I broke my toe the other day and proceeded to spend much of the next 30 hours walking around downtown Denver exacerbating the problem. I was with a friend of 20+ years whom I haven't seen in nearly 4, so it was worth it.
We said goodbye at the historic Union Station as he got on a train to the airport and I sat down to find a bus to Arvada.
Shit. Monday is a holiday. Holiday bus schedule. Shit. It was 7:07pm and the last bus was at 6:45. Shit.
Ok, uber then. My shitty colombian phone has only enough memory to hold the factory installed apps that I can't delete and two others, which means I have to delete either messenger or spotify to download the Uber app.
Price not too bad, about $13....Ok, I have gotten spoiled with cheap transportation in South America, and a big part of me cringed at the thought of 36 Peruvian Soles for a 15 minute ride. It should only cost 9,000 Colombian pesos for fuck's sakes. But this is the land of the tax cow.
And....Uber won't match me with a driver. They say it MIGHT be my card, it MIGHT be my location, too much traffic, my fucking phone number! Shit. A few minutes of this and I move to explore my ace in the hole.
The male half of the couple I am currently staying with works at the Kimpton Hotel just around the corner. He's working another 4 hours but whatever. I can catch a ride with him, $13 dollars saved. I was going to probably sit around smoking copious amounts of colorado's finest chronic and surfing the web, and honestly it isn't terribly difficult to do that downtown anyway, so I walked over to the Kimpton.
I caught up with my homie at the door, we had a smoke together and I shared the situation. He smiled and said "oh, I can probably get you a ride tonight, it's pretty slow."
A few moments later a guy walked up, was introduced and he grabbed my bags. We walked together to a FUCKING TESLA with FUCKING GULLWINGS! This was my ride?! Holy shit man. I've never sat in a TESLA before. That thing was straight from the future. I'm not trying to give a review of the car, as I don't know a ton about cars to do so. But I will say it was comfortable, beautiful, spacious, quiet and smooth. It was very much what I imagined George Jetson's car felt like as a kid. I could totally imagine this thing driving itself as a group of friends sat around laughing and talking. So dang cool.
My only regret is that there wasn't a group of really cool people there to greet me as I stepped out of my spaceship.
Big props to my friend for so casually swinging that classy move and hooking up the ride home from the future.