Random thoughts

This day began close to five hours ago, at 3am, when I woke up to the sound of the alarm (on the first ring, hooray!). I had to wash my hair, make some fresh coffee, and just in general get my body ready and mind organized to pick up yet another personal customer from my cab driving days to go to the airport.

Gee, I wish I had more of these! But, I don't. I see Dorothy only about once a year, -- fairly typical, actually, of my 'regulars'.

Anyway, she had called me a couple of days ago, asking if I was available for an early Saturday morning pickup. I told her I was, of course, and would be delighted to see her again.

Then, because the last time we saw each other my car was a taxicab, I had to go through the whole long story all over again. I concluded with the question, "Do you still want me to pick you up? If you'd rather have a taxi, I can recommend someone for you."

"Oh, no," says she, "I want you!" (Such a warm fuzzy answer.)


On the way to the airport, we had a fairly extended conversation about the Presidential candidates and politics in general. Each of us gave our views on the newly sworn-in NY governor. Her husband added his disgust with a system that allows people to get to such high positions of power with, seemingly, not thorough enough background checks.

We groaned about clerks poking their noses into passport files, and hoped the incidents were not politically-motivated (but afraid they were). We wondered how nasty things might get before November. The game of politics is so much fun, isn't it? Yuk!


Her reason for traveling this year? Her son, who lives in Florida, is taking her to Paris for her birthday. Isn't that delicious? She's going to call me from FL before she is due to return, giving me the poop on the airport pickup. I told her that the only way I would pick her & her husband up from the airport was if she would promise to tell me all about her trip. She promised she would.


I think living vicariously is a very close second to being there myself, and I'm looking forward to seeing her again in a couple of weeks.