No Thanks, I'm Drinking

Do you drive every morning, every evening, and sometimes during the day? Do you drive alone? Does your driving take up more of your time and money each year? Has your driving ever caused trouble at home? Is it hard for you to socialize without driving? Then you probably have a driving problem.

If you suffer from automobile addiction, please don't let it interfere with your drinking. At least on weekend nights, there's a new outfit in Portland that will help you out. RideOn Portland is a non-profit organization that will send a sober driver to your location, to drive you and your car home safely. According to their website, the drivers arrive on folding scooters, so they can load them into your car and be on their way after dropping you off.

The $10 price makes RideOn a no-brainer if you know you shouldn't be driving. That's $10 per car, no extra charge for your passengers -- you did carpool to the pub, right? The service area is fairly limited right now: the website says they'll drive you anywhere in the Portland metro, but they'll only pick you up in SE Portland within the rectangle bordered by Grand, Burnside, 82nd, and Powell. Still, there's some good drinking to be done within that rectangle.

Hours of operation are pretty narrow -- 11 PM to 3 AM, Friday and Saturday only -- but those happen to be the drunkenest eight hours of the week. Bad public transit hours also, with little or no service in some parts of town. I like their strategy: break off a manageable chunk of spacetime to get the ball rolling. The phone number to call is 503-235-7433 -- put it in your cellphone right now if you think you're going to need it. If you really did that, go ahead and put Radio Cab in there too, in case you lose your cool outside the RideOn area: 503-227-1212.

I haven't used RideOn myself. If you have any experience with it, feel free to leave a comment. And work on that driving problem.