Getting to California, particularly the Bay Area, we could only really do by plane. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger found a decent flight from Detroit to San Jose airport, with a stop in Saint Louis. Not even a change of planes; people who boarded in Detroit who were going on to Saint Louis were allowed --- nay, encouraged --- to just stay on the plane. So while our poor boarding number meant that we were separated for the first leg of the flight, we were able to sit together and in our preferred seats for the other half. Also who knew this ever happened? Also we got to enjoy that strange median time where nearly everyone is off the plane and nothing particularly much is happening, and you're just ... somewhere you never are. That was great.
We did arrive in San Jose a few hours later than we figured on, as the flight was originally delayed a couple hours leaving Detroit, a combination of traffic and storms. And in picking up our luggage discovered that they had lost one of bunnyhugger's vintage luggage tags, ones decades old that she got from her parents in the misty past. It's hard not to feel like we should have retired them, if they were going to hurt to lose, but then if they're not on luggage what are they? I briefly held out hope they'd stuffed it inside my suitcase, the way the Transportation Safety Theater Agency did that time they re-set the combination of my luggage padlock, but no such luck.
For some reason that I will blame on inhaling too much airport/airplane air we had trouble understanding how to get to the car rental desk. Turned out we had to walk outside the terminal and follow the signs across the street that pointed to 'CAR RENTAL'. So that wasn't a big deal. There was barely any line, either, although one of the two people who was there had the most complicated transaction since the Credit Mobilier was established going on.
We got a Vokswagon Something, a pleasant enough car with a dashboard display that showed way too many things for me to understand. However, it was comfortable and it linked up with bunnyhugger's phone in a way that let us get podcasts and driving instructions on it. (It was also linked to the last five renters' phones, contact details I deleted because I'm a kind person like that.) What it lacked was air conditioning.
This took a surprising while for us to be sure about. It hardly seems possible, right? The car was basically new --- maybe 20,000 miles on it --- and surely the previous renter would have complained if the aircon was bad. Our first night we got in so late that we settled for eating at Taco Bell and it wasn't a long enough drive to be sure. The next couple days, though, with longer drives, in the summer heat? It was clear.
So Tuesday morning --- the 4th of July and our third day there --- I took the car back to the rental agency on what I said would not be a big deal. The lot attendant listened to the problem and agreed that wouldn't be a big deal. There was almost no line and the agent agreed oh, yeah, that's no problem. What would I like in a replacement car? And I picked 'Toyota Corolla' because it was right up at the top of the list. Also I figured, I drive a Toyota, there's probably fewer weird things I can't figure out about this. I never did figure out how to turn on cruise control on the Volkswagon Something, for example.
I went back to the promised parking space for the Toyota Corolla. In that spot was not the promised Toyota. There was a Corolla next to it, but with some other license plate than the one we were supposed to get. Our spot number had some ... I forget. Some Urban Assault Vehicle that smelled vaguely of smoke. The gate attendant wouldn't let us out with the car that was not the one in our contract, though, even if it was the right space. So we turned that one back in, and began a fruitless search for the Corolla with the correct licence plate. At some point in wasting away the time we should have spent at an amusement park we could expect to never see again, searching for a car that was not there, because somehow they had given us a car that broke its air conditioning the first year of its life, and because my exhausted declaration to my wife that swapping the car for a working one would not be a big deal had been made a terrible lie, I reached the end of my patience, a state bunnyhugger does not enjoy seeing. I told her to wait here while I went and dealt with the counter. She didn't hear me and continued searching for our car or at least wherever I had gone.
Downstairs I would have waited in the line except now there was a very long line. So I cut the line, going to the counter and slamming my paperwork down. I understand no one else in the line understood the justice of my cutting. The clerk flagged the supervisor to deal with me while she dealt with the not-enraged customers, but the supervisor was dealing with somebody who wanted to ask every question known to humanity before getting their car dealt with.
Anyway I started to tell the supervisor about the Corolla that was not in parking space (whatever), and he started to explain it wasn't there because my paperwork said our car was in space (whatever the Volkswagon Something was in). I explained, without particularly clenching my teeth, that that was for the car we had rented on Saturday that did not have air conditioning and that I just returned. The supervisor understood more of my impatience as the whole of this tale came across.
Finally, we got a new car. And one that existed, and one that had air conditioning. This was a Kia Something, whatever their entry is in the Boxy Subcompact genre. It, too, linked with bunnyhugger's phone for navigation and podcast purposes, although it didn't have so many strange, distracting animations of the car and inscrutable evaluations of my driving when I was done. It did have lane-assist steering, a thing I've never had and which I now can't imagine driving without. Also cruise control that slows when you get too close the car ahead of you. Also, air conditioning, although the heat wave passed at this point and it wasn't so beastly hot again.
I know this sort of story happens to me more than it does to most people but I can't think what the heck I'm doing to cause that.
And something that is my doing? Taking photos at Anthrohio and sharing pictures with you. From our Saturday there:
That's right, they were there setting up a new inflatable.
And it's the How To Train Your Dragon dragon! Great to see. I have some more photos of inflating the whole thing; it's got a lot of parts. Each leg and each wing, particularly.
Meanwhile, folks enjoy resting up against the inflatable robot ... dog or something.
And now to Velveteen's second outing, and a return to the elevator lobby with a different set of eyes on. It's true!
Velveteen considers the message board in Hospitality and wonders what you make of it.
And here you can see that she's picked up ... something? I believe it's the interior of one of those Easter eggs planted about.
Trivia: Frank ``Tish'' Tashlin would draw a syndicated comic strip called Van Boring, after his onetime boss at the Van Beuren Studio. Source: Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Leonard Maltin.
Currently Reading: Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes - or - Le Mot Juste: A Fresh Look At The Masterpieces of P G Wodehouse, Kristin Thompson. So it's never been hidden but seeing his name makes me realize the joke in the character of Stilton Cheesewright. Also I had not thought of the parallels between Jeeves-and-Wooster and Holmes-and-Watson but it feels foolish now that it's pointed out to me.
