Fireplace Creek

This blog kindly brought to you from a MacDonalds car park... their free wi-fi is the only nutritious thing they produce. Thank you MacDonalds, as long as people are eating your crap your producing Wi Fi.

The RV company Cruise America where we had to pick up the vehicle is at Newark, about one and a half hours from downtown San Francisco. To get a taxi is expensive and because they can’t pick up fares from out of their area you have to pay for their return trip as well. Then there is in their words a “mandatory” tip of 30% so this is why Uber is so successful.
A 30% tip on a two hundred dollars (US) fare, what!
I don’t tip which is worse far for Americans than burning their flag. Instead I educate them on the importance of being awarded a decent wage and not relying on gratuities like some homeless panhandler and doing this will not lead down a certain path to communism.
Any mention of communism sends them mental so any thoughts of tips are forgotten, job done.

So instead we use Uber, now that’s a corporate lucky dip with drivers and fares if ever there was one.
We booked a ride from our downtown hotel, The Oasis, some stinking dive as we yet again got sucked in by the it internet representation.
Now here’s a good financial tip, buy shares in Getty Images they will soar because I reckon every flea bitten hovel on the web is using Getty pics to present their own property.

Back at the Oasis we order a Uber to take us to Newark.
Is this expecting too much to expect the driver to know our destination before taking the job? because the first one arrives and says “you go airport”. No we’re going to Newark like it is showing on you GPS mapped out right in front of you. So he says “no airport, I have flat tyre... you cancel job”.
I say no way Jose and in this case that really was his name, you cancel. “no you cancel” says Jose because he doesn’t want to look bad with Uber. So I say YOU CANCEL! (caps indicate strength of voice) so he says “OK” and drives off with his flat tyre.

The second driver arrives and says “airport”? No Newark! like it is showing mapped out on your iPhone GPS right in front of you “ not airport, you better cancel I think I’m getting a flat tyre” NO YOU CANCEL! NOW!! Me now frothing with a finger pointing in a dangerous direction, he quickly says “OK” and drives off with his maybe flat tyre.

Third driver arrives, does not speak English, does not say anything. I look at his GPS it shows a route to Newark so we get in. Not one word is spoken at any stage, nothing about past or future flat tyres, eventually we arrive at Newark and unload at Cruise America.
Now the thing about all this is each time Uber ordered a new driver a totally different fare was quoted by them for exactly the same trip with as much as $US40 difference between them. Luckily we scored the lowest one.

It’s all good now, we get our RV, pretty much a new one.
We load in all our stuff and it feels just like it did a year or so ago.
Very excited we pull out onto a 12 lane highway, flatten it and head toward Los Angeles though that is not the destination so after a hour or so we turn off, go through rich Californian farmland where we buy fresh produce from road side stalls run by Mexicans then head East to Yosemite.Read more