Yesterday on a shuttle bus back to a parking garage outside of Baltimore, I was fiddling with my phone looking for directions to my next destination. As usual, I was a little flummoxed by the gadget. So at some point I put it down and asked the man next to me, who was wearing a blue Hawaiian-print shirt that said “Aloha” on the back, if he knew the way.

“Sure do,” he said, not skipping a beat. “You go to the corner and turn left, and when you hit the traffic circle you take Dulaney Valley Road.”

It sounded simple enough. I took his directions and stuck with them — even though the cars were crawling and I kept wondering if I’d heard him correctly.

But eventually the traffic circle appeared and so did Dulaney Valley Road, and before long I was where I needed to be.

A little story about trusting people instead of machines? Yes, but more than that. Later that day at a luncheon almost an hour away, I saw the man from the bus again. He was sitting at the very next table. His back was to us, but I knew it was him. I could see the “Aloha” on his shirt.