He had been driving for Uber for more than six months when a conversation with an old friend sparked the idea. Everyone that rode in his car had a story to tell, a unique life experience, some wisdom they’d picked up along the way.

Uber driver Bob Weiser asks his passengers to write down inspiring messages to bring happiness and positivity to other riders. 

What if he could collect a slice of life from each of the hundreds of people who rode in his car, people whose only known connection was that they ordered an Uber in Chicago and had Bob Weiser pick them up in his deep-blue 2016 Nissan Altima?

“Why don’t you make people part of your journey as you’re part of theirs?” Weiser recalled his friend saying.

Weiser, 66, is a former Navy and corporate pilot who started driving for Uber late last year as a way to keep busy. “You never really retire, you always have to do something,” he said.

A self-proclaimed eternal optimist, Weiser is full of these kinds of quotable takes on life.

Excited by the idea that his riders would memorialize their brief time with him, he purchased a black leather-bound notebook in March. On the inside cover, where there’s a place to name whose journal it is, he wrote that it belongs to: “All that read it with an open heart and mind.”

Now, when riders get in his car, after the exchange of pleasantries, he’ll pass them the book and ask if they’d take a moment to write something in it...read more + see quotes