Dashing Galesburg

Here are a few things I've learned from dashing Galesburg.

You don't make much money doing Door Dash. It appears to be more than it is, but once you put gas in the car, make repairs, make up for the damage that happens on the road, etc., it's a very thin margin. I like the dashes that send me way out to Knoxville or someplace like Wataga, because it will pay me for both my time and my gas, and to let the car open up out on the highway is probably good for the car. But 34 at Henderson and Seminary is a terrible road. You lose no matter what you do.

You really learn a lot about a city, in this case Galesburg, from dashing. For example, I know where all the housing complexes are; I've been to each, in some cases many times. I don't really know the people I hand the food to. I'll never remember their first name unless I go there two, three or more times. But I know in some cases how the addresses are laid out in a housing village. I know how to find what I'm looking for.

The town is kind of divided by the railroads cutting through it; the tracks tend to isolate little pieces of the south side, for example, so that it's really about six different neighborhoods. And some of these little neighborhoods never get door-dash, or at least they don't get me, so I haven't seen everything. I also haven't seen every restaurant, since some of them simply don't have Door Dash. Some of the pizza places like Domino's have their own delivery; others like Pizza Hut have their own but also use Door Dash; go figure. Some I really enjoy walking into, just because of the atmosphere, or the smell, or the sports games on television.

I spend so much of my time on Henderson that I'm kind of sick of it. But I have to admit, it's the most reliable place to pick up an order. And these days, a lot of the orders are going over to Knox College. The most confusing area of town is where South West Street meets West South Street; addresses there are very difficult. All buildings face inward so you can't find any numbers from the street, and you have to walk around just to confirm that you're in the right place. But Knox students are friendly and they'll often come out to meet you.

I see the police out there doing their job, late at night much more than in the day. They have their ways and they like to follow procedure. One of them is don't be shy about sitting there with your lights on for half an hour. Let the rest of us see you in action. I'm glad I don't know the people involved though. These things are never good.

I think it was fashionable to put restaurants out on the edge of town there for a while, and that's why you have all those places on Seminary out past the Casey's, but you also have a few on the eastern edge of town and out at the end of Henderson. Lieber's and Applebee's are out at the margins. I tend to like them simply because more driving, more pay. My job is just to get from here to there, following the rules, not getting myself killed, keeping the food warm, keeping track of whose dinners are whose. It's not that complicated. But a good drive on the well-moving streets is a good way to pass the day, especially if I'm getting paid for it.

That's my life now. When I'm not driving I'm hanging around looking at my phone like all these other zombie apocalypse people who seem to have some riveting game on there that is way better than reality. I only have dash and the hope of making a few more bucks before I turn it in. But the phone has become like an appendage; I have it all the time, looking for a dash, watching for Galesburg to blink. For fun I watch the other towns too, especially Macomb, Peoria, Farmington, and Monmouth. The app tells me when they're busy. Being "in the know," in my case, means knowing when the entire town of Farmington is trying to do a door-dash at once. It's enough to make me want to just drive down there.