canyonwalker | Entries tagged with uber lyft etc.

Mexico Quickie Travelog #14
Back home · Thu, 14 May 2026. 8:30pm.

Getting home from Cabo today was an 8 hour trek, door to door. It began when we left our room at 11:30, having showered and packed after a morning at the pool. Well, a morning at the pool for one of us. 😣

We walked downhill to the front desk, rolling our bags beside us on the walkway. One of the bellmen at the front saw us coming and, freaked out that we were moving our own bags, literally sprinted up the hill to help us. We let him take the bags so he doesn't get fired for guests doing work on his watch. 😅

After checking out we rode to SJD airport, about 45 minutes away, via private car service. I booked with the same service we used Tuesday. Hawk liked the fact we sat in reclining seats with seat heaters. "That's worth a premium over riding in an Uber for 45 minutes," she noted. And it wasn't even that much of a premium. I checked out Uber prices when I booked the private car, and Uber, with tip, would've been just $10 cheaper. For an extra $10 we'll gladly upgrade to first class for the car ride.

Clowns and Ripoffs at the Airport

We arrived at SJD with hours to spare before our flight. Bag check had no line, and security had only one person in the line in front of us. Unfortunately the guy at security was some clown who was trying to fight the security people about how big his bottle of shampoo was. I mean, it was clearly bigger than the 3.3oz/100ml size limit. But they practically had to pull out a magnifying glass and flashlight to show him the fine print that read "300ml" or whatever it was. Like I said, it wasn't even close.

Passing a few hours at SJD was, frankly, annoying. That's because everything there is unreasonably expensive. I complained two years ago that two slices of pizza and a Coke from Sbarro cost $27. Well, now two slices and a Coke are $31. Not that hungry? One slice and a Coke is $22. And remember, this isn't London or Paris or New York. It's Cabo. At even a tourist-friendly restaurant we bought a whole meal for two, complete with bar drinks, for less than $35.

Think you'll save money drinking water instead? There are no water fountains in the entire terminal. Your only choice is to buy water. And a small bottle, less than 1/2 liter, starts at almost $7. A 1L bottle of water is $15. The only thrifty choice is to walk into a bathroom and fill your own bottle from the sink. I had my own bottle but... No. Just no.

This experience completes my conviction that Cabo has turned into nothing better than a cynical tourist trap. I love the hotel we stayed at, but everything else is a ripoff. (Actually the hotel is a ripoff, too— or would have been, if I were paying the cash rate. Instead I used free-night certs. More on that later.)

Flying First Class

For our flight home we booked a nonstop on United, SJD-SFO. We both got upgraded to First Class. Hawk got her upgrade on Tuesday afternoon, leaving me looking at sitting in coach (well, Economy Plus) by myself. My upgrade came a day later.

Sitting in first class was nice for the bigger seats, but that was about it. Drinks were free, but the flight attendant only came around once to offer them. I had to flag her down for refills. And the free meal I was served had a piece of chicken that tasted like it was cooked by being sucked in through one of the aircraft's jet engines. It was so hard I could barely cut it, even with the metal knife afforded to us first class patricians. God forbid they serve meat like this with plastic utensils in steerage. It was bad enough it made me wish I'd sprung for that $31 Sbarro combo. 🤬

Well, at least the flight was short. It was 3 hours, which was just enough time to watch a movie between the end of all the safety announcement interruptions as we took off and the start of constant safety announcement interruptions the last 20 minutes before we landed. I watched Sinners. I aim to write about it soon.

Bad News: Privacy's Dead. Good News: You Save 3 Minutes!

Things flowed smoothly on the ground at SFO. After I knocked Global Entry for how fast Mexico processes foreigners' passports, I saw today that Global Entry has really upped its game. That's the good news— that's it's really fast now. The bad news is that it's really fast now because they've proven that the government really can track all your movements in public, anywhere, anytime, and associate them with your biography simply through facial recognition via almost impossible-to-spot cameras.

After that deeply concerning demonstration that all the technology for 1984 exists and can be deployed at scale, and we are just one executive order away from President Trump (or any equally fascist leader who succeeds him) turning this country into the full dystopian storyline of that book, we hopped in an Uber and rode home. The Uber had a camera in it, too....

Mexico Quickie Travelog #2
Rolling to Cabo San Lucas, MX · Tue, 12 May 2026. 1pm.

We had a relatively easy trip to Los Cabos today. Although it did start early with a 5:45am wakeup our flight out of San Jose left on time. Actually, I think it left a few minutes early. There were a lot of empty seats, so that helped things flow quicker at the gate. That was just the first leg of our trip. We had a connection at SNA (Orange County).

U-Turn and a Bacon Cheeseburger at John Wayne

As we left for SNA I checked my flight app to see if our connecting flight was tracking on time. Part of that is checking if the flight that's bringing the aircraft inbound is on time. There I saw "SJC - SNA" and timings. Our timings. We'd be exiting our flight and at John Wayne airport, turning right around, and reboarding the same aircraft!

I took advantage of having a few minutes on the ground at SNA to hit the Carl's Jr. near the Southwest gates. It's not that I was super hungry, but there it was 9:30 and I figured I might not have lunch until 3:30 so I wanted something. And why have just something when I can have a western bacon cheeseburger? Mmm, mmm. Oh, and because I'm on Ozempic I ordered only a single western bacon cheeseburger, not a double, and no fries. It's my "eat two-thirds" discipline... except today was more like eat half. It works.

I wolfed the food to make it back to the gate in time for (re-)boarding. I need not have rushed as the connecting flight was delayed. Clearly it wasn't that we lacked an aircraft. 🤣 It's that we lacked pilots. They crew-changed us, and while the new flight attendants arrived on time— and were waiting in front of the locked door to the jetbridge with the rest of us— the new pilots were delayed.

What if Security Freaks Didn't Make Travel Suck?

Although we were late getting off the blocks from SNA we arrived into SJD pretty much on time. It was scheduled as a 2h15m flight and didn't take that long. Once we got rolling things were smooth.

Things were smooth at SJD, too— surprisingly smooth, for international arrivals. I mean, first there was this little number....

Exiting the plane at SJD means descending stairs and walking the tarmac (May 2026)

Exiting the plane at SJD means descending stairs and walking the tarmac (May 2026)

The Southwest flights at SJD don't use jet bridges. Apparently Southwest cheaped out on the rent. That meant exiting the aircraft by descending stairs— I always imagine I'm The Beatles waving to paparazzi— and walking across the tarmac to a bus to the terminal. That actually went a tad faster than I expected, but it dropped us off into the part of international travel that's often the worst: Immigration and Customs.

In the US Hawk and I have had Global Entry for going on 10 years now. That speeds up our return home through immigration— in theory. In practice we've occasionally stood beneath banners touting, "No paperwork, no lines!" waiting in a literal line with literal paperwork in our hands. "Mission Accomplished!" I guess.

In Mexico we have no such fast-track benefits. Except nowadays... it doesn't matter. Mexico's immigrations and customs checks are fast. Even for people with nobody status in Mexico.

Have a Drink for the Road. Or Five.

Past immigration and customs at SJD is a hall repeat travelers call "the shark tank". It's a room full of touts, shills, liars, and thieves who all misrepresent themselves as taxi starters and shuttle coordinators. They're actually all time-share conmen, I'm told. WE bypassed them and walked outside.

Outside the terminal at SJD it's one bar after another (May 2026)

Outside the terminal at SJD it's one bar after another (May 2026)

The next curious thing about SJD is that one you walk outside you're in the bar zone. Like, there are two bars right at the exit doors, one to the right and one to the left. You don't even have to walk across the street. Then, across the street, are two or three more bars. Those you can see in the photo above. They're opposite the area where all the shuttle drivers and coordinators— the real ones, not the scammy time-share liars— meet arriving passengers.

"Why not call an Uber and not worry about who's a scammer?" you might ask. Ah, easy answer. Uber and other ride-hailing services are banned by federal law from picking up passengers at the airport. Apparently the scammers have paid off the authorities better than Uber, et. al. ever will. And these federal police, once bought, are fiercely loyal. I read that Uber drivers face a $2,500 (US!) fine and confiscation of their vehicle if the heavily armed federales wish to make an example of them.

Well, we skipped the bars and found our shuttle coordinator. After a few minutes of waiting a driver pulled up in a Chevy Suburban. For just the two of us.

Enjoying a beer on the ride to Cabo San Lucas (May 2026)

Enjoying a beer on the ride to Cabo San Lucas (May 2026)

And there's more beer in the car, BTW!

Oh, and that's a picture of my second car beer. Since it was already my third drink of the day (I had a bourbon on the connecting flight) I figured I should switch to light beer. I like Pacifico so I figured I'd give Pacifico Light a try. It's... very light. "This is sex in a canoe," I quipped to Hawk. Then I checked the can and noticed it's just 3% ABV. Yup, that's light. I think from now on I'll switch to real beer. When I want something fucking close to water, I'll drink water.

Dallas Trip #2
Irving, TX · Wed 18 Feb 2026. 1:30pm.

Today I'm in Dallas. More specifically, Irving, one of its suburbs. Irving's a nice town, at least the part I'm in, with a mix of office towers, restaurants and hotels, and condos. Ah, but the trip out here took a bit of doing.

My flight today went smoothly. Even getting up at 4:45am went smoothly. I was worried it might be painful getting up that early, or that my scheduled Lyft driver might bail on me, or that I might get to the airport nice and early only to discover my flight was running 2 hours late. None of those bad things happened. And I even had a great seat on my flight when it left, on-time, at 7:05am.

A whole exit row to myself on an otherwise mostly-full flight. Luxury! (Feb 2026)

A whole exit row to myself on an otherwise mostly-full flight. Luxury! (Feb 2026)

I had an entire exit row to myself. Leg room and shoulder room! And this wasn't some 40%-of-the-seats-are-empty flight. It was mostly full. But thanks to Southwest's new assigned-seats policy, picking exit row seats costs extra money for people without elite status. Of course, if the flight were 100% full they'd put people in these seats for free. But this flight was maybe only 90% full, so I lucked out.

We even landed early at DAL airport. Of course, landing early meant we had to wait on the tarmac for our gate to free up. 🙄 There's no getting ahead in today's commercial aviation system. The only way to win is to fly semi-private. ...Which I'd like to try sometime. I'll see if/when it makes sense.

Taking Lyft from the airport was an odd experience. My driver called me up and yelled at me because I wasn't where he was trying to meet me. I was, I explained patiently, standing at exactly the place where the Lyft app told me to go— which was, not coincidentally, right under a bunch of signs that read "Lyft Ride App here ↴". But my driver was a 60+ male so the fact that somebody had changed the rules on him sometime since, oh, 1983, made it a thing to piss and moan about for a few minutes. 🤣

I could've hung up on him and tried another driver, but I really wanted to get going faster than canceling and starting over would take. And because I was patient with him, he eventually agreed to work with me instead of complaining I was "in the wrong spot"— which apparently was where ride apps used to do pickups, not where all the signs point today. He drove over to my spot and picked me up. I sympathized with him about "Yeah, they always seem to change the rules every few weeks"... and that was enough to put the issue to bed. We had an amiable conversation about the natural beauty of California vs. living in Texas after that.

I reached my hotel just after 1pm. They didn't have any rooms ready. That's really rare, but I accept it because it's within policy that checkin starts at 3. I stowed my bags with the helpful front desk person and walked over to an Italian restaurant a block away for lunch.

This really is a nice little corner of town with things close by & walkable. The DART light rail even has a stop a few blocks up. I'll see about getting my room again in another few minutes here as I head back after finishing lunch.

Thanksgiving triplog #1
SFO airport · Fri, 21 Nov 2025. 8:30pm.

Tonight we're headed east for Thanksgiving; to Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania to visit friends and relatives over the coming week. We're at SFO already, awaiting our 9:25pm departure to BWI. Yes, it's a red-eye... and a red-eye was actually our first choice. Partly that's because when flying west to east it's a matter of losing most of a day traveling or having a rough night getting little sleep on a red-eye. We chose losing a night over losing a day. And partly it's because this flight is on Southwest, where I have the Companion Pass that makes flying together cheaper.

And yes, Southwest flies red-eyes now! They started that in the last year or two. It took decades because they literally had to upgrade all their IT to be able to handle the clocks flipping from 23:59 to 00:00 in the middle of a flight. It's like the Y2K problem but it's the D2 (Day 2) problem. 🤣 Oh, but despite upgrading their IT from the 1980s to maybe the 1990s they've still got...

I'll book this Southwest flight... and it's delayed

I'll book this Southwest flight... and it's delayed

...The problem of delays snowballing across the day because they continue to plan their schedules hopelessly optimistically like the past 20 years of commercial aviation in the US haven't actually happened.

Fortunately it's just a small delay (so far) and we really don't care this trip. We purposefully booked a nonstop, even as a red-eye, to avoid problems with missing a connection due to delays. And with this red-eye we're scheduled to land at 5:30am. If the flight were even 2 hours late we wouldn't care— except for how long we'd be sitting, bored, in the gate area struggling not to fall asleep before the boarding call!

Well, one thing that worked well this evening was a scheduled ride with Uber. I've been leery of using scheduled rides since a colleague of mine booked one for an early morning airport departure and the driver was late then canceled. He barely made it to the airport on time. But this time the driver was actually early and waited patiently outside.

Texas Trip log #3
Residence Inn · Wed, 12 Nov 2025. 12:05am.

My Southwest Airlines flight to Austin not only left on time this evening, it arrived early. "Well, we got you to Texas 15 minutes early," the purser quipped over the speakers. "When we're late next time we'll call it even." See, even Southwest employees know their airline has a reputation for arriving late. 🤣

It's not as simple as, "We arrived early, woohoo!" though. The system is not set up to handle flights arriving early. As is frequently the case with an early arrival, our flight had to sit on the tarmac waiting for our gate to open up. You see, in the name of efficiency the airline figures out how to use the fewest gates possible, which generally means a gate doesn't open up until 2 minutes before your flight is supposed to land. So all of our 15 minutes of earliness was consumed just sitting there, 300 feet short of the gate.

Since I'd canceled my car reservation when my travel plans changed at 41,000' I thought I'd save a bit of time getting to the hotel by hopping in an Uber instead of walking all the way to the car rental depot. Oops, no, the designated spot for ride-share pickups is in the same far parking structure as the rental cars.

Well, one advantage of taking an Uber remained not having to drive. It was going on midnight local time as we whisked across uncrowded highways around Austin. Though it was only 10:45pm for me, on California time, it was still late by my usual schedule. I thought I might nap a bit on the flight. Strangely, I didn't. I was wide awake the whole dang time. And now I was struggling not to nod off.

The Residence Inn was quiet when I arrived. Despite rates being high when I booked the hotel seem to have low occupancy. I checked in, got my keys, and went upstairs to my room. To my chagrin I found that I was in an "armpit" room— wedged on an inside corner of the building, where there was no window near the bed and only a small window near the desk that looked straight into a hallway window 5' away. It's like they assigned me the worst room in the hotel. So much for Lifetime Titanium status. Not only don't I get an upgrade, even a trivial one, I pretty much get a downgrade. And I'm paying $200++ a night for this!

I called down to the front desk to complain about the room with its missing window. "Do you have anything better you can put me in?" The desk agent tap-tapped on his computer and asked me to meet him at the elevator for new keys. "It's a one-bedroom suite," he informed me. Well, it's the same size as the other room, just there's a wall in the middle. 🙄 But at least it has 2 windows... which it turns out will be really important tomorrow when I'm trying to get work done, because the lighting in here sucks!

Phoenix Getaway travelog #2
SJC Airport · Sat, 20 Sep 2025. 9am

Over my past several trips via SJC airport I've found that parking in the hourly lot next to the terminal can be a win. Yeah, it's not cheap at $31/day or $26 with a reservation a few days in advance. But when the cost of Uber/Lyft to the airport runs from $30 to $40+ each way, parking is a win, cost-wise, on short trips. Plus, time-wise, driving and parking means I control the schedule; no waiting on drivers who are slow to arrive or get reassigned and starting the process over from "Please wake up and start driving toward me" after I've already been waiting several minutes. And sometimes I've been able to park really close to the terminal. Alas today was not one of those days.

I decided to pay for the hourly parking lot... and the first open space is nearly at the far end of the lot. (Sep 2025)

I decided to pay for the hourly parking lot... and the first open space is nearly at the far end of the lot. (Sep 2025)

Paying to park in this lot is a gamble. It's a gamble because the lot is long and narrow. The long axis stretches directly away from the terminal. So if you luck into a spot near the front, it's a quick walk to the building. If you luck into the lot being 99% full with everything close already filled up.... Well, the spot I got today was 4 spaces from the far end.

I'm parked at the far end of the expensive lot. The terminal is almost 1/2 mile away. (Sep 2025)

I'm parked at the far end of the expensive lot. The terminal is almost 1/2 mile away. (Sep 2025)

It's a long walk to the terminal at the other end.

And for this I'm paying $104— $26/day times 4 days. I took the gamble on parking here for a 4 day trip because I figured it was worth a little something extra for Hawk with her broken toe not to have to depend on Uber/Lyft, which can occasionally be weird. Well, it's a good thing I dropped her at the terminal first, because walking from here would've been a no-go for her.

The cheaper lot across the street doesn't even go as far as where I'm parked in the expensive lot - and it's less than 2/3 full (Sep 2025)

The cheaper lot across the street doesn't even go as far as where I'm parked in the expensive lot - and it's less than 2/3 full (Sep 2025)

Oh, and there was a cheaper lot I could have booked my reservation in. The lot across the street would've been $80 total, $24 cheaper. And note that the worst spaces in that lot are still not as far out as where I'm parked here. And I wouldn't even have had to park at the far end of that lot.... It's less than 2/3 full.

You pays your money and you takes your chances.

Chicago Trip Log #7
Back Home - Thu, 13 Aug 2025, 11:20pm

Leaving Chicago this afternoon/evening was a comedy of errors. Kind of like the movie namesake of my tag for traveling— Planes, Trains, and Automobiles— aspects of getting from point A to B to C that should have been straightforward went awry.

The first frustrating miscue was it taking forever to get a Lyft ride. The app showed drivers within 1.5 blocks of the hotel, but then matched me to a driver 9 minutes away who still had a passenger to drop off first. "There's no way in downtown Chicago at rush hour the closest driver is 9 minutes away," a local friend of mine quipped. Then when that driver got as close as 6 minutes away, Boom! They switched me to a new driver. Who was 13 minutes away and still had to drop off a passenger.

"That's bullshit," my colleague opined. "I'd cancel and try again." So I did. And got matched to another driver 9 minutes away. I decided to stick with that as it seemed like the best I was going to get unless I wanted to pay a lot more.

Then my driver got lost. In downtown Chicago. Meeting me in front of an 80-floor skyscraper. So not exactly a hard-to-find address! Except obviously it was. The driver made wrong turns and had to circle around not once, nor even twice, but three times. I thought about cancelling again but didn't want to go to the back of the 13 minute queue.

Ultimately it took 25 minutes from when I first called for a car until one arrived. Then the ride took 55 minutes due to traffic. 80 minutes total... and if I'd walked to the train, it would've taken about 50 minutes for the same trip. And cost about 1/25th as much.

Paying a lot more for a ride instead of using transit

As an aside, I was planning to walk & ride the train until the last minute. I figured the timing of transit versus a car ride was favorable— which is often very much not true—and saving the company money was an act of good corporate citizenship. What changed my mind was that same colleague I mentioned above who openly laughed at my "save the company money as a good corporate citizen" line.

"It's not like it's your money," she began. Then after I used that citizenship line she laughed and told me about a few examples she's seen recently of managers in our organization running up huge bar tabs and expensing them. "All they did was get themselves drunk. They didn't accomplish anything necessary, like getting themselves to the airport. And they had zero hesitation."

Put in perspective against pouring $100 down my throat, paying $70 for a ride instead of $2.50 for the train was a reasonable business expense.

The usual with Southwest

I'm flying Southwest this trip, so you know what happened once I got to the airport.

Aaaand it's delayed (Feb 2018)

Yup, my flight was delayed.

Delays actually started appearing via notifications on my phone a few hours earlier. I ignored them earlier in the day, figuring the actual delay would be fluid until the aircraft serving my flight left its previous station.

Even once I was at the airport, and my scheduled flight time was just 2 hours away, the delay kept moving around. The flight was 10 minutes late. Then 30. Then 45. Then on time. Then 10 minutes late. Once it actually left its previous station 25 minutes late, it stabilized— it would be 25 minutes late. Like I said.

The weird thing, though, was despite Southwest showing a 25 minute late departure they claimed we'd actually arrive a few minutes early in San Jose. Yeah, I didn't believe that either.

Thankfully once our flight was ready for boarding the day's comedy of errors was over. The flight went smoothly. There were lots of empty seats, so I enjoyed an exit-row seat with an empty middle next to me. With two free drinks thrown in thanks to my elite status, it was almost like flying first class.

Ultimately we arrived just 10 minutes late. Not bad. And once we were on the ground at SJC I used my finely tuned skills at timing calling a ride so that a driver was pulling up to the curb just as I got to the ride-hailing area outside the terminal. I walked through my own front door right at 11:00pm, just 30 minutes after the flight touched down.

Chicago Trip Log #2
Downtown Chicago - Mon, 11 Aug 2025, 7pm

Today has been a day of alternating good and bad experiences. Getting to SJC airport and waiting for my flight was mellow. But then the flight was late. Then the flight was smooth enough that I even nodded off a bit... until later, when we hit turbulence as the pilot navigated around a storm. We landed in Chicago 40 minutes late... where the weather was beautiful. I was going to ride a train into the city, which would've taken over an hour including walking at both ends... but then I saw a pretty good price for a ride with Lyft. But then the driver drove past me, almost drove away while I was following after him waving my arms vigorously, and had a rotten orange peel sitting on the floor of his back seat when I got in. WTF? Oh, and the driver got lost in front of the hotel because he couldn't follow both spoken directions and a graphical map on his maps app.

All those little frustrations melted away when I saw my room.

Watch on YouTube

I'm in a corner room at the Radisson Blu hotel downtown on Lakeshore East Park. I've got a walk-out balcony with views over the park.

My plan for dinner with colleagues this even got canceled due to a conflict. Now I'm kicking myself for not having packed leisure clothes. It's a warm evening, and the pool downstairs (I can see it from my balcony) looks inviting. Well, maybe I'll just grab a leisurely solo dinner at the hotel restaurant and come up here to enjoy the evening on the balcony.

I saw a news article last week about Lyft CEO David Risher discussing enshittification in the ride-hailing platform. Recall that "enshittification", a term attributed to author Cory Doctorow, is the process of services getting worse for both consumers and sellers/advertisers/workers to enhance investor returns. Does Risher cop to Lyf being enshittified in his April 24 letter to shareholders? Eh, not quite.

Risher's letter (posted publicly at the link above) follows a familiar, three-step formula for leadership communication:

Things are going great! Fantastic! Look at these impressive charts!

But amid all this success, there's a pitfall we need to worry about.

But we can avoid that by all pulling together and working hard, with the benefit of this great new discipline I've thought of.

Enshittification is the pitfall Risher describes in part 2. But really the letter isn't about enshittification; that's just a motivation to help explain his brilliant new strategy in part 3, which he dubs "Falcon Mode".

That said, enshittification is a real pitfall at Lyft. I've seen the service enshittifying over the past few years and have groused about it many times in my blogs. My complaints:

Lyft rides have been getting more expensive and are frequently much more expensive than its direct competitor, Uber

Lyft rides often cost more than the price displayed when I choose the ride, due to hidden, extra fees tacked on.

The process of getting matched to a driver is taking longer and longer. Multiple times I've selected a ride in Lyft, waited several minutes, then canceled it and pursue another option— including asking my spouse to drive me to Oakland!

Risher only barely touches on any of these three problems. The closest he comes is writing about needing to improve the number of drivers by making the platform more friendly for them. More drivers might improve the first and third problems, indirectly. But Lyft drivers I talk to don't tell me the problem is the platform is "unfriendly" or "hard to use". It's that they make less money with Lyft than Uber. That is the key sign of enshittification— customers see worse service and higher prices, while suppliers fume about getting less and less.

Georgia Travelog #1
SJC Airport - Saturday, 5 Apr 2025, 5:15am

Since last night I've been humming 🎵 On a Midnight Train to Georgia 🎵. Today we're headed to Georgia, though not on a midnight train. It's a 6:30am flight. And we've been up since 4am.

We're headed out to Savannah, Georgia today. We'll visit my oldest sister and her family there for a few days, then drive up to the mountains in the northwest corner of the state for a few days of hiking. I was hoping to time the season right for warm-but-not-hot weather. ...Well, the first few days in Georgia will have highs around 80. Then it's cold and rainy. That's not really an ideal Spring Break trip.

Oh, I tried a new thing today: scheduled ride with Lyft. With us wanting to leave home at 4:45 for the airport I didn't want to deal with the risks of trying to hail a driver at that time. Uber and Lyft both have screwed me on that in previous trips. Last time I needed a ride at just 7:15am on a weekend I waited so long I gave up and asked my spouse to drive me. Unfortunately scheduled rides have been a crapshoot, too. When a colleague of mine tried one for an early flight, the scheduled driver canceled on him, and by the time he could get a new driver he arrived at the airport in time to have to run to our gate in time for boarding. Thus I was impressed when things worked smoothly with the ride I scheduled last night. A driver was assigned in time. He even arrived early and waited patiently for our pickup time. I'm not sure if Lyft has worked out the kinks since my colleague's bad experience or I just got a fortunate roll of the dice.

NYC Quickie Travelog #2
DEN Airport - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 2pm

It's been a long road to New York City today, a longer road than it had to be... but maybe easier?

Traveling nowadays is always a series of tradeoffs. The most direct flight coast-to-coast? Stupid expensive. Or only middle seats in steerage left. Or both. The next most direct flight? Nonstop to EWR. Which is fine if you're staying in New Jersey, but to upper midtown Manhattan it's 4 trains on 4 different systems. Or 3 trains plus walking 2km. Or $100++ for Uber/Lyft. So I chose to fly Southwest to LGA. Which means taking a connection. On the plus side, my Southwest elite status and Southwest's open seating policy— soon to be RIP— guarantees I can get a decent seat. And a midday connection in Denver means I can eat lunch at a real table and choose something tastier than an airline snak-pak. See? Tradeoffs.

Then there's the tradeoff of departure and arrival times. Flying west to east already makes scheduling hard, given the 3 hour timezone change. When flying with a connection the choices are often leave stupid early, arrive stupid late, or both. I found one itinerary that wasn't ridiculous on either end— depart 9:20am, arrive 8:05pm— but it meant hauling up to OAK airport, 40 miles from home.

Then there's ride-hailing services. Those have become a tradeoff all unto themselves. You want sneaky fees and shell games finding a driver? More and more, those are standard. When I hailed a ride at 7am this morning the app spun for a few minutes then assigned me a driver 12 minutes away. Then that ride disappeared. "We're looking for a new driver," the app told me. Then, "We're still looking for a new driver." My estimated pickup time telescoped to 20 minutes past when I first pressed the "Buy" button.

Fuck that, I decided and woke Hawk up to drive me to OAK. Fortunately for her this didn't come out of the blue. We discussed last night the possibility of me needing her to give me a ride at 7:15am. Yes, that's how enshittified Uber and Lyft have become; that I now routinely make a Plan B for "What to do if Uber and Lyft are useless."

Well, I got to OAK in good time, no thanks to anyone but my gracious spouse. And the flight left on time, so here I am in DEN, as planned, with time to eat lunch at a real time and without my elbows pressed in against my sides. OTOH it's still hours to NYC, and I'm not going to get to my hotel until at least 9pm local time— and even that only if things continue to go (mostly) right. Tradeoffs.

Update: MOAR tradeoffs in traveling to NYC!

Panama Travelog #39
PTY Airport - Tue, 31 Dec 2024. 6:30am.

Today's going to be a long day. It's New Year's Eve, and we're hoping to hang with friends in a low-key fashion late this evening to celebrate the New Year. But first we have to get home from Panama. And to that end we were up at 4:30 this morning— 1:30am California time— to get dressed, eat a quick breakfast in the room, and Uber to the airport.

We headed to the airport earlier than we had to for our flight. It's not 'til 8:55am, and I would've been happy leaving the hotel at, say, 6:15am. But Hawk lost her reading glasses on the flight down here 9 days ago and wanted to extra time at the airport to check with their lost and found.

We arrived at the airport around 5:45am, before the United service counter was even open. We lined up to be first in line. But just as we did that, Hawk realized she'd lost her cell phone!

We quickly surmised the phone fell out of her pocket in the Uber. I reopened the app to start their process for reporting/retrieving a lost item. Concerns rushed through my head: Would we be able to reach the driver? Would we be able to communicate the problem? Would there be time to retrieve it before we had to go through security for our flight?

First, it turns out that Uber has a pretty solid path in their app for reporting lost items. There's a set of forms to help automate it. And drivers are paid a flat fee ($10, at least in Panama) for returning a lost item. I clicked through a few of the screens then took the first "Call the driver" opportunity presented.

Next, I managed to explain, in Spanish, the problem. The driver said he found the phone and could be back at the airport in 10 minutes, same spot where he dropped us off. I continued to wait in line for the airline ticket desk while Hawk went outside to meet the driver.

Hawk got her phone back, tipped the driver an extra $5 cash which made him really happy, and came back inside just as the United ticket desk opened. New crisis averted while addressing original crisis!

The front desk agent there was very helpful about finding Hawk's lost glasses. She called over to the airport lost and found office in the other terminal and negotiated the process for us. A pair of glasses were there, in a case matching what Hawk described. The agent had them text her a picture of the item so Hawk could confirm it. They were hers! The gal from lost-and-found would bring them over. But it would be ~15 minutes because she had to come from the other terminal. We sat down to wait— with both of our cell phones to help us pass the time. 😅

Panama Travelog #35
Metropolitan Park, Panama - Mon, 30 Dec 2024. 12pm.

"It figures," I scowled as I arose to brilliant sunshine pounding through our hotel room's floor-to-ceiling windows this morning. "The first sunny day in Panama City is our last full day in Panama!"

What a fitting thing to say on this star-crossed trip. A bit of good news is hard to appreciate because it reminds us of all the frustrations we've had to deal with.

But hard to appreciate doesn't mean impossible. And with a list of possible activities Hawk drafted in advanced we looked for the most outdoorsy one still in the area. It would be Panama City's Metropolitan Park, right in town and with a small network of trails including a stellar view of the city itself.

We Ubered over to the park's visitor center. The fare was $3.19 for a trip of just under 4km. Uber is ridiculously cheap here by US standards. I left a baller, 30%+ tip— a whole dollar. 🤣

Panama City panorama from Cerro Cedro in Metropolitan Park (Dec 2024)

From the park visitor center we walked 0.7km up a trail that mostly paralleled a road through the park then 1.1km up to the top of Cerro Cedro. It's the 2nd highest hill in the city, at 160m (524') above sea level. Outlooks at the top of the hill provide commanding vistas in multiple directions, including the one in this photo showing the main downtown area of Panama City.

Edit: Which building is our hotel? We're about 90% of the way over to the right in the photo above, just to the left of the tall, black building (Tower Bank) anchoring the right edge of the picture.

As we looped back down a different trail from the summit we saw some wildlife. I'll share short videos of those in another journal entry.

Update: see my journal with video of 3 animals we saw in the park.

Trade Show Travelog #9
Back home - Thu, 5 Dec 2024, 9:45pm

I'm home from 4 days in Vegas. It's time to truly close the book (well, mostly; there are still followups) on this trade show. Especially after today was a busy final day of the show. My flight back to San Jose, despite leaving 10 minutes late after the crew were scurrying around to find either a missing passenger or a stowaway, landed on time. Once again I timed my call to Lyft/Uber well such that my driver was pulling up at the waiting area just as I arrived on foot. I really like not having to wait late in the evening when I'm tired after a long day. Even a wait of several minutes can feel like half an hour. I was home-home, walking through my own front door, at 9:10pm.

After arriving home I methodically set about emptying my suitcase and packing things away. All my dirty clothes went either into the laundry basket or directly into the washer. I started a load this evening for the stuff that's stinky with second-hand smoke from walking through casinos. Then I took a shower. As I've remarked before about staying in casinos, I need to wash up at night to get the reek of smoke out of my hair and my pores. I feel much better already. Now I'm winding down for the night, though I might have to stay up later than I want to move my laundry to the dryer so it doesn't sit damp in the washer 'til morning.

Trade Show Travelog #8
LAS Airport - Thu, 5 Dec 2024, 6:15pm

Another year of AWS re:Invent is a wrap. The exhibitor show closed at 4pm today. I'm now at the airport awaiting my 7:15pm flight home.

I worked the full day at the show today, 10am-4. I was only on the duty roster to work 'til 1pm. In the morning I checked with Southwest Airlines to see if I could change to an earlier flight. The option was there to confirm a seat on the 4:20pm departure... but I decided, "Enh, I'll see how things are going at the show at 1pm and check again later." That was a mistake. By 1pm all the confirmable seats were gone.

But staying through 4pm was also a good thing, for the team. The booth got busy in the afternoon, even after other people peeled off to travel home. The last 8 of us were often all tied up working. And people responded well to Jenkins the Butler being in the booth.

Another costume remix as Jenkins the Butler (Dec 2024)

Another costume remix as Jenkins the Butler (Dec 2024)

Yes, I dressed as The Butler again today. I drew a lot of traffic into the booth just by people recognizing me— or, should I say, my persona. They'd walk by, do a double point, then point and laugh (in a good way!). I'd wave them into the booth. Lots of people took selfies with me.

I also had a good conversation with an overseas partner while dressed as Jenkins. This was an executive meeting with one of our VPs... and the partner VP recognized me from Jenkins World conferences as far back as 2018! We also compared experiences from 2022 getting out of Orland, FL when Jenkins World was canceled last-minute due to an oncoming hurricane.

The end of the show at 4pm might have felt like the end of the workday. But, ugh, it was not. First, I stayed to help the team tear things down and box them up until about 4:30. Then it was a loooong walk back to my hotel's bell desk where I'd left my suitcase. Then it was a long wait, 15-20 minutes, for a car via Uber and Lyft. Oh, and prices were high. Uber wanted over $80. Lyft was under $50... until I clicked for the ride then it was suddenly $65. This isn't the first Lyft has been thieves. But still they were cheaper. 🤷 Oh, and traffic made things take a long time to get to the airport. The ride was almost 25 minutes. It's less than 5 miles.

At the airport my first order of business— after getting through security, that is— was to get dinner. Dinner at 5:30pm was the first food I've had since before 8am today. Yes, I was so busy at the show I skipped lunch today. But now I've eaten, and I'm sitting, and I'm finally unwinding. So far my flight home to SJC is showing on time. Fingers crossed Southwest doesn't find a way to disappoint as usual.

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #16
Back Home - Mon, 2 Dec 2024, 12:15am

Hawk and I got home late this evening from our Thanksgiving trip to the east coast. We always knew it was going to be a late evening as our flight was scheduled to leave Baltimore at 7:10pm and land in Oakland at 10:10. Best case we'd be home a bit after 11, we knew.. For a few hours at the airport our flight showed on time, with the inbound aircraft flying on schedule. But then....

I'll book this Southwest flight... and it's delayed

Then Southwest changed our aircraft. The one that was due to land 90 minutes ahead of boarding our flight was swapped over to another flight and we were assigned an aircraft that couldn't possibly get to us in time for our scheduled departure. We left 30 minutes late. We landed 30 minutes late, too. The upshot was that we got home-home, as in walked through our own front door, a few minutes before midnight.

Turning Around Tomorrow Morning

Coming home at midnight would be one thing if all I had to do was work from home in the morning. I'd be dragging but I'd manage it. Instead I have to get up early tomorrow morning to pack another suitcase and go back to the airport! I'll be headed off to a big trade show in Las Vegas for 3½ days.

Of course I planned ahead for this so I don't have to do laundry before going back out... but I do have to ready a bunch of specific things. Thus I'll be busy in the morning. And I planned for that with my flight time, too. I booked at 11am-ish flight instead of one leaving around 9am. That'll give me time to do the things I need to do... though I will be busy and there won't be time to spare.

About the Parking Gambit...

Recall when we embarked on this trip 9 days ago we had trouble getting an Uber or Lyft ride in time. We punted on waiting for a car and drove— which meant we had to park. And airport parking at OAK was more expensive than I expected. I thought it'd run us about $180 for the trip. It ran $236.

Part of the problem with Uber and Lyft, though, was that not only were there no drivers nearby, the fares were ridiculously high. We'd have had to pay around $100, maybe more, for a ride. We imagine that our ride tonight, when an after-hours surcharge would apply, would make it another $100 proposition. The prospect of spending $200 on rides softened the blow of spending $236 on parking. Well, I checked when we landed at the airport near 11pm. Lyft would've been about $80 coming home tonight. So driving our own car cost us about $56 more in parking than the rides would've cost. Is there a value in the convenience of having our own car instead of a potentially cramped and smelly back seat of someone else's car? Absolutely. But is it worth $56? Enh. Next time we fly OAK we'll plan ahead of time on driving and make a parking reservation, which lowers the daily rate.

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #1
OAK airport - Sat, 23 Nov 2024, 6:20am

Hawk and I were up early this morning, like alarms set at 4:30am early, to begin our Thanksgiving trip. It was still pitch dark out when I checked Uber and Lyft at 5:10am to roll to OAK airport. The fares were ± $100. I chose Lyft and... waited. It was still pitch dark out at 5:15am when I gave up waiting on their shenanigans with how long it would take for a driver to arrive, even after trying the more expensive "priority pickup". It was still pitch dark out at 5:17am when we decided "Fuck it, we'll drive our car to the airport and pay for parking," as I backed our car out of the garage. The enshittification of everything.

It's mostly pitch dark out now at 6:20am as I write this, sitting comfortably in the airport gate area. The first light of day has just appeared over the trees. Actual sunrise isn't for another 38 minutes.

Oh, and the decision to park at the airport was not quite the over-under I thought it would be. When Uber/Lyft cars were running ±$100 each way I figured that parking, 9 days at $20, would be cheaper. Nope, parking is now $26/day. So driving is not cheaper, even at eye-watering ride costs. Well, at least we have certainty about our schedule. And don't have to wait for pickup-time shenanigans when we arriving home 9 days from now, late at night and tired.

Our flight departs at 7:30am. Tracking shows the inbound aircraft operating on schedule. So chances seems good we'll depart on time. The airline is even estimating we'll arrive on the east coast 20-25 minutes early. This is Southwest Airlines, though. I'm all but certain they'll find a way to leave 10 minutes late and waste that 20-25 minute buffer somewhere.

New Zealand Travelog #1
SFO Airport lounge - Sat, 6 Apr 2024, 7:15pm

We officially began our trip to New Zealand today a bit after 6pm. That's when we left home and boarded... a Lyft car to SFO. Yes, a journey of 16,000 miles— about how far we'll travel in the air and on the ground over the next 17 days— begins with a Lyft ride.

One interesting thing about this Lyft ride is that as we sat in the car the driver was still fiddling with his app to find the "Start Ride" button. While he was swiping through screens I saw how our ride appeared to him. The ride, which showed a charge of almost $54 on my app, showed him a payment of just $29 and change for providing the ride. That's... astonishing. The driver is paid only a little more than half what we riders pay. The rest goes to Lyft. Lyft, which is... running an app.

That's not just astonishing, it's disgusting. It's made me reconsider whether it'd be better, from a workers' rights perspective, to take a taxi. Except I know that as bad as this is, the taxi industry is worse. 😱

This morning I got an email that struck me as strange right off the bat. Lyft was advertising to me that I should use their service for my commute. "WTF?" was my immediate thought. "Hiring a ride to/from work every day would be expensive!" ...Not that I actually have a commute right now. I've been 100% remote the past 5-6 years and partly remote another 5 years before that. But I've also had plenty of in-office jobs, and I've both driven and used transit for commuting, so I have a strong sense of how (un)realistic this is.

People who read my blog regularly should know that when it comes to a proposition like "Does it make sense to use ride share services for commuting!" I don't just say Yes or No and move on. If I think it's a plausible idea I'll do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to be sure. And even if I think the idea is absolutely nuts I'll still work out the math just to demonstrate how cracked it is. 😅 So here's some math— and some thinking about the situations where ride-sharing for a commute might make sense.

My company's office, the one I was officially de-assigned from back in, like, 2018 in a cost-cutting move— is 10 miles away. A quick check on ride-share apps shows the fare to get there right now is about $24. Let's call that $27 with a tip. But that's mid-day. I could imagine commute hours trips easily running $30-35 with traffic and demand pricing. That's $60-70/day.

Spending $60-70 per day on a commute is a lot. If you do that every day, let's say 20 working days (average) per month, that's around $1,300 per month or $15-16k per year.

This reminds me of the calculations I did when I was starting my first professional job. I worked out that the costs of taking transit (which really wasn't designed for the commute I had) were higher than the costs of owning a car. And yes, I considered not just the monthly cost of a car loan but also insurance, maintenance, and gas. My calculations showed that the transit costs I avoided paid for all my car costs— meaning I had the car for leisure use nights and weekends basically for just the cost of extra gas I needed to buy.

Indeed, "It's cheaper just to drive" has been the answer for most commutes I've had since then. And those have ranged anywhere from just over a mile each way to nearly 40 miles each way. The one thing that has swung the needle in favor of transit versus driving was when there was no free parking at the office. That would change up the calculation of driving vs. ride-sharing, too. For example, one of my customers says that parking near his downtown SF office is $20 even in the company-sponsored garage. Though rather than motivate him to use transit or ride-sharing it actually just motivates him to limit his in-office workdays to one a month.

Another thing that could swing the needle in favor of ride-sharing is if you don't go to the office every day. Suppose you need to be in-office 2 days a week. Then the example commute I described above averages $130/week, $520/month, and $6,200/year. That starts to compare favorably with the costs of owning a car.... Though if you don't own a car you've probably got to add on a lot of ride-share trips for other things such as grocery shopping, visiting friends, and occasional dining out. I don't see many ways ride-sharing to work makes sense for people living in areas that make driving a practical necessity.

I wrote yesterday about how my company snuck in an ridiculous change to our travel policy. Even worse than the change they did make is one they reversed after strong pushback from managers who refused to take it to their teams. (Remember, they presented it to managers then asked the managers to tell all us ICs 1:1 to avoid widespread emoji jeering on Zoom all-hands other companies have experienced recently when informing employees of idiotic new policies.) The change they at least had the grace to withdraw was, "Employees shall use public transit as much as possible."

Use public transit?

Okay, sure, when you're commuting to the office, transit works. When you're in a city. When you're in a city that actually has good public transit.

This seems like a policy that was thought up by someone who lives and works in a large European city and only ever visits large European cities. Or, in North America, only goes between New York, Boston, Toronto, and maybe Chicago.

And even in such places, transit only works if you travel around the city center and highly connected areas outside it. Because anywhere else you need a car.

Yeah, there may technically be bus lines, but buses are slow. When you're working, time is literally money. It's not worth taking a bus ride that takes an hour-plus— or even an indirect train line that takes just as long— when Uber or a taxi or a rented car can get you there in 20 minutes.

The company execs who made that sprained decision thankfully rolled it back to, "Employees shall use taxis and ride-hailing services as much as possible rather than renting vehicles." That makes sense. Uber, Lyft, etc. are a lot cheaper than renting a car in many situations.

I recognized the obvious cost-savings of using Uber, Lyft, etc. versus renting a car over 10 years ago. I almost never rent a car on business trips anymore. My travel pattern on business is usually going between the airport and addresses within 10-15 miles of it. Even with a couple rides of 25-30 miles to/from a more remote suburb it still usually adds up to less than the cost of renting a car. Plus there are additional wins. I save the time and time and hassle of picking up and dropping off a rental car, the effort and hassle of driving, and the costs of gas and parking.

As much as all these wins with Uber, Lyft, etc. are obvious to me apparently they're not obvious to all my colleagues. I've heard back-channel that the main reason execs were (over-)focused on reducing ground transport expenses was that too many people were racking up big bills on car rentals.

Renting cars isn't cheap nowadays. Renting them on business days without a big corporate discount (my company has no corp discount) runs upwards of $100/day. And it's probably higher in some other countries. To think that anybody in my line of work would think that's a bright idea is baffling. But maybe old habits die hard for some people.

Profile

canyonwalker

May 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated May. 19th, 2026 10:40 pm

Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with uber lyft etc.

The Journey Home from Cabo. Big Brother.

Clowns and Ripoffs at the Airport

Flying First Class

Bad News: Privacy's Dead. Good News: You Save 3 Minutes!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to Los Cabos

U-Turn and a Bacon Cheeseburger at John Wayne

What if Security Freaks Didn't Make Travel Suck?

Have a Drink for the Road. Or Five.

(Mostly) Settled in Dallas

Headed East for Thanksgiving

Midnight in Austin

I Gambled on Parking. I Lost.

Comedy of Errors Leaving Chicago

Paying a lot more for a ride instead of using transit

The usual with Southwest

Late Flight, Terrible Lyft, Nice Hotel Room

Lyft CEO Talks Enshittification

Up Early to Georgia

The Long Road to New York

Lost & Found on the Way to Lost & Found

The View from Metropolitan Park

Back Home from Vegas

Trade Show Day 4's a Wrap. Headed Home.

Back Home Late, Leaving Again in 9 Hours

Turning Around Tomorrow Morning

About the Parking Gambit...

Oh-Dark-30 to Oakland

A Journey of 16,000 Miles Starts With... a Lyft Ride

Lyft for Commuting?

They Thought "Use Public Transit" Would be a Good Travel Policy??