With air travel arranged, the next step was to arrange for a rental car. Texas is a busy place and with the big race, it turned out that rental cars were expensive. After a few days of searching, Jeremy called me to say he had found a rental car in Dallas that wasn’t overly expensive. He wasn’t familiar with the company name, but we decided there wasn’t much to lose so he went ahead and booked it. Perhaps if we had been paying attention we might have noticed a tiny red flag waving in the periphery of our vision. But who pays attention to those pesky red flags… this was going to be fun!
Finally the big weekend arrived. The flights to Houston and then Dallas were on time and soon we arrived at the Dallas airport where we met up with Matt who had arrived on another flight to join us. Here is where the story takes a slight turn and in retrospect, we should have seen a much larger red flag waving, had we cared to look. But the only flag we were thinking about was the green flag that would mark the start of the big race. Besides, this was going to be fun!
In all the times I have rented cars, the arrangements followed the same pattern. Find the rental company's kiosk, in or close to the airport, fill out the paperwork, pick up the car and drive away. This took a slightly different route. Instead, we were instructed to find a certain person waiting for us in the terminal. This we did, with the help of a few text messages. Next we were driven to a nearby hotel where we sat in the lobby while Jeremy filled out the paperwork. Then we were led outside to our rental, which turned out to be a not so new Dodge something or other. While it was basically tidy, it was nowhere near the standard of any rental car I had ever seen. Hmm, that red flag was getting bigger all the time, but we carried on, oblivious. Besides, this was going to be fun!
After a three plus hour drive we finally arrived late Friday evening at our motel. Accommodations were also at a premium so we had settled for a rather dingy motel on the north side of Austin. It was a bit strange sharing a bed with Jeremy, while Matt, being taller, had one all to himself. The room seemed serviceable … And besides, this was going to be fun!
And it was fun! We attended the pre-race events on Saturday, then went out to enjoy a bit of the night life in Austin in the evening. The race on Sunday was rather predictable as one driver seemed to be dominating every race that year. There was some excitement when Jeremy discovered some kind of weird bug in his hair. But this was Texas, and they do have different critters down there.
That night, we got to bed in good time as we were tired from being out in the sun all day. But we had enjoyed ourselves and looked forward to returning home the next day. Thus it was a bit of a shock to discover that our rental car was nowhere in sight the next morning. As we contemplated the oil stain in the parking lot, we realized that we were going to have to get moving. Our rental car had obviously been stolen, we needed to report it, get a replacement and get on the road back to Dallas in time to catch our flight. Tick, tick, tick…
The first call was to the Austin city police to report the theft. Fortunately, we had recorded the license plate information. The police were very helpful and calmly informed us that the car had not been stolen, but instead had been repossessed! This changed the nature of the next call, which was to the rental company. Instead of feeling ashamed for having their car stolen, we were now somewhat indignant that this had happened. Not to worry, they assured us. Just go ahead and rent a car from another company and they will reimburse us. Tick, tick, tick…
Our next call was easy. How do you get a rental car when you can’t get to the rental office? Easy, of course… just call Enterprise, because, as the ad says “we’ll pick you up!” Looking at the time, we realized we could still make it to Dallas in time for our flight. Tick, tick, tick… Five minutes, no Enterprise driver…, ten minutes, nothing, twenty minutes, nada. Finally, Jeremy’s phone rings. “Which hotel was that again? … Oh, our apologies, the driver somehow got our hotel confused with another on the other side of town! But no worries, he will be there soon…” tick, tick , tick…
Finally our driver showed up and quickly whisked us to the Enterprise office, which wasn’t far away. Thankfully, there was still enough time for us to get to Dallas, return our car and catch that flight! Hoorah, the day had been saved. The paperwork was quickly filed and soon we were on our way to Dallas, breathing sighs of relief. Then Jeremy’s phone rang… “Our apologies sir, but it appears that you left your passport at the Enterprise office…” A quick look at the clock revealed that time had run out. There was no way that we could return to pick up the passport and make it to Dallas in time.
But, wait a minute… What about the fact that we were actually closer to Houston than to Dallas. Why, the geography of Texas had come to save the day. We could simply drive to Houston and catch our flight back to Calgary. In fact we could do it with oodles of time to spare! All was well. As we backtracked to pick up the passport and head to Houston, we thought we had better call the airline to let them know that we wouldn’t be boarding that flight in Dallas, just in case they would be worried about us.
A quick call was made to United Airlines. It was at the point that the idiosyncrasies of airline ticketing were made clear to us. There is a policy that if a passenger doesn’t show up for one leg of a multi leg journey, that the rest of the ticket becomes null and void. "But not worry sir, for the tidy sum of approximately $400 U.S. dollars we can provide you with new tickets from Houston to Calgary." We didn’t have much choice, at this point, so new tickets were purchased to fly on the same flight that we already had tickets for!
Finally we arrived back in Calgary, tired, poorer and slightly traumatized. Oh yes, I almost forgot to add. The critter that bit Jeremy when we were at the race turned out to be a bedbug! Turns out that both sons had numerous bites by the time we left the hotel. For some reason, they left me alone. And it provided a bit of a silver lining to the story. Both sons were successful in making a claim against the hotel’s insurance. Alas, somehow the original rental company never did come through on their promise to reimburse us, but that trip sure was fun!
