Uber Alles

The stories of the Geneva Shore Report Uber driver.
I got the call that afternoon, to pick up this guy coming in on American Airlines Flight 1224, set to arrive at 8:35 p.m. on Saturday night. Okay, the guy was coming to Wisconsin and I’d be there. So I waited until about seven and then took off. At 8:30 the guy called to say he’d touched down. I waited in the cell lot. At 8:55 he called and said he had his luggage and would wait outside of American luggage. I drove over there. No joy. No guy. I called him back. We talked. He could not orient himself at all. He swore he was standing right there. I told him to look at the big white bus with the number one in giant letters on its side. He said there was no bus at all. I thought for a second, and then asked: “What airport are you at?”

He said O’Hare. It turns out there’s a flight 1234 that lands at O’Hare at 8:35 p.m. on Saturday nights. Flight 1224 lands at Mitchell. And so I drove like mad. It took just short of fifty minutes to get there. The guy was there, just like he’d said. We talked and laughed all the way back to where Highway 50 crosses 94. I took the exit and promptly got a flat tire. My spare would not fit the wheel for some reason. A wrecker was called. I had a friend come from Lake Geneva to get the ride. He got in at 1:30 a.m. The fare was $140.00 and the guy who’d hired the ride paid $200 (tip) the next day. Obviously, the guy he’d had picked up stayed mum, so did I. Beware of flights landing at the same time. I’m still not sure who was right and who was wrong.   Somehow we made it all work. The fare and the tip covered my new tire down to the dollar, like F&F Automotive in Delavan somehow knew the whole story.