I don’t know how they found me, but they tracked me down, and they found me.

As the letter from City Hall trembled in my hand, I quietly bid farewell to my time on the front lines with my fellow San Franciscans, as a taxi driver. Or, a rideshare driver rather. And I’m not really a San Franciscan. I’m from Florida. But I live a hang glide down the beach from San Francisco now. The laughter, the tears, the middle fingers(not from or at me necessarily), all came flooding back.

It’s only $91 a year for the business license that is now required to drive in San Francisco, but that’s a substantial percentage of income I would make in a year driving part-time, so the time to lay down my smartphone has come.

My only regret is that I wasn’t there for this surge:

That 8x normal fare area must have desperately needed drivers that late night, and I wasn’t there for those people.

I’m truly am disappointed that I won’t be driving anymore. If I netted $2K in a year just driving a weekend here or there, this would be almost 5% of my net income. It was not only a little bit of cash when I needed it, but it was also an intriguing feel of the pulse of a Bay Area that has been and is still morphing very quickly.

Where else in the world can you drop off two friendly passengers, and get out of your car to this view?