Another journey, another airport. This time I’m leaving Orlando and headed to Dublin where I’ll meet a friend or two in Cork.

In an effort to save a few hundred dollars for my team in car rental, I chose to return our van near where we stayed instead of at the airport (it worked, by the way). The guy at the return office really wanted me to ride an Uber back to the airport, but that was going to take at least thirty minutes and cost around $15. My other option was to catch a bus a few blocks away for an hour ride at $2. After failing to persuade me, he wished me luck and commented that I could have some interesting covnersations with the bus people, as if I were embarking on a deep sea dive into the low class.

The joke was on him because I did end up having a couple of lovely chats: one at the bus station with a woman whose daughter is vacationing in Paris; and one with a woman who recently lost her daughter to cancer. “No one should have to burry their own children, but the big man upstairs has her now.” It was a tragedy for this half-centry-old grandmother and I felt her grief while she worried about her six grandchildren who are missing their mother.

We did all worry for a minute if we would make it to the airport because the driver pulled over inexplicably alongside the road beside the runway. She never did tell, but after shutting down the bus completely, radioing, figeting with some kind of tool around the front, then hopping back in, we were on our way as if nothing happened. I suspect this is a common occurrance, the kind that the bus drivers half-joke half-complain about in the breakroom. “Oh yeah, that there number eleven. She always breaks down by the landing strip. I think she’s jealous of the planes as they sail across the sky.”

You don’t fabricate experiences. They grow over time and get passed down through the generations. There’s hardly a way to put a dollar value on their worth, but I ended up saving a few bucks to listen to these women and we all benefited from the sharing of these stories. Not persuaded and less persuaded on every encounter.