SF cab drivers...

As S puts it, I seem to always end up in "interesting" cabs. I took 3 cab rides today and believe it or not, each one was more talkative than your average driver.

The first encounter for the day with a cab driver was on my way back from the airport. It was actually quite embarassing as I couldn't recall his face, even thought he insisted that he'd done the same route before. After a while, I just went along with his story, and ended up learning about "Green cab", a relatively new taxi service focused on hybrids / environmentally friendly cabs in the city. It's about time we had more of those!

Taxi driver # 2 started chatting about jazz and moved on to "mind over matter". This ride turned out to be a very interesting conversation, where we went from stopping bullet trains, to wondering how many more years it would take for teleportation to become a reality, to discussing the several dialects in Indian languages! When I got off, he complimented me in a very typical elderly Southern black gentleman like manner, and told me that he wanted to leave me with a happy thought about the upcoming Spring season and love. I thought that was rather sweet, given that I'd been in the cab for less than 10 minutes.

The last cab driver for the day was a conservative SF resident. He started off with telling me how this past Monday was the first night in the past 20+ years he has been driving, that he made less than $100, thanks to the current state of the economy. Needless to say, the easy availability of cabs and lesser wait times at restaurants on a Thursday night had more than made that point. Anyways, he then went on to share his insights into the dating lives of young professionals in the city, based on his conversations with his passengers. I'm glad I had a short ride, else given his chatty nature, I'm pretty sure I'd have featured on one of his future conversations with some other random stranger :P

Interesting rides...yet more interesting how the city never fails to surprise me. Next time you sit in a cab, think about the person driving you - they may have more to talk about than you think!