Waiting in Reston, VA

Waiting for the motorhome to be fixed gave me the chance to hang out in Reston, VA anxiously awaiting the phone call with the cost for fixing it.  I sat in a coffee shop reading emails.  Two older gentlemen sat next to me and it was obvious that they meet on a regular basis for coffee.  I thought how nice it was that they had this social time.  It became very clear that I needed to check my stereotypes about the elderly.  Their conversation was about computer programmers from other countries, like Russia, who were creating software for potential government contracts with the US.  They discussed how long the process takes and how many trips they had made to explain this to the programmers.  I received an education about software and an opportunity to be reflective about my own ideas about who these men were before I got a chance to know them.  Was I participating in ageism?  Have I really thought about what that looks like and how I might be contributing?  I know that I find it difficult to share the breadth of my professional and personal experience without feeling like I am boasting and yet often younger colleagues have no idea what my life experiences are.  Too often they assume that they can't possibly measure up to theirs.  How do we capture wisdom and experience and not assume that those older than us have stories but they are irrelevant to the world in which we live today.
In the cab I took to get the motorhome, I had my first female driver.  She happened to be African American and had a beautiful head of grey hair.  In talking she shared that that morning she had taken a customer to a jewelry store to buy a present for his girlfriend and he asked her to wait until he was done so she could take him back.  On the way back, they stopped at a convenience store for him to use the restroom.  As she waited six police cars surrounded her cab and a police helicopter was flying over it.  An officer came to her window and asked if she had a passenger and she explained he was inside.  The officer said we think he just robbed a bank.  She said that this was not possible that he had been with her the whole time.  "Why do you think it is him?" she asked.  The officer said the bank robber had on a black coat and black pants.  That's it!  Half of DC males have black coats and black pants but as an African American woman who has seen people put in jail on slim evidence she knew this could have been one more case.  Her frustration with this behavior was evident.  She had been driving for 25 years and had many amazing stories.  She made me laugh as she talked about young people who get in her car and ask if she has a GPS before they tell her where they want to go.
She says I have a brain that knows this county well but now only a GPS knows the way!  Never thought about assumptions people make about whether we can through experience match what computers, phones, etc. have in details and is one more valuable than another?
Motorhome just had loose wires.  Charged me for an hour of labor!  Hooray!