New Ride Share AP Targets the Cut Throat World of Wild Mushroom Foraging
As the March rains saturate the East Bay hills, the ground springs to life with grasses, wild flowers and mycological delicacies. For many it’s time to enjoy hikes, bike rides and picnics, but for fungophiles its hunting season. One of their biggest challenges is keeping their foraging grounds secret from the competition. Remember this is the city of Mayhem in the Mushroom Aisle. Fortunately, for local hunters a new service, Shroom Zoom, has arrived to provide “stealth transport for the discrete forager.”
The service came about after its founder, Morchella Populiphila, who serve in the Greek Special Operations Force, realized there was a growing need for stealth transportation. Populiphila recruited drivers from various ride share services with vehicles that matched certain performance criteria needed for the service. The vehicles come with high resolution screens so passengers can check the latest aero maps to determine a prime location. One user indicated, “Morels grow near red woods, so I usually check the aero maps to find the trees and go there.”
Maksim, a local forager found the service to be exactly what he needed. “Look I come from Estonia where your mushroom plot is a deep secret; this service is amazing! It allows me to slip into the field without detection from the competition. I once found the mother lode of morels and used them in a pasta that I served to my neighbors. Since then, my neighbors started tracking my every move in the hope of learning where my secret stash was located. I could not even park my car in Tilden over fear of being spotted.”
my neighbors started tracking my every move in the hope of learning where my secret stash was located
Maksim the Forager
Morels are a particular favorite this time of year. According to the Bay Area Mycological Society, “If you do your homework, and study their fruiting patterns, and go to suitable habitat, and get your morel eyes on, and search and search and search and then actually find these cryptic delicacies, can you then rest on your laurels and just have a nice meal?”
Recognizing Maksim’s predicament was a familiar one for foragers, Shroom Zoom operates with strict autonomy protocols including a complete shutdown of location services, rotating paper license plates and continually rotating vehicles for every customer. They have really covered every angle from the standpoint of being stealthy. Shroom Zoom will also store your foraging gear (boots, shell, compass and mushroom basket) so you can slip out of the house like your just walking up the the Cheese Board. Once in the vehicle the handy privacy curtain allows you change discreetly into your foraging gear. They also provide Andronicos paper bags for your “stash.” Maksim noted, “the Andrinicos bag may trigger a Berkeley Notify alert, but , so when you get back home it looks as if you just popped up to the grocery store, so “prying eyes” will not become suspicious.”