The first day for me was really Friday, since I had to travel out to the SF Bay area.
I couldn’t find a ride to the airport (waited too late, and Mike was out of town), so I just drove there. I left early because I knew traffic down TX-121 would be bad, especially with the construction. By the time I got to the airport, the Remote North parking lot was full. Fortunately, Remote South was still open. The remote parking lots are reasonable, only $6/day.
I got there with plenty of time. More than I knew. My flight got delayed because the plane we were using got in late. Apparently there was some bad weather around the DFW area and planes were being routed around it. So my flight left late, then it took longer to get to San Jose. We had to be routed around the same bad weather that had impeded the flight on the way in. The suspense apparently got to the kid two rows in front of me. She threw up, which really added to the atmosphere.
By the time I got to the San Jose airport, I was not in a particularly sunshine-y mood. The flight was long and I was very tired. Elaine met me there (she seemed very chipper at the moment), we got my bag, then went to the car rental.
So before I arrived, Elaine had been at the car rental center. We had reserved a minivan for the missions trip. By the time she got there, they were out. So they offered her a full sized van for the same price. So she signed all the paper work, paid for the van, then went to the other side of the airport to pick me up.
When we got to the car rental together, we went straight to the parking lot to pick up the van. But it wasn’t there. The man handing out keys seem really confused. He told us we had to go back to the counter to figure out where the van was. It didn’t take long to figure out they had rented the van out from under us in the time it took Elaine to go to the other side of the airport to pick me up. Nice.
They kept telling us we should have taken the key. Apparently their booking system is as sophisticated as “do we have the key?” If they have the key to a car, they’re renting it. So never have a car rental employee hold they keys to your car. They’ll rent it out. It doesn’t matter if you’ve paid for the car.
Anyway, Elaine and the woman renting the car spent a lot of time going back and forth, trying to work something out. They didn’t have any more vans, so they offered to rent us two cars. The problem was, the cost kept coming out to more than what they were going to charge us for the van.
Meanwhile, my sunny disposition was not improving. I was getting more fatigued and dealing with the whole “are we going to have transportation or not” was not helping. At one point they needed my license to put me on the driver’s list. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded. But I was tired, and felt like I was being forced into driving because of the rental company’s mistake. Elaine noticed my deteriorating condition and called Kristy and Noel to come out and drive one of the cars back to their place. The idea was I could just crash at their place until the next day.
But Elaine got everything worked out shortly thereafter. That’s when Kristy and Noel arrived, and we drove the rental cars (two of them) back to Kristy and Noel’s house.
Elaine and I then continued on to her parent’s house. She pointed me to a bed and told me what time to get up.
I slept like a rock.
