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My 12000 Mile Mental Health Charity Drive 2016 Summary

Simon Kwok

My 12000 Mile Mental Health Charity Drive 2016 Summary

Three months, I embarked on a cross country drive trying to raise some money for charity. I raised about $300 from trips and donations from active Lyft Rides, and anther $200 from the GoFundMe page. You can read more about my trip and also about the GoFundMe Page.

Below is the collection of my trip reports and also time lapse video of every day I drove. If you want to know what it was like to drive all day, watch the videos. It is highly accelerated, so it compresses a 17 hour drive into a 2 minute video.

What I Learned about very long road trips:

I received a few nuggets of information before I left Boston and then learned a bunch more things when driving for about 16 straight days, logging an average of 800 miles a day. Here is what I learned:

What I Learned about Driving Lyft in Other Cities

For the most part, you can drive in almost any city that Lyft is live in. Here are the exceptions due to local regulations:

If you want to check to make sure your application is live on driver mode, you will need to use a second device as a passenger to see if your application shows up. This was how I verified that I was not able to drive in Minneapolis.

What If I want to do this myself?

I would totally recommend anyone do this! You need to figure for safety issues and be prepared for them, but otherwise prepare your car first and foremost. I averaged about 700-800 miles a day (at 55 mph throughout the whole trip), so a nice pace would be somewhere between 400-600 miles a day. That is still about 12 hours of driving a day.

My trip was a one way trip from Boston to Seattle, which may be the shortest distance possible for a trip like this.

A trip like this is also very expensive, unless you do enough Lyft’s to support your needs like food and hotels. Figure at least $100 a day in food and accommodations so that is about 5-7 hours of Lyfting a day you would have to do in each city in order to make enough to break even. I only stayed in a hotel twice my entire trip so I saved quite a bit of money on that front. I also rarely ate so my food bill was very low.

Have More Questions?

I tried to write as much as I could about my trip on various posts and then bring it all together in this post. If you have more questions about my trip, you can email me at ridesharedashboard at gmail.

Detailed Trip Log:

Here are the details about every day of my road trip, along with a time lapse video of each day. Some of the videos were a bit shorter due to technical issues with the time lapse application. Also, the windshield would occasionally get dirty and I didn’t have the time to stop until the next gas stop, which could be 4-6 hours later.

Day 1

I spent six hours waiting for a ride on Cape Cod and only made it down to NYC on my first day.

Time Lapse Video Day 1

Day 2

I got a very late start, but drove from NYC down to Washington DC

Time Lapse Video Day 2

Day 3

I got another late start out of DC, but drove through Norfolk, Raleigh and Charlotte, towards Savannah, GA

Time Lapse Video Day 3

Day 4

I drove from Savannah to Fort Lauderdale and then back up to Orlando and Tampa. I visited a Waffle House and Pulse Nightclub

Time Lapse Video Day 4

Day 5

I drove from Tampa through Atlanta to Lexington. I got my first oil change of the road trip and was a few miles short of Lexington.

Time Lapse Video Day 5

Day 6

It was a long day through 9 cities, the most cities I have done up to this point. I drove from Lexington to Pittsburgh then around to Toledo and Ann Arbor to Detroit.

Time Lapse Video Day 6

Day 7

I drove from outside Toledo through Indianapolis and Nashville and ended my day at Jackson, MS

Time Lapse Video Day 7

Day 8

It was a long driving day from Jackson, MS down to New Orleans and through San Antonio to Austin, TX.

Time Lapse Video Day 8

Day 9

I spent today as a rest day and also to do some rideshare research in Austin, TX and to get some good BBQ. I manage to give a Lyft in Austin, TX before I drove up to Dallas.

Time Lapse Video Day 9

Day 10

It was a rough day. I had a pretty good drive though Oklahoma when I witnessed a drug deal during an active Lyft. I also got some good BBQ in St Louis.

Time Lapse Video Day 10

Day 11

My day got started in Chicago and kept going north to Milwaukee. I looped around to Minneapolis but found out I couldn’t drive there. I headed south to Madison and ended my night after a late trip in Omaha, NE.

Time Lapse Video Day 11

Day 12

Today was 4th of July and I was lucky to be able to go through Mount Rushmore! It was a detour that took me a few hours out of my way but it was so worth it. I didn’t go into the memorial park but saw it from one of the roads leading up to it.

Time Lapse Video Day 12

Day 13

I started my day just a few miles outside Denver and gave two Lyfts because of the back to back feature. I completed the trip in time to visit the top rated Yelp restaurant, Pho 95. It was very good. I don’t think this is the best Pho place I went to, but it is definitely top 2 or 3 I’ve been to.

Time Lapse Video Day 13

Day 14

I drove from Salt Lake City south towards Las Vegas. I found that I couldn’t drive in Las Vegas either and kept going to Phoenix and ended my night after a trip in Tucson, AZ.

Time Lapse Video Day 14

Day 15

My day started outside of Tucson and drove through San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara before I made my way up through Bakersfield and outside of Fresno for the night.

Time Lapse Video Day 15

Day 16

It was a long day through California, but I had the chance to visit Lyft’s new office in San Francisco! I then headed north through Napa Valley and finished outside of Reno, NV.

Time Lapse Video Day 16

Day 17 (Last Day!)

I drove from Reno up through Idaho to Spokane WA. Then I drove to my final destination of Seattle, WA!

Time Lapse Video Day 17

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