you
have to clean your car?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Oh? Well, yeah, I told you every three or four rides,
but serious cleaning, uh, every every other day, every other day.
Somebody would It might be a dog. We had a
stupid thing, bring a blanket with you, you can put
it down for the dog. It's a bullshit, man, that
(40:33):
doesn't work. They might, you know, somebody might just a
lot of people just smell bad. Some people, yoh yeah,
I've had people that the stink is probably still in
the car. Yeah, it was bad man. And you know what,
I loved it though if I picked him up on
a pool ride, because then the other pool riders have
(40:56):
to get in.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
And oh my god. I know.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I told one story about that where I picked up
a stone crazy lady who smelled like and I described
the smell and then I had to pick up these
other pool writers and all the interaction that went on
that was hilarious. So smelling, yeah, and then some people
they ask everyone, I've been sick in the car. Absolutely,
that's in the book I talk about that. Uber did
(41:21):
develop a thing where you take pictures and they send
you They build a client for that. So yeah, you
have to clean the car after every day, but probably
every three or four days after a specific ride that
was just messy.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
You use that say you bought a car, so you
use a car just for.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah, I did, and I sold it right afterwards. And
the other thing is it was a manual transmission. So
of all the ten remember I had ten thousand rides,
which means that's ten thousand writers. And some people would
ask me what I was doing. I'd tell him I
was writing a book, and oh, I want to see
when it comes out. So I'm certain that somebody listening
(42:01):
to one of these podcasts is going to go, you
know what I remember? Well, actually, Shannon Farrell from k
if I got into the book. Once she got in
with the with her sidekick and the other guy who
does the news who goes KFI. I can't remember his name,
but uh, we take a selfie and then I have
(42:23):
a big Twitter following, so I flap it on Twitter
and then I tag her Twitter account and actually I
just sent her a thing with a book and say,
you know, you're not didn't make the story, but I
didn't eventually write the book. So I would get all
kinds of people in the car.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
A boy telling us anybody famous, Well I just did.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I'll say everybody else that you know, people might know
I might say say the names.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
I'm just curious.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
No, no, nobody else. And now, well, okay, true, there
might have been somebody super famous got in the car.
I don't know that I would know. With popular culture,
you know, the would just be another writer.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm like, yeah, I don't
know everybody. I'm all these singers and I'm like, I'm
probably I know these are at all. That's funny. Uh
And it was one last one.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
It was.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Here They were like, oh, that's the last one. Is
there you find any similarities between being a cop and
being a.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Driver, Well, yeah, I guess. Uh wait. I tell people,
if you want to know what it's like to be
a police officer and take exactly how to figure out
what it's like. I want you to sit on your
couch and watch television for twelve hours. But I want
you to have a friend who comes into the room
(43:56):
and every once in a while they blow a whistle.
When they blow the whistle, you get out of the
off the couch and you run down to the end
of the block. You run back to the couch, You
sit down and watch TV until they blow the whistle again.
And everyone what's going to happen is there after the
second or third time, They're just going to walk into
the room and your heart's going to begin to race
and you're good, blood pressure is gonna rise, and the
adrenaline is going to be able to flow, begin to flow.
(44:18):
And so a lot of that anticipation and that that
that hyper alertinism that comes from being in patrol. You
get that driving uber too, because sometimes people get in
the car and they'll do things. I took a guy
out and he was clearly doing reups right now. Your
average uber driver is not going to realize what's going on.
(44:40):
In fact, and it's in the book the third time
and I go, hey, you know what, I'm not getting
paid enough to do your reaps. You want to know
where the story goes, read the rest of the book.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
But so there was some There was lots of crossover
for for me, and I knew I knew la very well.
Right As a matter of fact, somebody would say there
was something going on, and I would do some kind
of maneuver to get away. How do you know that?
And I go, I used to work around here. I
know the backstreets. So that helped a lot. I had
(45:11):
a lot of dealing with people who were in crisis.
A lot of people the Uber and crisis, so that
helped a lot. So yeah, there were some similarities between
the work, except Uber didn't pay nearly as well.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Of course, folks.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
The book is called Chasing the Surge, And for those
who don't know what the surge is, it's usually at
a certain time the prices go up.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
That's a surge search pricing you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
So it changing stars, ten thousand rides to the American Nights,
two hundred and sixteen pages out now, Kindle, hardcover, empire back.
Go to Amazon. You know I was always say run,
you have to run, just on your phone, tablet, computer
and pick it up. I'm looking at right now, right
now on kidl it's nine niney nine, folks, I say
go get it right now. The hole to do that whole,
(46:01):
I guess Amazon saleh prayer Back is about twenty bucks
and hardcovers thirty not bad, nice little book, I say,
get it. Thanks to just publish their big fuel. Or
I can be publishing the book, of course and think
you're written for being on a show. If they want
to follow you, say, but they want to follow you,
what can they follow you.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Two things you can do, you know, I'm an profession
early adopter to technology that I might handle. On Twitter
or axis police officer is it whin? Yeah? And on
Facebook it's backslash law enforcement. That's I got my Facebook
at camp By twenty five years ago when you could
pick it. Yeah, I used to get all the search
(46:39):
WARRT requests that is. So if you want to follow
me at Facebook, it's backslash law enforcement. On LinkedIn, it's police,
it's police officer. Instagram it's police underscore. Lieutenant YouTube is
a police writer. So there's all kinds of ways. My
website is high TECHCJ dot com Tech Criminal Justice. Have
(47:02):
that for twenty five or thirty years. We're more for
get into an author's site. So my blogs, contact information
and links to the books are there. Thank you so much. James,
had a great time with you.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Same here reading. Come on, folks, we're still doing it.
Books are not out of fashion, and we're seeing more
and more men are reading these days. That's been a
recent talking recent talks about that reading handheld books, physical copies,
physical media is in right now. I go to record
stores all the time still, Yeah, I buy records I
(47:34):
don't call them violot Calm records and there's books are
really important out there and these are fun. It's fund
stas something different and some fun. And most of us
ride share so we know what this is like. We
get all these things, so run out and get it.
That's why I'm on the show route and get it now.
I'll put all the links in the descriptions. You can
get it easier than that. Also, this show is on
(47:56):
audio and videos, so we're everywhere you want to be.
So if you want to go to the gym or
walk the dog, or walk the baby, or walk the cat,
I don't you walk in you can. You can listen
to us on Apple, Audible, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Deezer where everywhere
under in between the pages, that's in between the pages
with James Lott Jr. Uh, there's in between pages out there.
(48:18):
It's not me, it's with James Lot Jr. And that's
a lot with t t's dont forget that. The support authors, writers,
we need them. They're telling stories. This is the fun.
This is a fun book. So I want you guys
to go out there and get it. Chasing the Search.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
I'm James I Jr. You follow me.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
We're all the We're all James Junics are sold at
James I Jor and also spend your platforms. I made
it easy for you. Just find me at James Lot Junior.
It's easy for you. Everyone. We here on Thursdays. We'll
see you next Thursday.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
What I show
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