Gone are the days of opening your Uber app and willing a Bainbridge driver to appear, to save you from the buckets of rain on your long walk home from the ferry. Or to rescue you from the Alehouse after a few too many drinks. Or provide some other impromptu transportation service.

As of Tuesday, Don Hazeltine is on the job, cruising around in his 2006 Honda Civic. From noon to 7 p.m., he’ll have his app open, ready to pick up whoever pings him.

Although Hazeltine has worked in the transportation industry before — as a cab driver with Bainbridge Island Taxi and also delivering pizzas — his true passion is art. He’s a professional painter; he attended the Burnley School of Professional Art (now the Art Institute of Seattle) and the Portland Art Museum School (now Pacific Northwest College of Art); he shows at Roby King.

Driving for Uber is simply a way he can sustain that.

“I haven’t sold a painting in a while and there’s no teaching prospect, so basically we need the income,” he explained.

The job market can be iffy for an older person, added Hazeltine, who is 65.

“But this, of course, is something I can do. I’m familiar with the nooks and crannies — some of them anyway, as you know on Bainbridge, there are a million and a half as far as roads go.”

For anything Hazeltine doesn’t know, he has the in-app GPS and his handy Bainbridge Island Road Book.

“You know there are those weird hobbit enclaves,” he joked.

The advantages of Uber, compared to a regular taxi, are many.

“You’re likely to have someone there much sooner,” Hazeltine explained. You don’t have to wait for someone to be dispatched from Silverdale or Bremerton, where he said many of the island’s taxi companies are based. Hazeltine will already be on-island, ready to go.

And he will come as soon as someone contacts him — as long as he’s available.

With Uber, rides aren’t arranged in advance. You simply load up the app via your smartphone. You’ll see a map and, if Bainbridge’s lone driver is working, a black car icon on the screen. You set your location and your destination and the app will calculate how long you have to wait for him to get to you — and even give you a fare estimate ahead of time.

“Cabs can meander around and you don’t know the fare, where it’s going to end. But with Uber, the real advantage is you’ll know the fare before you even get in the car,” Hazeltine explained.

Right now, he’s on a month-long trial period — gauging if there’s enough interest on-island or whether he’ll need to venture over to Seattle to find customers (Uber pays by the ride and not by the hour).

He’s also trying to determine when people will most need his service, so the hours may change depending on usage and feedback.

The enterprise is not purely about money, Hazeltine’s wife Lora explained. It’s a way for her husband to be helpful and friendly, out in the community.

“Don happens to be the nicest man on the planet Earth,” she said. “For him, this is an instinct of the heart; he just likes to serve — but he would never say that.”

To see Hazeltine’s art, visit www.donhazeltine.com. To arrange a ride, download Uber from the app store or at www.get.uber.com.