THE LONGEST RIDE: I've gotten a few really long rides, but this ride was 157 miles from Myrtle Beach to Columbia, South Carolina. It would have taken under three hours but with part of the highway closed down briefly, the trip turned out to be almost four hours one way. A brother and sister was taking the trip at 9 am Sunday morning after arriving Saturday night with her boyfriend. The person paying for the ride was the sister's braille teacher since the sister is completely blind. She and her boyfriend(who had been drinking) got into a fight and she hit him first and then he tackled her. The police were called and he was arrested. He gave a false name, and then resisted arrest. They were leaving town without her wallet since it somehow wound up in the hotel hallway with her debit card in it. She had bruises from the fight and had not slept which she did almost the whole trip. It was quite a story and unfortunately I think there's a lot more to it.
REALLY-THE VERY LONGEST RIDE: I previously blogged about "The Bag" which was the end part of my very longest ride. However, here's the beginning of the story: I got a 65 mile ride to the Florence train station for two recent high school graduates. Due to the virus and there not being many drivers out, it took them an hour to get a ride. We had 75 minutes for a ride that took 85 minutes to make. I was under pressure to get them there, but we got delayed ten minutes and the train was delayed 20 minutes. We arrived at the station and jumped out and ran into the station, but we missed the train by about two minutes. The next train was 11 hours later. I couldn't leave them there, so I drove them 3 1/2 hours to North Carolina. They were both upset about missing the train. First, the boyfriend was crying on the phone to his mom apparently after his girlfriend hit him in the mouth. Then, she started crying and he spent a good hour calming her down and she finally fell asleep. His mom decided to pick them up from the train station and we arrived safely. Everything was fine until I discovered an extra bag in my trunk that I picked up outside the first train station thinking it was part of the couple's luggage. If you haven't read about "the bag", go back a few blogs-it's worth reading.
THE COLLEGE STUDENT: We had just had the discussion the other night about people in their twenties and if they were motivated to work. I had mentioned several riders that I've spoken to as an Uber driver who were extremely impressive and the woman I picked up to take to the airport certainly fit into that category. She's about to be a senior at Lehigh University,(where my son attended) and she's a Business Economics major with a Chinese minor. We had a long conversation about school and what she plans on doing in the future. She's interested in cyber security and has worked with a neighbor who is involved in it. She wants to start as a consultant and she already has a job offer from a major company which she has not accepted yet. She was very articulate, friendly and obviously intelligent. She went to Catholic schools all her life although she wasn't very religious and said sometimes she just had to "grin and bear it."(the religious part) It doesn't matter where she goes in the future, because I'm certain she's going to go far and I really enjoyed talking with her.
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