All I can say this morning is: It's a wonder I'm still alive.
That, and "Advantage Rental Car sucks big time, and the La Quinta Inn and Suites at SEATAC is a fucking dump."
Other than that, I have nothing to say.
Yeah, and we all believe that, don't we?
No, nothing catastrophic happened during our Adventures in Air Travel yesterday. Everything was on time, nothing broke or fell out of the sky, nobody puked on me. There's that for which to be grateful; I know that.
On the other hand, it was a sucky-ass day from beginning to end, and I vowed sometime last night--who knows what time it was, since we're two hours off and some of our time-keeping implements have very helpfully re-set themselves to Pacific Time and some have, stubbornly, kept to Central Time. So we're not very sure what time it is. And given the dumpiness of this "hotel," I'm not sure anyone bothered to officially usher in last week's time change--I vowed sometime last night that I will never, ever, EVER travel by air again. Well, once I get home, that is. I don't have much choice there, as I'm far, far away from home and am not ABOUT to take this POS rental car any farther afield than I absolutely must.
In fact, let's start with that, shall we? Let's start with the absolute disaster of the rental car experience. Because, really, without that it would have been just a long and painful and irritating day. But when we arrived, a little before 9 pm (11 pm our time), it could have gone either way. We got the luggage, which we didn't recognize on the first go-round on the baggage carousel because my suitcase, which had been a brand-new-looking red bag just 6 hours earlier, was now a filthy, blackened skank of its former self. And then we headed off the rental car counters, a long slog, but not too long. We passed the Advantage counter at first, since it was by far the smallest one and way down at the end and--whoa!--completely dark. We turned around and hauled our crap up to the darkened counter and peered at the little sign, which said the counter was closed and that we should go to the parking garage Level 3 and find Island #1 or #2. OK! Now, this might make perfect sense to someone who flies a lot, who's cosmopolitan and Wise in the Ways of the World, but we had no fucking clue. We followed the signs and headed over to the parking garage and went to Level 3, and all we could see was miles of meters for buying parking tickets and many, many people bustling about with their luggage, all looking serious and businesslike. We wandered around for a while, and then The EGE asked someone. Except, gee, as soon as I saw him walk over to ask them, I had to hustle back and stand behind him. As soon as they shook their heads and walked away, I said, "Gee, dear, when you're in a strange place, it's really not a good idea to approach the two whitest women in the whole place in the middle of the night in a parking garage." I might have added, "Esp. not the Church of Christ Ladies." Because I'm pretty sure that's what they were: long hair coiled into buns, long skirts, sensible shoes, big glasses. It's a wonder they didn't run screaming through the rows of cars.
We go back and forth across the skybridge, looking for someone who looks like they know what's going on. We remember fondly our first trip to San Francisco, where every time we stopped to look at our map, someone in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, would come up and cheerfully, in a very Ambassodor of The City manner, offer help. There were no workers of any sort anywhere. Finally we just randomly asked, in raised (and probably desperate-sounding) voices, if anyone knew where the Advantage (Snort) Rental Car counter was. A guy pushing a cart with even more luggage than we have--and that's a LOT of luggage--sent us down a floor. There, indeed, were the rental car counters.
Advantage was not among them. I had begun to get suspicious when I used the iPhone to try to find directions and it showed the airport location with the notation "this location closed permanently," but now we discovered that, contrary to our Priceline itinerary, the Advantage (To Whom?) Rental Car Company had moved "off-site," and we were to go down another level and stand on the sidewalk--in the cold! in the dark!--and wait for a shuttle van.
Which we did.
It finally arrives, and the guy driving it has an unidentifiable-to-us (meaning: not Spanish) accent, and he asks a lot of questions but seems not to understand our answers. We're the only people on the shuttle, and he seems thrilled to see us and assures us we'll be at the lot shortly, and then we clatter and bounce off into the night.
I'm thinking, "Holy shit, we're being kidnapped." No one knows where we are, nothing is as it's supposed to be ("in-terminal counter," my ass), it's late and dark and spooky, and we arrive at this lot full of cars with this building that, from the outside, looks dark and deserted, and he says, "That's the office."
I swear I could hear the music from
Jaws. Not that this experience had anything to do with sharks, unless you count Advantage (To Us! Not to You!) Rental Car Company as a shark, which would not be stretching anything if that's what you chose to do, but it's the only Scary Movie Music I remember, so it kind of has to fill in for every scary situation.
He grabs our suitcases, thumps them down out of the van, hustles them into the office--which is, hooray! open after all--leaves them right in front of the door, so that we have to kind of shove them with our feet to get in the door--and then vanishes, leaving us with The Advantage (And Here We Mean "No Advantage") Rental Car Company Resident Bitch.
We knew we were in for an experience in No People Skills Whatsoever when she picked up the phone and said, "You'll have to call back. [pause] Because I'm the only one here, is why." Clunk.
If she's that jolly to someone on the other end of the phone, in front of customers, it's not going to be all goodness and light.
She then sets out to try to extort as much money out of us as she can. She tries, not once, not twice, but about a billion times, to get us to upgrade to a larger (more expensive) rental. The car I have reserved is a mid-size car, nothing tiny, certainly nothing huge. It doesn't matter what we rent--we're not paying $800 a week for an Expedition, and anything else is going to seem small to us, so what does it matter, really? If I'd had a choice, I would have gotten a cute little Volkswagen like we had back in the day when we didn't do a lot of road trips and so didn't worry about Highway Safety and always bought the smallest, cutest (well, in my case, anyway--I don't think The EGE was really choosing his transportation based on cuteness), most-fuel-efficient cars we could find. She tries to get us to pay up-front for a full tank of gas, telling us that gas in Seattle is $3.25 a gallon and will probably go up, and we can guarantee a full tank at whatever-their-price is if we pay now. I tell her no, we'll leave it like it is. And this is where I start to get irritated. I mean, really irritated.
She: "What do you mean, 'like it is'?" She doesn't say this in the way people do, where they're just checking to see if they understood you. She says this in the way you do when you're mocking someone, demonstrating to them that you think they're idiots. I tell her we'll leave the contract the way it is. She repeats this.
Then she begins with the insurance, telling us horror stories about how our insurance, which we have always used before, might not cover us in Washington, and how if something happens, we will pay the per diem (not her words) charge until the repairs are completed. She goes on at length, relishing the recitation of all the woes of being uninsured in the state of Washington, a No-Fault State.
Now, I thought I knew what "no-fault" meant, but apparently not. Apparently it means "you're at fault for everything and will pay or die," according to her. At this point, I just turn away and breathe. I'm tired, I ache everywhere, I've banged the suitcase into my knee, I haven't eaten an actual meal in over 24 hours, and I haven't met a single friendly person since the desk clerk at the La Quinta in Dallas.
Then she says, oh, yeah, and there's the $200 deposit you'll get back when we get the car back.
I pull out my print-out of the agreement, and there's no mention of a $200 deposit. I've never paid a deposit on a rental car before. She smirks at us. "Well?"
What choice do we have? I can't even open my mouth. I just nod. She, of course, asks, "So what does that mean? Yes? Yes to what?"
I said, "Yes. What choice do I have? Except that this will be the last time I ever use Advantage (Fuck Me, Please!) Rental Car Company."
I just thought that middle part. I didn't actually say it, because if I had--if I'd opened my mouth and said what I was thinking--it would have gone on for a long, long time, becoming increasingly ugly and personal. Kind of like:
"Listen. I know you have the power, here all by yourself in some little shanty office on some backwater car lot in the middle of nothingness that is this airport, but that doesn't make you anyone special. You're not cute, and you're not witty, and you have such abysmally poor social skills that it's a wonder you're not a guard in some maximum-security prison, where they value people's abilities to condescend to other human beings as a method of discipline. But, no: they've given you this job, and something in your pathetic collection of issues that function as a 'personality' makes you gain pleasure from making people as miserable as possible. You and the driver are the first people with whom we've had contact since landing in Seattle, and, honey, if you're an ambassador for the city--as you, in fact, are, by virtue of your job--then this city is fucked."
What I wanted to do, at that point, was to throw the keys at her, demand to be taken back to the airport, where I would have stripped myself naked (to avoid another time-consuming and attention-getting wand-and-pat show) and demanded to be put on standby for the next flight home, where I would have kissed the ground, fashiioned myself a garment from mesquite and cactus, and then hitchhiked to my house, from which I would never depart again, never, ever, ever.
But no. The EGE is with me, and he's as tired and dispirited as I. We're not old, but we're Of A Certain Age, and we have the kind of lifestyle where we do not find ourselves averse to certain comforts. Decent food, for instance. Nice people. Comfortable seating in a variety of situations. Clean bathrooms, fresh air and water. You know. And we have not had any of those for far, far too long.
OK. I know that there are those of y'all out there who are rolling your eyes and going, "My god, what a weenie. What a hick. What a whiner."
I say, "And?" I have never claimed to be a cosmopolitan jet-setter, a global adventurer, a Woman of the World. Hell, no. I am, instead, a woman who knows what she likes and should know better, by now, than to try to like what she hates. What do I hate?
--rude people
--crowds, esp. crowds of rude people
--stale air, stale food, stale anything
--noise, especially crying babies
--filth
--not knowing which way is north
--not knowing where I am
Oh, honeys, I could go on. I could go on and on and on. But I won't. Let me just back up and leave you with the first part of the story, the part where we check in at DFW for our flight, and we find that not only do I have to pay $20 each for the privilege of checking a bag for each of us, but, because The EGE's bag is FIVE POUNDS OVERWEIGHT, I must pay another $50. This irritates me no end. Oh, sure, I understand the logic of it, of not letting people cram their safes and their collection of commemorative bricks and their boat anchors into their luggage. Yeah, I get that. I get the idea that Too Much Weight Is Unsafe, but here's the deal: The EGE and I easily weigh many multiples of five pounds less than the average passenger. Why could that not be taken into account when our luggage is standard size and is not going to take up any more space than anyone else's but just weighs a little more? Couldn't they look at us and go, "Yeah, OK, it all balances out. And, in fact, thank you for so thoughtfully being skinny"?
Non.
So I heave many big sighs--something at which I've gotten ever-so-much-better in the last 24 hours--and pay the money and head to security. I've taken off the largest of my jewelry--the rings, the big African silver bracelets--and put them in a plastic bag, but I know that's not going to help much. I have to take the laptop out of its case and put it in one tray and put the external hard drive in another. Another for my backpack/purse, and another for my coat. I tell them, smiling, apologizing profusely, that I'll need to be wanded. As, of course, is the case. I expected this. I'm OK with it. I know that the attendant will not be chatty and friendly--that's not her job. She's not an ambassador to anywhere--she's Security, and she's what's keeping all of us safe from The Terrorists. Which might be me, right?
Only: wouldn't you imagine that a terrorist intent on blowing something up would want to kind of pass under the radar? Wouldn't you imagine that maybe you could relax a little while wanding and patting and feeling up a middle-aged woman with screamingly-bright (freshly colored!) orange hair, a purple skirt covered with a rainbow of rows of fibers and beads and sequins from top to bottom, 10 earrings, a dozen bracelets, a neon orange and pink jacket--you get the picture here? Wouldn't you think you could relax a little, maybe smile? Oh, no.
OK. I understand. For the Safety of The Nation, she has to treat me just as if I were wearing _______ (here fill in the outfit of your personal favorite terrorist cliche). But I can't help it; I'm still me, and I still have to make her laugh. Or at least smile. I don't talk to her while she's doing the actually patting and prodding, but when she moves from one area of my body to another, or when she explains what she's going to do (check to see if those are really underwires or if perhaps I'm carrying a switchblade in my bra) and asks if I'd like to be taken to a private area to have this done (and me? I'm so suspicious of The Government that there's no way in HELL I'm going to agree to let a Federal Employee cull me from the herd and take me into A Private Area for ANYTHING. Good lord: Sure, The EGE has good life insurance on me, but he would kind of like to have me around for a while longer, and preferably with my frontal lobes intact and nothing implanted under the skin of my thumbs.)
So I tell her it's OK, no problem, and I say, "Honey, I have tattoos! This doesn't bother me." No reaction. I say, "This must get really old for you." And she says, "It's my job."
And then she says, under her breath, "A woman this morning told me this was the worst thing that had ever been done to her."
I said, "Whoa. She must never have had a colonoscopy."
And then, as she passed back in front of me, I saw her lips twitch.
Score!
Cutting it short--since we have to go check out the car--that would be the rental from Advantage (Plus One for Us; Screw You!) Rental Car Company--and see if we think there's an issue with the transmission and we have to take it back and try (oh, please, no!) again, or if it's just the way this car sounds: as if the engine is revved to the max and not shifting into another gear when it gets over 30 mph.
--We board the plane, where I sit in the middle seat, between my husband, who loves sitting by the window and looking out the entire trip and cheerfully pointing out things to me, never mind that I've told him approximately 1,000,000,000 times that that's OK, I'd prefer pretending that we're on the ground in a really ratty and noisy bus--and a young guy who is obviously the Master of Planning: when the plane takes off, he opens a paperback copy of
The Road, by Carmac McCarthy, and just as the plane taxis on the runway to the gate in Seattle, he reads the last page and shuts the book. "Wow, that was perfect timing," I say.
"Yeah. Wow. What a depressing book." Those were the first words he'd spoken to me in the four hours we'd been sitting 6 inches away from each other's face except when they turned off the cabin lights and I turned on his reading light for him and he said, "Thanks." Why had I not talked to him earlier? He was obviously not someone who wanted to be talked to. See above: the book.
--Ever notice how men take up public space? I first noticed this on a train trip from Silverton to Durango, when the men sat down and draped their arms back over the seats and spread their legs in what would, in a woman, be seen as an invitation to some sort of sexual congress right there on the bench. I said something to the guy beside me about taking up so much space, and he said, yeah, that's why we sit this way.
Same on airplanes, where guys just assume that "arm rest" means "arm rest for guys to spread across."
My husband would have moved his arm, had I asked, of course. But I'm already crammed into a space that's never going to be comfortable, and the guy on the other side of me has, without even thinking, taken up the other armrest, so why bother? So I sit, for over 4 hours, upright, my feet on the floor (I never sit with my feet on the floor; it makes my hips ache), arms at my side, neck out of position. Reading magazines, something I don't normally do except in short, 5-minute breaks.
--what is it with people? Sitting waiting for the plane to board, the thing I noticed most was that almost without exception, everyone waiting to board acted as if this might be their last chance to find sustenance for days. Months, maybe. They were eating entire meals with that steady, determined energy I reserve for things like shaving my legs. Whole families were sitting, staring straight ahead, wolfing down sandwiches and boxes of fried chicken and pizzas. This terrified me, because, with my personal aversion to public puking, I did not want anyone to eat anything at all before boarding the plane.
Luckily for me, everyone around me seemed to do fine with the digestion part. It was just the amazing odor of onions part that nearly killed me. The entire plane reeked of onions. It was like they'd eaten onions with onions and a side order of onions. All so that they would have the strength to go for 5 or 6 hours without getting a full meal. Never mind that they had the opportunity to purchase sandwiches and snacks during the flight.
Now, I admit that going too long without food is not a good thing. By midnight last night, after going for over 24 hours with only some grapes, a few ounces of nuts and a plastic cup of wine (on the plane), two fiber wafers and a cookie, I was a little peckish. But still: scarfing down a full meal before boarding a plane (with no intervening chance to floss!), just so you won't have to go 6 hours without putting food in your mouth? And not just one or two people with possible medical/blood sugar conditions, but EVERYONE? Huh.
OK. So now it's time to leave, do whatever has to be done about the car from Advantage (My Ass) Rental Car Company, find the way to the ferry, and head to Port Townsend. Wherever that is--I'm not really sure.
But I'm feeling better today. I had a nice conversation with a very cheerful and helpful and reassuring agent from our insurance company who assured me that we are covered while driving a rental car, even if--omigod!--the ferry sinks with the car on it. His social skills were so fabulous that he even apologized with what sounded exactly like sincerety when I related to him the many flaws in the personality of the clerk at the Advantage (And What A Sucker YOU Are) Rental Car Company.
There may, at some point, be a meal in our future (our options, last night at midnight, when we had no intention of testing out the little car in the dark and so were looking to see what might be had locally) were Jack in the Box (which we refer to as E-Coli in a Box, after that incident many, many years ago) and Denny's (motto: Black People, Go Sit By the Toilets!).
If you see us, we'll be the brightly-dressed people walking the streets of Port Townsend, holding up signs that say "Will Schmooze for Tofu."
XO
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