sorta cuz i needed to. sorta cuz i could.

maybe this is how it is with you too, but even when i dont have any responsibilities, there’s still a major tug of war between the things i wanna do and the things i gotta do.

i want to drive uber every day. i was obsessed when i began 9 years ago. im obsessed now.

i wear copper lined fingerless gloves to help heal my occasionally pained hands and like a baseball pitcher i take days off to rest my bones.

drove 12 hours today because it was 12 hours of painfree joy.

all long trips. one longer than the next. from way far on this side of LA to way far past LA.

took an 82 year old man from a hospital near long beach to an inglewood funeral home and i got his phone number because i need him on my dumb podcast, the true love of my life.

my actual wife. who asks me to be home tuesday and wednesday to deliver our weekly baby.

this old man had so much life in him. mostly Black, the rest Cherokee. from miami but moved to LA in the ’50s.

said Blacks in the ’50s werent allowed to have any good jobs so he was a janitor for a while and when the owners of Nate and Als found out he knew how to cook kosher they hired him.

how did you learn that?

boy even back then florida was full of jews. i came here knowin how to cook that food.

took a truck driver from LAX to his recently repaired 18 wheeler way out in commerce

every question i asked him resulted in a better, wilder answer

what made you become a truck driver?

got thrown in jail and no one else would hire a felon

learn anything in jail?

learned how to grow the best damn weed in uruguay

uruguay?

in 2013 they were the first country in the world to legalize it so i moved down there to do what i was doing in the mafia run warehouses in jersey. but bigger.

dont ask how i got there, but i was taking a leak at the target in duarte when i got a ping from the city of hope hospital to take someone to a hotel in el segundo

was hoping it was a lonely nurse.

ended up being an actual angel

a lively german woman who leaned forward in the back seat to get closer to me to talk and talk and talk.

she flies from bavaria to europe, australia, and the states delivering life saving stem cells in a small blue square insulated container that could easily be confused as her lunch.

her job is twofold: make sure the thing gets to the hospital in 72 hours (usually takes just 48), and make sure it stays cold. easy peasy.

i said shes got good mojo and asked if there was a german word for mojo. she said nine.

what about juju? also, nine.

sometimes she gets to spend a day or two in the city to chill, but usually she flies back the next day to pick up her next stem cells to take to the next country. and save the next persons life. 80% of the time the life is saved.

after she explained all of it i said i’ve never had a saint in my car before. please put in a good word to the man upstairs bc i could use it.

she asked what do you think the odds are we can get to el segundo in time for the sunset?

i looked at the eta, asked siri when sunset was, and then stepped on it.

and thanks to waze, the car pool lane, and bypassing the 101/110 interchange by zig zagging through dtla, we made it to the 105/405 with 20 minutes to spare so i said

i never do this. ever. but el segundo is no place for a saint to take in her first LA sunset of the year

how about we drop your bags off at your hotel front desk and i take you to manhattan beach pier 12 minutes away?

$15.60 tip