On The Road Again

10 PMish - In cab w driver that I'm not jiving with. Feeling some inner Trump/Hulk brewing inside and fighting it. Reactions are a big part of life. And the right reactions have to be cultivated years in advance. And even then it comes down to the skinny millisecond between what has transported and your reacting to it.

12:30 AMish - Right after I wrote the above I decided to break the cold silence, and I started a conversation w the driver. He was pleased.  He's from Bangladesh.  His father is a long time menber of Parliment . He's 40, here since he was 21. Lives in Queens, married with 2 kids.  Likes to take the kids on vacation, wherever they want, but so far not Disney. He's traveled a lot. Likes Democracy. We civilly spoke and disagreed about up to the minute politics.  He admired that I'm a teacher (I left out the rabbi/Jewish part due to tension we had earlier in our ride). We shook hands and ended on a very positive note.

And now I'm wondering about the big question, how many stars do I give this Lyft driver.  He wanted to take me to Wash Heights via 59 street Bridge to save toll - that makes no sense.  He asked me to shut my GPS.  He missed the correct exit for me and then said he saw there was traffic and next exit was quicker.  But I had my GPS muted and was watching it and saw that his mistake added 8 minutes to the ride. I'm glad that I navigated us into peaceful and pleasant conversation.  I don't want to rate him low because of lingering upsetness over his early attitude and temperment which seemed to improve. I also don't want to give him a higher rating than he deserves out of guit or misplaced compassion or weakness...