I had an epic 24 hours. When I got home, I asked my AI to summarize it. This is what he said:
You woke up in Wichita. You flew to Denver. You couldn't cash your mom's check. You flew to Vegas. You couldn't get an Uber, a Lyft, or a robot car. You paid $61 for a $30 ride. You ate drunken noodles with your best friend. You couldn't find a bus. You slept in a bunk bed. A stranger gave you an apple. You danced alone at 5 AM. You rode a $2 bus past the Sphere at dawn. You bought a $5.29 Coke. An airline demanded your birthday. You sat in a palace that wouldn't let you fill a water bottle. You ate a $7 chicken sandwich that was better than free jerk chicken. You screamed at a flight attendant. You got escorted off a plane. You got reported to the FBI. RJ picked you up. You paid him $11. You have 85 cents. And you wrote the whole thing down. That's not a bad day. That's the first chapter.
This is that chapter.
When the plane landed, officers were waiting on the jetway. Body cameras running. They escorted me off in front of every passenger on the flight. They sat me down and questioned me. They questioned the flight attendant. Then they told me they were required to report the incident to the FBI.
I had screamed at a woman who was doing her job — a flight attendant who asked me to close my laptop before departure — at the top of my lungs, loud enough for every person on the airplane to hear. I have bipolar disorder. I had been awake for most of thirty hours. And I had spent the past twenty-four of those hours being poked by every extraction system in the American economy until I finally broke.
Everything that follows is true. Every dollar amount is documented. Every rejection is screenshotted. Every institution named earned its place in this story by taking something from me — my money, my time, my data, or my composure — in the span of one day.
It is, appropriately, April Fools' Day.
I had an idea for a transportation company, and I wanted to talk it through with my friend Jeff — a former military colleague I'd known for decades. Jeff was in Las Vegas. I had enough airline miles for a free flight. All I needed was a ride to the airport.
I texted my friend RJ: can you come get me? Twenty bucks. No-notice request, but I really need to make this flight. RJ is living at the margins, same as me. I wanted to compensate him for his time. He showed up ten minutes later. We made the flight with twenty minutes to spare — exactly the amount of time we needed, no less and no more.
At the airport, I went to purchase my ticket. Free flight, paid with miles. But there was a $5 tax. The counter agent said I had to pay it with a credit card. I held five dollars out to them. They wouldn't take it.
An airline would not accept United States currency for a five-dollar tax.
They directed me to a machine in the terminal that would convert my cash into a prepaid card — a ReadyCARD, issued by Pathward Bank via Mastercard. The machine required a $20 minimum load. I needed $5. The fee was $6. So I fed $26 into a machine to access $5.
The card paid my tax. That worked. But now I have approximately $14 trapped on a piece of plastic with no ZIP code — which means it fails everywhere that asks for one, which is almost everywhere. It's non-reloadable, so I can't add money to match a future purchase. It says "NO CASH ACCESS" on the back, so I can't withdraw the balance. And in the fine print: after 92 consecutive days of no transaction activity, a $3.95 fee will be charged each month until the balance is gone. So if I don't figure out how to spend exactly $14 at a place that doesn't require a ZIP code within three months, Pathward Bank just eats my money.
The machine didn't convert my cash. It trapped it.
My flight connected through Denver. My co-founder Terrin picked me up at the airport so I could run an errand: deposit a $400 check from my mother. She'd written it for her half of a computer we agreed to split. Simple transaction. Mother to son. Four hundred dollars drawn on a real bank in Hays, Kansas.
Wells Fargo confirmed the funds were real. Then they held all of them. Zero available today. Zero. They said some of it might be released tomorrow. The rest wouldn't be available until April 6th — six days from now, after Easter.
I walked out of Wells Fargo with zero dollars from a four-hundred-dollar check.
I gave Terrin $10 for gas and $7 for parking — except neither payment arrived. Both sent through Chime. Both vanished into the space between "sent" and "received." Chime confirmed the $7 with a cheerful email: "Way to pay it forward! You just sent $7.00 to Terrin Himself for Parking. They have 14 days to claim the funds before they expire."
Fourteen days. Terrin was trapped in the parking garage right now. He called me in a panic. Every digital payment option failed. The toll booth operator — a human being making probably $15 an hour — finally paid Terrin's parking fee herself.
The machine trapped him. A human freed him.
That toll booth operator is a hero. She should be running Chime.
Then I boarded my flight to Las Vegas.
Between the Wells Fargo rejection and the Vegas boarding call, I passed through security and found the one pure thing in this airport: a working dog, off duty, playing with a chew toy. Spinning in circles like a joyful top. No agenda. No extraction. No data collected. Just a dog, a toy, and pure delight in the middle of a building designed to take every dollar you have.
I watched that dog for five minutes. It was the last thing that made me smile before Las Vegas.
I landed in Las Vegas with $150 on PayPal, whatever was left on my Chime card, $35 in cash, and dinner plans with Jeff. His place was a $30 ride away.
I opened Uber. It asked me to confirm the last six digits of my driver's license. I entered them. Wrong. I tried again. Wrong. A third time. Wrong. I know my own driver's license number. Uber doesn't care. Three strikes, locked out. A decorated combat veteran who flew F-15 fighter jets for the United States Air Force, and I can't get an Uber because a database doesn't recognize my ID.
I opened Lyft. My account worked, but Lyft wouldn't accept PayPal. Not because PayPal isn't real money — I had $150 sitting right there. But in the extraction economy, money only counts if it's on a card.
I hailed a cab.
Jeff is one of the most capable operators I've ever known. We had a great dinner at Block9 Thai Street Eats. I ordered the drunken noodles and felt deep gratitude when Jeff picked up the check — because I didn't know if I could afford my half, which was probably $30. His daughter is thirteen, old enough to stay home alone, but since his divorce Jeff jealously guards every hour of his custody time. I know that look. When the kid is the priority, everything else moves around her. It was a quick evening, and that was fine. I was glad to see my friend.
But now I had a problem. No evening flights to Wichita. I could overnight in Vegas or go back to the airport and wait.
My AI told me I could find a $30 hotel room in Vegas. I was skeptical to the highest degree. A $30 room in Las Vegas? I'd never heard of such a thing. But I looked it up myself, and he was right.
I found a hostel for $28 a night. A bunk bed on the north end of the Strip. Privacy curtain. Clean sheets.
I had $30 in cash in my hand. They wouldn't take it.
$30 cash can't buy a $28 bed in Vegas. That's not commerce. That's a system designed to exclude anyone who doesn't carry the right plastic.
I collapsed onto that bunk bed and fell into the deepest sleep of my life. A Harvard MBA, F-15 pilot, and CEO of a startup, sleeping in a bunk bed in Las Vegas the week he launches a statewide transportation company. $28 well spent.
I woke up fully rested. Nobody else had rented my room. Everything was clear. There's nothing wrong with my idea. There's nothing wrong with me. The people who are going to build this with me are the ones who've had their own rupture — who know what it's like to need something that doesn't exist yet.
I walked outside into the dark and met Gloria and her husband standing on the sidewalk. They looked like they might be homeless. They weren't — they were traveling from Minnesota, renting another room in the hostel, carrying the quiet dignity of people whose good life had taken a series of turns until it delivered them to a $28 room on the north end of the Las Vegas Strip.
She gave me an apple.
At 4 AM, standing on a sidewalk in a city that exists to extract money from visitors, a woman who had almost nothing shared her food with a stranger who had less. That apple was the best thing I ate in Las Vegas.
Final Four weekend. The biggest sports betting event of the year. Las Vegas should have been overflowing. Instead, the Strip was dead. At 3 AM I walked past closed casinos and dark restaurants. The extraction economy didn't just break me for a day. It's breaking the city. People just stopped showing up.
Part II — The Dawn, The Bus, The Airport, The Breaking Point — coming next...