Meet Freddie Mercury

Last night I had a great conversation with Ben, a 23-year-old ridesharer from Manchester, N.H. Ben’s been ridesharing through Craigslist for about a year and had some crazy stories about his most recent adventure. I tracked Ben down on CL where he was looking for a passenger to join him on a spur of the moment trip to Wisconsin to knock on doors for Obama.

Ben ended up taking Brett along, a self-described “unemployed vagrant” who’s been backpacking around the country on a shoestring budget and documenting the adventure on his awesome website.

The “highlight” of the trip came when Brett, charged with driving Ben's '96 Honda Accord, was pulled over late at night in Ohio for doing 83 in a 65 mph zone. Brett tells the story way better than I can but suffice to say it involves a $130 dollar ticket, an unimpressed trooper, and a narrowly avoided stint in the slammer.

Ben's return trip to New England was no less eventful. Before he left home a craigslister offered him $100 dollars to pick up a package from friends in Toledo and bring it to her in New York City. Ben's first instinct was that it was a bad idea to transport anything for a stranger across state lines but after speaking to the woman he agreed to take on the parcel/passenger: a 12-month old purebred dachshund puppy!

I apologize if you were expecting to meet the dead rock n’ roll legend but that’s the Freddie Mercury pictured with Ben above.

Faces in the Rear-View Mirror

Omar was my first. He was a PhD student at Brown and rented a Ford station wagon for the occasion. We met outside North Station where I spotted him in the Montreal Canadiens T-shirt he had promised to wear. Three other people were in the car - Kristina, Andreas, and Winston. Kristina studied Spanish literature at Brown and was Omar’s neighbour. Andreas was a “random” they had hooked up with through the Brown graduate student website. Winston studied Spanish at Harvard and was Kristina's friend, although the backseat hand flirting I witnessed while crammed in with them led me to believe they were more-than, or intended to be. Omar blasted Kanye West and politically-tinged underground hip-hop for most of the ride. Except every now and then he’d add some Frank Sinatra into the mix which raised eyebrows all around.

***

I didn’t think I would like Jason at first. From my vantage point behind the passenger seat he looked like Ryan, the smarmy intern-turned-boss from The Office. But Jason turned out to be a nice guy, a sardonic violinist and German teacher who described himself over the phone as “pretty much as safe a driver as they get.” We listened to Led Zeppelin and Phish and commiserated about being in long-distance relationships. On the way back to Boston we were joined by a sweet girl with blonde hair and big eyes, an art student in her early 20s. When Jason dropped her off near Boston Common and asked for her 35 dollars, she handed him a cheque, explaining the rest-stop ATMs she had visited would not accept her cards.

“Who travels with a cheque book?” Jason said as soon as she left the car. Incredulous, he promised to text me if the cheque didn’t bounce; I’m still waiting to hear from him.

***

My last Rideshare was with Raj. She picked me up in front of Dusty’s, the Montreal breakfast joint I’ll only frequent on New Year’s Day. She drove a beat-up grey sedan and hadn’t printed out Mapquest directions; we were making our way to Brookline on instinct. Neither of us had brought CDs but the conversation flowed from real estate to Barack Obama to travel epiphanies without hesitancy. Raj ran “math camps” for inner-city kids at Boston public schools and, in the summer, for wealthy businessmen at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Recently the McGill alumnus decided to move back up north despite not speaking any French. She said she loved the city and was determined to give it a go.

I hope it works out for her.

Last Horse Crosses the Finish Line

Until this moment, I was probably the last journalism student without a blog. But here I am in my Bob Dylan T-shirt hunched over a coffee-stained laptop hammering out my first blog post. The only thing separating this scene from indie cliche is that I'm not wearing plastic-frame glasses (they're in my school bag) and I'm not typing on a Mac (The commercials are fun, but I'm still not sure what the fuss is about).

True, everyone has a blog these days but mine will be different. It won't be an outlet for self-righteous rants about elections I can't vote in, or ironic posts about washed-up '90s sitcom stars. Most importantly, my blog won't be about me. It will be about bringing people together, about fostering the sort of intimate-yet-transient relationships that develop when we spend 2 to 50 hours in cramped sedans with strangers - sharing music, stories, laughs and travel tips.

This blog will chronicle my experience trying to make sense of the rideshare phenomenon and building my website, "Strangers in Motion: The Secret World of Rideshare" (working title). You'll hear all about the interesting people I meet in the process as well as the frustrating ones who won't return my phone calls.

I hope the site and blog will also double as a sort of Ridesharers hub. A place for people to learn about it, talk about it, and be empowered to take the leap of faith themselves.

So please do share: What sort of experiences have you guys had with Rideshare? Or why might you have hesitated to try it out?