This story is probably as long as the horrible day that the system beat us in Thailand. In an effort to consolidate, I'm going to bullet point the story:
Friday, September 30:
- last day of work
- return one rental car to the airport
- park other rental car on Tuesday-street-sweeping street. (No matter, we'll return it Monday.)
Saturday, October 1 - Monday, October 3:
- do lots of moving errands
- do lots of fun stuff, as outlined in the previous 9 posts in this series
- run out of time to return rental car
Tuesday, October 4:
- sleep until noon
- lollygag about the apartment for a few hours
- get a tan in my living room
- inform Summer that I don't feel like leaving the apartment so she leaves to go to her appointment alone
- get phone call from Summer
- "where is the car?"
- realize rental car has been towed
- make 357 phone calls trying to see if tow lot will release car to us, since we are not owners. nope.
- make 432 more phone calls trying to see if rental company will call on our behalf
- resolve, finally
- walk to tow lot two miles away through bad, bad neighborhood
- talk loud and fast to Summer through bad, bad neighborhood so nobody gets any ideas about robbing us
- finally pick up rental car, $193 later
- drive it to the office to pick up Summer's car which has been stored at the office and not driven in 7 weeks
- follow each other to drop rental car off at the airport
- ride together back to apartment
- break down two miles from apartment on off ramp
- Summer steers and I push car
- a few good Samaritans help as she pops the clutch and starts the car and it runs for two blocks
- repeat for two miles
- finally give up and call triple A
- wait for triple A driver
- drive car no problem with help of triple A driver's power pack attached to battery
- it's the alternator, he says
- leave car overnight with voicemail to mechanic, who advertised Foreign car repair
- stay out until 4am dancing with Lionel Batiste
Wednesday, October 5th:
- wake up late and find out Foreign car repair place does not work on cars over 10 years old
- discover Enterprise rental car company would have come and got all of our rentals, we wouldn't have needed to drive to airport
- pick up another rental car
- push/pop clutch on Summer's car for three blocks
- jump car with new rental car
- drive car two blocks again
- give up
- leave Summer with her car, drive rental car to ATM to withdraw $70 cash, in order to leave deposit for alternator shop's power pack so we can drive Summer's car there for repair
- return to Summer and her car, drive 3mph the two miles to alternator shop, who has graciously stayed open just for us
- leave car with adorable cajun couple
- REALIZE THAT ALTERNATOR SHOP IS 45 YARDS FROM ORIGINAL OFF-RAMP BREAK DOWN LOCATION:
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| Photo taken from alternator shop. We broke down at that traffic light the night before. |
Thursday, October 6 - Friday, October 7:
- cross fingers, hoping car will be ready for our cross country journey on Saturday (it was)
Saturday, October 8:
- drive to South Carolina, only to be informed part-way through the journey that the destination had been changed to Birmingham, MI.
The Adventure Continues...
5 comments:
seems like a normal couple of days really
Wait, how many cars did you go through?
I thought Birmingham was in Alabama.
hmmmm....only four cars. Is that a lot?
Birmingham IS in Alabama, but it's also in Michigan. We were in both in two days.
Instead of "triple A" how about "AAA"?
That's what Summer said.
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