Today is Gasparilla day. I have driven for Gasparilla every year since I started driving for Uber. I planned to drive today but I cannot. Ruby has a wheel bearing that is going bad and I can hear it clear as day so I don’t wanna push it. The wheel bearings that are on there right now are Moog. Last week I heard a metal-to-metal scraping noise but only for about 2 seconds. I told my Mother and we used her CC to order new ones from 1AAuto. I made an appointment with Automedic to have them installed last Monday. 1AAuto shipped them the same day for free and UPS said they wouldn’t be here until Tuesday sometime. I advised Omar at Automedic and he said he would try to get me in on Wednesday. UPS dropped the parts off Tuesday at night late, so I just told Omar we will do it Monday 01/30/2023 he advised that was good. Yesterday that wheel started making noises intermittently. I understood what was happening and I wouldn’t be able to drive for Gasparilla. So I took one last big ride from Downtown St Petersburg to Odessa. Everything was fine until the very last part of the trip (I advised the rider of the noise problem as soon as he got in the car) it started making noise. I dropped off the rider in Odessa and drove about 60 miles home and it made noise pretty much the entire way home. I parked it and I will triple-A tow it to Automedic Monday morning.
let me talk a little bit about Gasparilla I have lived in Tampabay pretty much my whole life. I am in my mid Forties. I have never attended a Gasparilla parade. I drive for them only. This is what I know about Gasparilla. There are 300,000 people in attendance. They are pretty much scattered all around Davis Island which is in Hillsborough County FLORIDA. There are 300,000 people there drinking alcohol all day long. There are so many people in attendance the cell phone towers get overwhelmed and do not work. Humans have to urinate, it is pretty much an alcohol consumption party. So this happens EVERY YEAR at Gasparilla. A lot of people get arrested. You have 300,000 people on an island that have been consuming alcohol all day. It is easy for me as a male to find a tree or a bush or a corner to pee in, but it’s a little different for a female. So you have a lot of people, drunk, on an island that are pissed off because they can’t even request an Uber, Lyft, they can’t even call a taxi so they have to just wait it out or go to jail. It’s not worth attending in my opinion but it is VERY good for business! So I drive for it but nothing else. Last year, I picked up two dudes at 9:30 AM for Gasparilla and they understood the cell tower problem, so they were prepared with Walky Talkies lol. That is devotion!