So in addition to navigating to a friend's beach house, drivers with connected services and apps will be able to get recommendations for Thai restaurants near their destination, find the cheapest gas en route, check in on Facebook so friends know they're on the way and switch to streaming Internet radio when the local FM station plays one too many Adele songs.
Stories abound of broken sculptures, a crate containing a Douglas Gordon sculpture made of gold that was empty on arrival, or even an auction-house driver who left his truck for five minutes at a highway rest area and lost a truckload of art when the vehicle was stolen.
Then comes the contract negotiations with much attention to lavish perks houses, drivers, chefs, club memberships, the list goes on.
By the time her mother came out of the house, the driver was crying.
On Sunday morning, I arranged for the guest house's driver, Jun, to circumnavigate the island on its ring road.
What starts out as a small-time scam — pouring boiled tap water into mineral-water bottles recovered from restaurants — gradually evolves into a thriving big-time business, enabling "you" to ascend into the firmament of the wealthy with a big house, a driver and lots of security to protect him from the envious rabble.
From the moment I walk out of my house, the driver will say, 'What on Earth are you wearing?', then I get to work and I get the piss taken out of me mercilessly, and then I'll get a load of emails afterwards saying, 'What the fuck were you wearing?' So you know what?
But where is our house?" The driver pulled up.
This would require a night in Barstow - rail-freight capital of the Mojave and a halfway house for drivers on the LA to Las Vegas run.
Thirty-eight weeks a year the Cup Series, the peak of stock-car racing, journeys from Loudon, N.H.; to Homestead, Fla.; to Sonoma, Calif., and lots of points in between, dragging with it big rigs loaded with cars and equipment and the million-dollar motor coaches that house the drivers once they disembark from their private jets.
