Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car

Here is the story about a man and his plan.

The man is me. The plan was mine. Everything went to hell. The End.

That was the simplified version, for those who don’t like reading long blog entries. For those who have more time, here was my day on Sunday, in more detail:

I woke up early with the anticipation of meeting up with my friends in Baltimore, Maryland. Matt managed to get his hands on four tickets to the Ravens-Steelers game, (which was to be played at 1 pm), and although I’m not a fan of either team, I thought it would be nice to meet up with everyone. Being in DC sans car, I needed to find an efficient way to get to Baltimore. One option was to take several metro connections to either Amtrak or the Chinatown bus, which would then drop me off somewhere in Baltimore, and would require me to then either take a taxi or get picked up once in the city. At the time, that seemed like a hassle and a big waste of time, as I would constantly be waiting on public transportation to take me each leg of the trip. Instead, I decided that a simpler plan would be to rent a car, and that would take me directly from DC to Baltimore and back. No problem, I thought. Easy as pie. Piece of cake.

I went to a rental office near my place, and rented a car for only $22.00 for a full day. It seemed like such a bargain. And I sure like bargains. Until I saw the car.

The car that I had rented was a very large and very old silver Ford Crown Victoria (Ford built the first Crown Victoria in 1955. I think what I rented might have been that car). I got inside and was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of old people. I then noticed there was no gas in the tank, so the first thing I had to do was navigate this boat to the nearest gas station, where I ended up paying more for gas than I did to rent the damn thing. Next, I made my way to the highway, where I kept getting distracted by the drone of a pack of motorcycles that seemed to be following me very closely. Turns out, the sound that I was hearing wasn’t a pack of motorcycles, but the car that I was driving. Some lesser men might have turned the car around at this point. Some smarter men might have done the same. Not me. I thought, “The car is old. Old cars make weird noises. Everything is as it should be.” Eventually, the noise went away, and away I went, to Baltimore, my neighbor to the north.

Somehow, I managed to make it to downtown Baltimore, and about five blocks from the stadium, the car died. After frantically tried to restart it, it became apparent that I wasn’t going to resurrect the car myself, and so I tried calling the rental company to find out what I should do. Of course, they wouldn’t answer. As I continued to futilely call their office, passing cars did not take too well to me sitting in my deceased rental making calls on my cell phone. Instead of extending a helping hand, they extending me a middle finger, (or two). This was somewhat frustrating.

Eventually, Alex showed up and helped me push the car off the main road. He hopped in the car, put it in neutral, while I pushed, and he managed to get the car started. By this point, Matt and Ana Lauren had found us, and so I jumped in their car and we started following Alex as he slowly lumbered off. Despite the fact that he was moving at 5 mph, we somehow managed to lose him. Eventually, we found him trying to parallel park the car. The thing is, the car had died again, so he and some bystanders were trying to manually parallel park the car by pushing it, (if you think trying to parallel park a car in the normal way is hard, trying doing it without power steering and without the help of the engine to move it). After it became apparent that the car wasn’t going to fit, we moved it across the street, where we noticed it was next to a fire hydrant. Not wanting it to get towed, we pushed it into an alley and stuck a note under the windshield wiper that said: “Car engine dead. Will have towed later. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Not knowing what else to do, we went to the game.

While the game was entertaining, I must admit, I was slightly preoccupied. During half time I happened to glance over the rental agreement that I had signed, and on the back, in almost illegibly small type, it said that, were the car to fail, I was responsible for towing it back to DC. However, when we eventually returned to where we left the car, I no longer had to worry about towing the car, because someone had done it for me. Oops.

I managed to write down the towing company’s number after borrowing a pen from a resident in the building adjacent to the alleyway. Apparently, this lender of the pen WENT to Penn and Ana Lauren knew him. He seemed like a nice guy, (I guess I’ll overlook the fact that he was probably the guy that had my car towed). I then went to the train station and took a train back to DC.

Yesterday morning, I called the towing company. They told me I owed $240 in cash, and there would be a charge of $8.00 a day for each day it was there. So, if you are keeping track, my brilliant plan has now cost me: $20 to rent, $26 in gas, $40 for a train ticket home, and on top, it would take at least another $240 just to get the car out of the lot so I could then tow it back to DC, (which would probably be another few hundred) and THEN, according to the rental agreement, I would have to pay more to have it fixed. I then tried to call the rental company, and the operator let me know that the number was disconnected.

So, basically, I don’t plan on paying for anything more in this fiasco. Last night, I went to the lot where I rented the car, and slid the keys in the drop-box. Let them deal with their bargain buggy. I think I got what I paid for, but I don’t think I should have to pay for what I got.

If I’m sued, I really hope the judge agrees.