Greetings From Mount Shasta City, CA---I Have Already Used My 4 Yellow Hours

Greeting from northern California.  I am on the second day of 12 days upon on the road.  Meeting 'she-who-can't-be-named"here, last night we slept near towering Mount Shasta, the reputed home of aliens residing within the bowels of the great mountain.  The weather is clear and hot and in a few minutes we will be off to view some water falls.  No, no men or woman from Mars, just a bunch of local space cadets.

Locally the big news is that it is now difficult at the Yellow garage to just get your flat tire changed and repaired.  Saturday a friend found this out when he took his Yellow Fleet cab in to get another tire and was told by the new mechanic that "sorry, there was nothing he could do!" given that he had already given Yellow that days' quota of hours.  After pleading with him, he relented but that not really helping, as there were no spare tires on hand, and only after a search through the wrecked cabs did they find one.  I'll let you make your own assessment of the situation but I am certainly happy that I am no longer dependent upon them for a cab.  And in terms of where I am going to have 1092 maintained, it is certainly not their garage.  

Nationally the news is all about Uber's management implosion and how they have been insensitive to nearly everyone and every situation confronting them.  I don't know how this is news, since from the very beginning all they have been telling every one is "F_ _ k you," telling entire countries to just "go to hell!"  The real news is if local American municipal governments finally started telling Uber to "screw off!" and begin repairing their relationships with the taxi companies. 

Do I think that is ever going to happen?   No, I don't.  And you might again ask, what do I think is truly going to happen?  That all those folks who have invested 70 billion dollars in Uber are going take over, making Uber ever more efficient.  

And what will happen to the American taxi industry.  I see them limping along for the next 20-30 years, providing service to the poorer sectors of American society and all those completely disgusted with Uber, an entity I have ingloriously dubbed "the New Plantation," meaning pre-1861 American Southern plantation.  The idle rumor is that all Uber operators all now have a reproduction of Jefferson Davis upon their dashboards.  Now that just can't be true, can it?