We’ve had an amazing adventure so far. Getting the chance to bond, see new places, learn and have fun – those are the reasons we set off on this trip, and we’ve done it all already. But it hasn’t all been perfect. We want to share a few of the wrinkles we’ve run into along the way.
We ran into one of those wrinkles yesterday. Instead of enjoying her day in Temple, Mom had to drive 2 1/2 hours back up to McKinney, Texas in order to be added as a driver of the RV. We had tried to add her in Elkhart when we picked up the RV, but for some reason she had to be physically present. They told us that if we could stop by one of their other branches with her, she could be added, and one of those branches happened to be on our route. We would pass very near to their McKinney office Sunday on our way to Temple. What luck!
Saturday we called the McKinney office to be sure she could add her as a driver. No answer. Huh. So we looked at the papers they’d given us. Oops. Said McKinney was closed Sundays. We checked the website to confirm, and sure enough, we would not be able to stop by on our way through. The next closest locations were either Vegas or Salt Lake. Either we get Mom to McKinney Monday, or Dad was driving all 6000 miles. Which he would do. Of course.
Sunday we headed out for Temple with a plan. If we left where we were in Hot Springs, AR early, we might make it to Temple in time to rent a car so first thing Monday, Mom could drive to the RV rental office and avoid the worst of the notoriously bad I-35 corridor traffic. We looked around online and called car rental companies in Temple. It was Easter Sunday, so some places weren’t even open, and the ones that were closed before we’d be able to get there. So sad. Oh, and most places were critically short on cars – big vacation week down there.
New plan. We could make it to Waco, 45 minutes north of Temple, in time to get a car. We looked around and found one. Success! Time to fly to Waco. It looked like we would make it 15 minutes before closing. The traffic and construction, the swarms of speeding pickups and swerving lanes hemmed in with jersey barriers matched the mood perfectly as we raced to Waco. Miraculously we nailed our 6+ hour drive from Hot Springs to Waco and arrived at the rental office 15 minutes before closing time. Naturally, the office was in a bizarre location just off the highway where there was (more!) construction, and we had to do a little Austin Powers to get the RV in and out again. Dad asked Mom if he should wait till she was in a car. Mom said she was all good. Dad returned to to battle on I-35 the rest of the way to Temple, and the call came in from Mom less than 5 minutes later – she was not all good. They did not actually have that car. So sad. But also upsetting. How do you rent a car and then when you show up to get the car there is no car? Funny business.
After turning around and discovering that the bizarre rental location was a lot harder to get to from the other direction and also that RVs don’t do well entering some parking lots that have even a slight incline, Mom was back on board and we had a new new (how many news is this?) plan. We would rent a car in Temple for first thing Monday morning and get her on the road to avoid that nasty traffic We looked around in Temple and found a car, again getting the reminder that cars were scarce. Now we knew maybe we could rent a car, go to pick it up, and have the car not be there! Scary!
Monday morning, Mom got to the Temple car rental office as early as she could, but there were already multiple other parties waiting for a car. The office was grim, and the people waiting were even grimmer. The two young, undertrained, underpaid employees were doing their best, which was not enough. Mom signed in and was cheerily told they would help her as soon as they could and to join the grim waiters in the grim waiting area, and she cheerily did so.
While they were doing their best to shuffle through the waiting customers, the two young employees answered the phones a few times. Mom noticed it sounded like they may have been speaking to the same person each time, a person who was told repeatedly that, yes, someone was coming to pick them up at the storage unit, that they’d be in a red Ford Fiesta, and that no, they didn’t know why it was taking so long.
So when a already highly agitated woman burst into the grim, tense office huffing and puffing, Mom guessed it might be the same person who had been calling over and over. Spark, meet powder keg.
The two young employees were both outside vacuuming and spraying down cars for the waiting customers, and so they were not at the desk when the huffing woman approached. She cleared her throat and harrumphed then loudly exclaimed to the room that there was no one at the desk! She then stomped to the door and yelled out at the poor vacuumer that no one was at the desk and that he should be at the desk and that someone should be helping her does no one have any idea what she has been through and on and on, reaming everyone out.
That was when one of the grim waiting customers shouted at the huffing woman to give the poor kids a break, they were doing their best to get cars ready for everyone, and if she could just shut up, sit down, and wait like the rest of us they might have a chance to do that. The huffing woman approached the shouting man and shouted back that he should mind his own business, reminded him and everyone else that they did not know what she had been through. Again, she asked, why didn’t he mind his own business. This wasn’t his business. Shouting man shouted, it was indeed his business, that was his expletive car being being vacuumed.
The spraying employee returned and called Mom’s name. She leapt up and chirped, “that’s me!” As she was led out to her sweet maroon Chrysler minivan that wasn’t what she rented, the shouting man apologized to her, “Pardon my French, I just couldn’t let that stand.”
Mom made it through the crazy I-35 traffic to McKinney where she met the two lovely elderly gentlemen who worked at the RV rental office. She handed them her license, and they added her as a driver. Just like that. So simple! So quick! Then Mom presented them, kindly, with a list of items we had paid for as part of a convenience kit for our rental that were not present in the RV when we picked it up. The elderly gentlemen chuckled at the long list, how could those Elkhart fellas have forgotten all that stuff? Then they quickly provided Mom with each item except one. Mom got a toaster, a cutting board, some sharp steak knives, clothes hangers, a roast slicer, measuring cups and spoons, and a coffee maker that wasn’t as good as Aunt Patsy’s. No GPS. Mom even returned to Temple with a new key for our RV lockbox. The one we had been given had been bent and nearly broken. Those gentlemen in McKinney had even cut her a new lockbox key! Thanks, Michael and Glen!
