{"id":303,"date":"2015-07-01T01:17:46","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T01:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/challengedetroit.org\/blog\/jessicawang\/?p=303"},"modified":"2015-07-01T01:17:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T01:17:46","slug":"36-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/36-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"In the passenger seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a carless person in a city with extremely limited public transit, Uber\u00a0has been a lifesaver on more than one occasion. For those unfamiliar with the app, Uber connects riders with drivers using your phone’s GPS. Not only is the service incredibly convenient, it’s actually really affordable in Detroit – a 7-minute, 2-mile trip\u00a0costs about $4. However, rather than\u00a0its cost and convenience, my favorite aspect\u00a0of\u00a0riding with Uber in Detroit is something else altogether. My favorite aspect has to be\u00a0the\u00a0strangers\u00a0whose cars I hop into<\/strong> (hey, mom and dad).<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this, chances are you know how much I love engaging with new people (strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet, after all), and that you’re rolling your eyes at how ridiculous I am. But in all honestly, I have\u00a0learned so much<\/em> from my Uber drivers. More than once, my driver has been so enraptured in his trip down memory lane that he has taken a wrong turn on our actual physical journey. More than once, I’ve\u00a0gotten out of the car\u00a0thinking to myself that the cost of the ride would have been well worth it for the conversation alone.<\/p>\n

As a transplant, it can be difficult to engage on a regular basis\u00a0with new native Detroiters – you\u00a0actively\u00a0have to seek out such opportunities. However, with Uber, meaningful conversations with long-time locals are effectively\u00a0delivered to your doorstep.<\/p>\n

There was the retired Comcast field technician who made a boatload in his career and retired early, and was\u00a0now using Uber to fund his backyard observatory<\/strong> and\u00a0ever-expanding interest in space (pun intended). There was the Iraqi\u00a0polygl\"IMG_1706\"ot who spent his career translating for the U.S. military, who was speaking to his “Lovely Wife Luma”<\/strong> when I entered the\u00a0car\u00a0(Luma’s name was, adorably, saved as such on his iPhone). \u00a0There was the recent divorcee who was moonlighting as a driver to simply\u00a0get himself out of the house<\/strong> while his kids were over at their mom’s place five nights a week. There was the elderly gentleman who married\u00a0a woman\u00a0he had unknowingly met at the roller rink\u00a0when he was twelve (they’ve been married for over forty years now and have a host of grandkids), who described to me his idyllic childhood running free in Royal Oak Township, eating fruit right off the trees, and feeling rich despite having little<\/strong>. And there have been no shortage of Detroiters, born and raised<\/strong>, whose undying passion for the city impacted\u00a0me far beyond the five-to-ten minute intervals I spent in their\u00a0respective vehicles.<\/p>\n

While I don’t claim to have had an enlightening conversation with every single Detroit\u00a0driver I’ve met in the past nine months,\u00a0these snippets\u00a0only skim the surface of the stories I’ve heard along the way. \u00a0In the passenger seat, I have heard\u00a0what people think of the city’s (re)development, why some fled the city for the suburbs, and why others still would\u00a0never dare to\u00a0do so. And I have listened to tales\u00a0of\u00a0family and friendship, love and loss, heartache and hardship.<\/p>\n

These conversations have pushed me to make better use of my time, call my parents more often, and\u00a0tell the people in my life that I care about them. They have inspired me to cherish my youth, spend less time in front of screens, and appreciate Detroit more than I thought possible. And most of all, they have encouraged me to\u00a0keep asking questions and sparking conversations. Whether in the passenger seat or elsewhere, it’s amazing what you can learn from the people sitting right next to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a carless person in a city with extremely limited public transit, Uber\u00a0has been a lifesaver on more than one occasion. For those unfamiliar with the app, Uber connects riders with drivers using your phone’s GPS. Not only is the service incredibly convenient, it’s actually really affordable in Detroit – a 7-minute, 2-mile trip\u00a0costs about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}