the kindness of strangers

I have to come up with a great random act of kindness. This week, while I was in Portland on business, I was really blown away by the generosity of strangers. Let me set the scene for you. My conference started at 8. So naturally, I did something wrong to my alarm clock and woke up at 8. You know those kinds of days - when you have to basically hop out of bed at 60 mph. I thought, oh well, I guess I just missed the introductions - which aren't the worst things to sleep through. But of course as soon as I got into the conference, they said, oh, we forgot the introductions! Let's pass around the microphone so everyone can say who they are!
Awesome.
The day was full of energy biz presentations, some were great and some were so painfully boring that I seriously considered jabbing my pen into my throat to end it all. You know, save the world a few megawatts. After a busy day of listening, we all went to a social mixer at a local restaurant. It was pretty funny to see just how quickly the men jockeyed for position around a pretty young blonde from the conference. Suddenly a sea of waiters came out, singing happy birthday to her. They placed a crown on her head with balloons attached to it. You know, just in case you didn't see her before. But I digress.
After the mixer, where happily, the bourbon flowed like wine, my co-worker Patricia told me that she had never been downtown in Portland before and was hell-bent on seeing the city.  We caught the amazing Max Line  into town. On the train we chatted to a nice university worker named Connie. She pointed out places we were passing and gave us directions on how to get around the city. She even got off the train and walked with us for four blocks, pointing out where we needed to go. Amazing.
Patricia and I found a great little fondue spot for dinner. We gabbed for hours over wine and cheese about life.
When we were heading out, the waiter said, "there's a good chance our paths will never cross again in this life - have a wonderful life and try to leave the world a better place than how you found it." Love that.
We waited for our train, trying to ignore the fact that some young drunkards were busy fighting a rather innocent newspaper stand. We hopped on the first train that came into our sights, knowing that it connected up with our train further along. We just felt like it was in our best interest to get out of that area.
While on the train we met a nice lady named Terry. I think we started chatting to her because we were all in awe of the young 20ish year old man, drinking beer, and shouting loudly that he was a retired entrepreneur. Now I'm not saying he wasn't....but I'm pretty sure that young rich retired entrepreneurs these days are not hoisting Pilsner on the Max Line screaming about how rich they are. But I digress.
Terry asked where we were going, and we told her we were just going to transfer at Gateway for the Airport. She informed us that the airport train stops running after 10. It was going on 11. Da Da DUH!
She said that she was also getting off at Gateway and would call us a cab (ie Russian Mafia). But after being on hold on the phone forever, she told us that she would give us a lift to our hotel. She said she refused to leave us at the station, it was in a dodgy area. I tried to give her money for her efforts, but she refused. She said she did what any good person would do. She just wanted me to pay it forward one day.