The World According to Erroll

According to Erroll, he met Barack Obama way back when the President was working as a community activist in Chicago where Erroll has lived all his life.

"You ought to run for President," Erroll told Obama at the time.  

We met Erroll yesterday when he was the driver of the Go Airport Express shuttle on the way from our hotel to Chicago's Midway Airport.  

What a way to start a day of what seemed at the time would be a long, tiring day going home!

If everyone could meet someone like Erroll first thing in the morning, what a positive world this would be.  

Erroll's a captivating storyteller.  He's also a sports fan.  

Because of the latter, my daughter-in-law Debbie has his business card, and she will be sending him a ZAGS T-shirt.  

Erroll has a collection of college sports t-shirts and would still like to run across someone with ties to USC and UCLA.  

He's been waiting a long time to meet someone who follows the ZAGS, and the wait ended yesterday when we climbed into his van.

The minute we met Erroll we knew the 20-minute ride to the airport was gonna be entertaining. In addition to being an avid sports fan who played a little high school ball himself (mostly on the bench), he's worked as a deejay.  

Ask him about music; he'll tell you what he thinks.  He likes all genres.  He likes Adele. He loves a song Nora Jones sings but couldn't think of its name while we were riding with him in the shuttle. 

He assured us that as soon as we left to go into our terminal he'd probably think of it.  I gave him my card and told him he could give us a call whenever the song title popped into his very active mind. 

Erroll is now my Facebook friend, and it's obvious that he has probably charmed virtually every person he's met while driving travelers to or from the airport. 

He even drove the Venezuelan men's basketball team who were in the states prior to the Rio Olympics.  

Erroll told them where they could get a haircut and to be sure to go to the Nordstrom's rack where they could find shoes their size for half the price. 

He also advised them to enjoy everything they could about Chicago cuz they were sure gonna lose to the USA men's team----and lose bad.  They lost by about 30 points. 

Erroll showed us a photo of him standing with the team.  They dwarfed him. 

We also learned that Erroll has three children, all successful.  One of his daughters will be soon be getting married.  

He hasn't met the prospective son-in-law yet, but when Erroll does, he'll show the young man his extensive gun collection.  

"Just kidding," Erroll told us. 

When Erroll tells people he knows Tony Parker, they're really impressed.  

But then he has to tell them he knows Tony Parker, Sr., not the son who's now a famous player on the NBA San Antonio Spurs.  Erroll is instead a Tony Parker Sr.'s contemporary. 

I actually hated to see our shuttle trip to the airport end early yesterday morning because I could have listened to Erroll all day.  

The brief experience with this marvelous man serves as more reminder that life's journeys or even weekend trips to Chicago are always made richer by the people we met. 

Erroll was pretty special, and I'm sure he's lifted a lot of early morning moods while transporting travelers from all over the world to or from the airport.  

Can we clone Erroll?

Yes, he will definitely get his ZAGS t-shirt.  

After all, he made our day, and, besides, once we stepped inside the terminal, we learned that we had a direct flight with Southwest to Spokane, getting us there two hours earlier rather than laying over in Denver.

Can't beat that. 

Happy Tuesday.