The alternate delegate from Missouri is speaking. Pretty typical 2016 Republican National Convention chatter. Hillary Clinton? "The simple truth is, she’s just a bad person," he calmly declares. President Obama? "He’s ruined pretty much everything."

The alternate delegate from Missouri really punches his way from one point to the next. I mean, he’s really going on and on. Time ticks by, miles on the road, until he’s outlining the negatives inherent in trade unions. Really mansplaining things to me. Directly to me. Pouring the party platform in my ear. I'd even say literally in my ear, since he’s holding forth from the backseat of my car.

The alternate delegate from Missouri is a young guy, on an Uber ride late Sunday, from the Cleveland airport to a hotel in Akron. This after a series of cancelled flights and a set of lost luggage. Even so, he’s raring to go. The haircut? Annoyingly fresh. His beard: both disturbingly full and somehow trimmed wicked tight to the curve of his full cheek. His blazer: a little too snug, a little too blue. He was like an advertisement for what he was: 38. Male. White.

This was my passenger. My Uber fare. And me? His driver. The transporter. The amanuensis of his movement.

It'd been one day at the RNC for me. I'd decided not to argue or interject. I just tried to be fair to the fare. Be a transporter, I told myself. Never mind that I grew up in a house where the New York State teacher's union put bread on our table. Never mind that I once gladly paid dues to the carpenter's local.
I reminded myself of that: I am an Uber driver now. My sedan is a sacred vessel of Interstate 71. I Uber. Therein lies my peace.

Still, I was flustered enough to make a wrong turn.

About two weeks prior, I received a text from the ever-mysterious offices of Uber, inviting me to drive in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention. I hadn't been driving a rideshare very long, but ratings from my passengers had been top notch. Why not? I drive a 10-year-old, high-mileage, BWM 7-series sedan and I never fail to hand out sticks of gum. I accepted the invitation and drove the six hours from my home outside Indianapolis to Cleveland, joining that city's expanded Uber force for the week.

Transportation always has been a thorny issue at political conventions, where the streets get jammed with buses, taxis can be a rarity, and shuttles slowly hopscotch between the Marriotts. Uber, the on-demand limo service for delegate and everyman, looks likely to totally change transportation at the conventions this year, with short-hop transportation---from hotel, to office, to convention center---available to all. Participants can take a shuttle from their hotels, often set up in places like Akron (40 miles away), and use Uber to get around the city. Private fleets of black cars and yellow cabs used to straight-up overwhelm conventions.

Uber knows all this. Hence the invitation. The Uber-Cleveland meet-and-greet---with a DJ, swag, a car raffle, coolers of Red Bull, tables full of sheet pizza, and the ever-present certainty of imminent cultural relevance---echoed early Coachella. Staff members outlined Uber's new mapping efforts, specially crafted for the convention, that will track and update drivers on traffic patterns and lock-ups.

"We're not sure how many drivers will actually come in from other cities. We'll know at the end of the week. We're in new territory here," one staffer told me. "This is the first Ubervention." I actually heard that word twice.

Convention, or Ubervention, aside, a Sunday afternoon Uber shift can be sleepy. I'd expected the airport to be the source of especially good fares. But so did everybody else, leaving the Uber parking lot jammed with drivers. Instead I started by drifting toward downtown, making closer and closer passes to the convention hotels, working to learn where the roadblocks were, to understand traffic patterns, and get used to the menagerie of police and security forces sitting on every block like packs of teenagers out for a smoke, except not. Every shade of blue, every variety of law enforcement---state trooper, sheriff, police department, from Ohio and beyond.

Many streets were held empty in the blaring afternoon light by barricades and movable fences. There were cops on bikes, nice ones, wearing helmets that made them look like Kevlared hornets. So many cops, manning so many intersections that double parking was no option, and street lights became irrelevant. I learned to look for eye contact; there was always a cop to wave you through.

My first fare came near the end of the afternoon. Two women who'd come downtown for a demonstration called Stand With Love (an attempt to assert the importance of love by forming a human chain around the city and across bridges) needed a ride to their homes in Cleveland Heights. They marveled at the sight of five buses, surrounded by out-of-state troopers spinning their lights, carrying the Florida delegation to some appointed task. "My yoga class this morning was full of police officers from other states," she said.

"This was a class you teach?" I asked, pulling around two shuttle buses head-butting one another in traffic.

"Oh yes," said the other woman. "She teaches. Julie is also the yoga instructor for The Washington Post."

"It’s true," Julie said. "They hired me for the week."

The other woman sighed and looked out the window as I pushed up Cedar Hill toward the eastern suburbs. "Nothing like this ever happens in Cleveland," she said. "Everyone has a story."

I took a pre-med student from her sorority at Case Western Reserve University to the bus station. Undecided, she said of the upcoming vote. After that, I traipsed along, several blocks behind and then two ahead of a demonstration I never completely caught up to. I stopped to ask four black guys selling T-shirts who was demonstrating, but one of them handed me a T-shirt before I could say anything.

"Fuck Trump?" he asked.

I hesitated. Then I understood. That's what the shirt said.

"Sure," I said, weirdly answering the question, I suppose.

"Twenty bucks," the guy said. I paid. He thanked me and when he turned away, he said it again loudly one more time, in the direction of some passersby, who cringed.

Then I carried a dispassionate young consultant from his downtown apartment to his Texas-bound flight at the airport. A Trump guy, he said, who was just happy to get away as the convention began. At the airport, I waited an hour and a half before getting the call to pick up my first convention participant, the aforementioned alternate delegate from Missouri, with whom I made the wrong turn down a long stretch of interstate, a distance he filled with ruminations about how to behave as a white man around cops. "It’s simpler than people make it," he said, outlining the talking point. "You just do exactly what they tell you. No matter what anyone says. Not even Obama."

Turned out, he was my last fare. I never even made it to surge pricing. Worse, I suffered for that wrong turn, refunding him part of the fare with that in mind. And before that, I listened, whether I liked it or not.

The Tally

5 fares
$57.20 + $11 in tips
Trump: 2 votes
Clinton: 2 votes
Undecided: 1 vote