Pedi-cab Driver

My life has taken a very interesting new direction.  I am “Back in The Saddle Again”.  It looks like I will be serving as the Senior Pastor at Greeley First Christian Church for the foreseeable future.  In the past 19 months I have logged 3805 Lyft rides – you might call that ‘full time’.   I have found joy and purpose driving complete strangers all around this five county area, and turning my riders into the stars 🌟 of this blog.  How my new job affects what happens in our conversations in this blog, goes like this: I will be finding these ‘gems’ in 15-20 rides a week rather than 80-100.  If it goes like it did with my three rides on Tuesday, it will be no problem.

I had just finished a 20 minute ride from near my house to about 10 miles west.  He was a fascinating man with a story of a near death survival.  I will save that one for a more serious mood.  Within seconds I picked up a young couple headed back downtown to a concert at the Fillmore Auditorium, and my car was filled with joyful energy and humor.  She works in tech and he is a pedi-cab driver.  For those of you who might not know what a pedi-cab is, they are our version of a rickshaw.  There are now about 400+ registered pedi-cab drivers in Denver.  On a busy night downtown it can feel like a scene from a B movie from India.  We began to swap stories.  We agreed that there is nothing rowdier than young women on a bachelorette outing.  He asked me if I drove last weekend which was “Pride-Fest Weekend”. I shared that sadly, I was out of town, and that last year I loved it…and “the tips are always great”!  He shared (this is my best paraphrase) “I put on my best ‘gay-look’ shirt and shorts and had a great time and made a s___load of tips”.  His date was somewhere between aghast and impressed.  She then asked a question that I am often asked, “What was your most bizarre ride”?  I told them in great details; I am not ready to share it here.  Suffice to say it ends with a drunk woman in my back seat holding onto my head while her two girlfriends are dragging her by her feet out the rear door. 

We pull up to the Fillmore as I was complaining that the new Lyft “Driver App” had completely messed up my Bluetooth connection.  She said, “Lets go park up the street and see if I can fix it”.  I quickly jumped on it and said “My Grandkids provide my technical help… I suck”.  It took maybe five minutes and she had solved the issue.  She asked me, “What did you do before you retired?”  “Well, as of this week I am a local church pastor back out of retirement.  I served for nearly 18 years at South Broadway Christian Church, just south of the State Capital on Lincoln.  Now I am the Transitional Interim at the First Christian Church of Greeley.  Here is my card.  I write a blog about pastor gone Lyft driver”.  Then he made a very interesting comment, “The Church door has a lot of filters, this door is wide-open”.  “Wow, you nailed it…my goal is that the Church could be more like Lyft, helping anyone and everyone to get from here to there and treating them like a friend”.  These were two delightful folk.

Onward and Upward,

Mark