“Do you get high?”, he asked as I pulled onto the eastbound ramp of I-90, en-route to Kirkland. I looked in my rear-view mirror at the man sitting in the backseat of my cab. He was a white guy, maybe 45-50 years old, conservative haircut, white shirt, normal looking … yet, there was something off about him. Something I just couldn’t put my finger on. His question was...

For a few months in 2011, I had a regular customer named Chris. Chris was an interesting guy, an unusual guy, and a sometimes pathetic guy. A veteran of the first Iraq war, Chris reminded me of that character on The Simpsons. You know the one, the surly Army Surplus store owner with a missing arm. Chris had all of his limbs, but in all other respects, they were the same. Hell, they even...

Oh, what a day. What a week. No sooner did the ink dry on our formation documents and we get two clients. One, an Android app in-development, the other, an editing job for a cable television network. Now, my day breaks down to something like this: 6am – 4pm: Coding and Editing, with one or two driving calls to break up the monotony 3pm – 8pm: Driving 8pm – 10pm: Knocking round...

So I’m driving up Denny Way when I hang a left on Broadway and immediately stomp on my brakes while laying on the horn. You see, a guy started to walk out in front of me and I skidded to a stop to make sure I didn’t run him over. When I hit my horn, the guy stood there next to the travel lane and he made a strange hand gesture at me. Of course, this only further infuriated me. I...

So, a guy jumps in my cab at 2nd and Blanchard in Belltown, and tells me to take him to 1st and Lenora … a ride that is literally two blocks long. He was a black guy with a tattered army jacket and disheveled hair … come to think of it, he looked a lot like Ol’ Dirty Bastard (rip). When I hit the gas to turn the corner, the guy said, “I’m going to ask you a question and I want...

All the way to Mexico. Ahhhh, hipsters. Can’t live with them, can’t disembowel them and dump their corpses on the banks of the Green River. At least not legally. Gary Ridegway, if you ever get out of prison, I have a job for you. Anyway, for those who have yet to notice, the transplanted twenty somethings of the greater Seattle area have stolen yet another saying, and boy, is it...

Today, I was flagged down by contestants of “The Amazing Race”, and they asked me to help them bend the rules a bit. I won’t mention what team I helped, or where we had to go, but it was kind of interesting trying to help them make their way to a destination while taking back streets so as not to be detected. Frankly, I don’t watch the show. Aside from the local news, I no longer watch...

So, I get called to the Sheraton in beautiful Bellevue, WA and when I get there, a woman hops in. She’s alright looking, maybe a 7, early 30′s, with high heels and messed up hair … and she smelled like she just swam 12 laps in an olympic sized pool filled with perfume. Apparently, the woman was an upper-middle-priced call girl. If you ask me how I know, I’ll remind you...

Yesterday, I picked up a fare in West Seattle en-route to SeaTac. I noticed that the guy had a couple of instrument cases, and of course, I asked about them. As it turns out, he was a banjo player from Australia who was here to play a couple of gigs. On the way to the airport, we talked shop for awhile and the guy raved about how receptive the Seattle crowds were. Toward the end of the ride,...

When it comes to employment, I’ve been fortunate. For the majority of my life, I’ve been able to make a living while enjoying a great deal of autonomy. In my younger days, I was a musician who helped make ends meet by working as a bicycle messenger and photojournalist. I got out of those endeavors just in time to get into tech where I created a popular website which was eventually bought...