What? Oh ... sorry, that's another story altogether.
So
as I said ... finally got on the plane, and flew into LA. Had the good
fortune to have an empty seat between myself and the window-side
passenger, so it was surprisingly comfortable. I even managed to snooze
for an hour or two.
Having queued for an hour and a half
to do the formalities, which only took ten minutes once I made it to the
head of the queues, I boarded a transfer bus to the car rental office.
Seriously, the car rental offices (all of them) are so far from the
terminal, that they provide buses. But they still charge the 'airport
levy'. I guess it's to pay for the free bus. I had some misgivings as I
approached the counter, which were realised when I provided the
reservation number and the counter person (that doesn't sound right does
it? She wasn't really countering being a person) said: "Oh, we
cancelled that booking because you were more than 24 hours late". (26,
to be precise.) "I provided a flight number on the booking, that is
supposed to let you know the flight was cancelled, and sent you 2
emails." I replied in my brightest, not-bloody-Thrifty-again voice. Yup.Them again.
"Well
we didn't get them so the booking but was cancelled", she beamed. "But
it's OK, we can still provide you with a car." My joy failed to runneth
over. "At the same rate?" I asked, not at all optimistically. "Oh err,
let me see..." (Checks original booking. Goes a bit pale). ""I'll have
to check with the supervisor." She comes back with a not very convincing
smile of not very reassurance. "Yes, we can meet the same rental
rate." I should have picked up on the stress of 'rental'. My $300
booking turned into $900 of rental plus insurance plus blah blah plus
blah blah. "These 'extras' were all included in the original booking." I
observed, just to see what would happen. "Oh no, that's just the
rental. It doesn't include all these wonderful additional costs ... like
tyre wear levy, and brake light cooling fees ... and..." I was tired,
and about to become very cranky. "Fine". I took the car and silently
vowed to swap it over to another not so Thrifty one ASAP. It took me a
couple of days to do it, and wasn't as cheap as the original because I
wasn't booking a month ahead, but I changed to another major company at
one third less than the darlings at Thrifty. And they gave me a car
upgrade. Don't think I'll go the Thrifty path again.
Then to the hotel. "Shouldn't be too hard. I have a map." The significance of the fact that it was a map provided by that car
rental company failed to register. It's a map that you might use to
cover a hole in the wall, or teach primary students what a map should
show the user, by discussing what this one doesn't. But by gritting my
teeth and using some rusty navigation skills (keep the sun over my right
shoulder and I'm heading in more or less the right direction) I found
the hotel. Twice actually. Found it, then lost it, then found it again.
The hotel was, to my delight, expecting me, and made no fuss at all. And
wasn't the rat and 'roach infested hell hole that I'm told some cheap
LA hotels are. It's a little ...aged. Perhaps even jaded. Calling it 'shabby-chic' would be an unwarranted nicety. But it is clean and has been vermin free since I got here.
The
drive to the hotel was in fact remarkably incident free. I only crossed
onto the wrong side of the road a couple of times. I didn't fatally
injure anyone. I didn't get 'honked' at at all. In fact in the week that
I have been driving around, I have a) managed to have a pleasantly
small number of close shaves with the grim reaper, and b) been equally
pleasantly surprised at how patient and courteous LA drivers have been.
On my two long trips on LA Freeways, I have been struck by the way that
the drivers just make room for each other to merge or change lanes. No
fuss, no shaking fists or flipping birds. Just .. 'yeah OK, I'll slow
down for a couple of seconds and you can move into this lane'. Not at
all what I was expecting. Can't imagine what Jerry Jeff Walker's problem
was. (A country music ref. Don't panic if you don't get it.)
Well
once again I've taken far too long to retell far too little of my
progress. I have an early start tomorrow and should be asleep already.
I'll try to get caught up ... soonish.
W.
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