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My Sidecar Drivers

My Sidecar Drivers

April 21, 2013 11:11 pmComments are Disabled

I have been using Sidecar for about eight months. I don’t use other services, so I can’t say if my experiences with Sidecar have been unique, but the people I meet using Sidecar are the reason I do it. In just 10-30 minutes per ride, I have heard some amazing stories. I just went through my trip history to share some of them (I changed the names).

  • Kwame, from Ghana, joined the National Guard the month after getting his Green Card last year. He was shipping out in a week to Afghanistan for a yearlong tour. As a member of the army, he had to renounce his Ghanaian citizenship, and since he won’t get his US Citizenship for another three years he is currently a man without a country.
  • Tom is a truck driver for his day job. He used to be an avid gamer to battle his loneliness, but discovered Sidecar was a great way to meet new people. He was born into a Catholic family and has discovered recently that he’s an atheist. He thinks the hoopla over the new Pope is ridiculous.
  • Paul is a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem, went to school in Zimbabwe, lived in Mozambique and South Africa, immigrated to Minnesota, married a Spanish teacher from Peru, and they moved to San Francisco. In Palestine, his father was a well-known politician, and in our conversation it seemed that he went through a lot of effort to separate himself from the family, for reasons unclear.
  • Kemal is a Yemeni immigrant. His brother owns a large textiles company in Yemen, and Kemal has been trying to help him outsource some high skilled jobs to the United States, which is proving to be extremely difficult. He loves soccer and currently is a soccer coach at a high school. When his wife first got pregnant, he was hoping it would be a boy so he could teach him soccer. But she had a girl. Then another. Then another. Kemal is now the proud father of five girls, and he jokes that soon he will have enough for a soccer team, if they showed any interest in learning it.

Who have have you met through your ride sharing service?

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