On our way to Navy Pier from our north-side apartment one afternoon, we ended up in a cab with a driver who must not have had a good night''s sleep the night before. While sitting in traffic on Michigan avenue, he nodded off and we bumped into the car in front. Unfortunately that didn’t serve as a wakeup call. He still kept dozing off; so we got off at the next light and walked the rest of the way.

On our way to Las Vegas a few years ago, we got a cab driver who must have been training for NASCAR. While he drove his cab, a minivan by the way, at breakneck speed on the expressway, we hung onto our bags and tried to keep our breakfast down.

Returning from the same Vegas trip, we got a cab driver who thinking we were tourists, took every back alley and street from Midway to Lakeview. When we reached our apartment, I told him the regular fare was $21 and that''s what I was going to pay. That lead to a heated discussion. The real fireworks started when Mary Beth told him to shut up. Apparently he didn''t like being talked to that way by a lady.

On my way to O''hare on friday morning to catch a flight to Detroit, I got a cab driver who I recognized as Nigerian from his accent. I have a tendency to strike up a conversation with anyone from Nigeria, after all I did live there for 11 years. We had an interesting conversation about Nigeria, until I asked him about his family both in Nigeria and here. He informed me he had attempted suicide by downing a bottle of pills a couple of years ago because his wife had ‘left him and took everything he had’. Not exactly the kind of information you want to know about someone who''s driving you down the expressway at 75 miles an hour. For the rest of the trip I sat on the edge of the seat waiting to pounce and take control of the vehicle should he decide to revisit that decision.

On our way back from last weekend trip''s to Detroit, we ended up in a cab with a very polite driver from the motherland. Both Mary Beth and I looked at each other and agreed this time around we had picked a winner. Unfortunately this guy was lacking three essentials for every cab driver. First, he was unfamiliar with his cab. Several times while attempting to turn on the turn signal, he turned on the wipers. Second, he was unfamiliar with the major expressways. And third, most importantly he didn''t know how to drive. The concept of looking to see if there was any traffic in the next lane before merging into it was foreign to him. On the way to Schaumburg he almost took out quite a few cars on the expressway.

I''m already looking forward to the next time I have to take a cab. Based on past experiences it''s going to be something interesting to blog about