Happy Father's Day. I've had a lot of great Uber rides in my car, but this one ride was very special. In March 2022, I drove my orange Ford Transit Passenger Van for the very first time doing rideshare. The car was orange because it was my dad's favorite color and we lost him the year before. He never would have bought an orange car, but he would have enjoyed seeing it.
That morning I had to pick up a passenger who had just gotten off a cruise ship. As I approached the dock in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, I looked to the left and on the cruise ship it said, "Sunshine." My business name is, "The Sunshine Man," and when I turned to my right I saw my passengers.
The short man was a farmer in northern Maine and his son was five years old. Standing next to them was a very large suitcase and it was orange. I told him that his suitcase fit perfectly with my van. He was spending some quality time with his son and they were having a great time.
The son stole the show when the only thing he said on the ride was, "My dad is getting old and fat and my sister and I beat him up all the time." His dad may have been thirty and he didn't have an ounce of fat on him.
His dad had an incredible work ethic. He said, "When the weather is good you work twenty-hour days. If you want to survive there you work eight days a week." He got his work ethic from his dad who never paid him for doing any shoveling to help his snow removal business. I told him that his dad owed him money. This farmer had nine W-2's for all the jobs he had in high school.
This ride was the only one I remember that day. Having him and his son in my car made me feel like my dad was driving with us. He would have loved my orange car.
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