A Taxi Ride Down Memory Lane

You never really know what’s gonna set off your memory.

Last night, at 3AM, coming home from a club in Downtown Chicago, I was seated smack-dab in the middle of a tiny cab in between people I hardly knew.  It felt all too familiar.

All the late nights around the world while on my epic voyage came to mind.  All those times when we would pack into taxis like they were clown cars.  “Look at those dumb Americans,” everyone must of thought.  Those rides were some of the best times.  Either we were on our way to an amazing adventure and anxiously waiting in anticipation for what was to come, or we were on our way home, our ship, the MV Explorer, reveling in what we just accomplished, panting for breath, and glad we survived in order to repeat the same process yet again the next day.

There were the incomprehensible taxi drivers.  Or rickshaw drivers.  Or even moto drivers.  Whether paying in rand or rupee (or real, but that is feigned alliteration since it’s actually pronounced with an initial ‘h’ sound), we could never really get the conversion rate just right.  We often overpaid, much to the driver’s content, though his price gauging felt justified since my chump change probably fed him and his family that day.

There were the roads.  The signs, the traffic, the animals.  But most of all the the people.  Pedestrians running across the street for dear life.  The female entrepreneurs selling goods from gargantuan baskets on their heads.

The most memorable thing, though, were my companions.  For a brief amount of time, we were sharing in the same journey.  Seeing the same things.  Experiencing the same confusion or joy or what-have-you.  Some of these rides were shared with some of my best friends, and some were shared with complete randos, and those times were one of the few instances in which it was ever acceptable to be sitting on a complete stranger’s lap.  The only other time I can think of when that's okay is if that stranger was in a Santa Claus costume during Christmastime, and even that’s a bit weird.

So my one lasting piece of advice or wisdom or whatever you want to call it is to keep having new experiences.  It’s gonna be a fun ride down memory lane when you realize they’re not so new after all.