I'll have to admit, Thursday was pretty stressful. I had thought I would be traversing the Rockies but as it happened we went through a pass in Arizona, I-17, instead which, for all I know, might have been worse or better as far as the steepness of the grade goes. This was a 6% grade and to me, that was pretty steep. It felt as though I were driving a rocket because, at times, I was driving 65 – 70 miles per hour; the speed limit is 75mph. Oh, and it turned dark before I got through the mountains.
All the while I was driving down the mountains I was afforded a spectacular lightning show; it was hard not to watch. This storm actually lasted until 2 or 3 in the morning and even got better as we got into Phoenix with the whole sky lighting up constantly with spectacular displays of bolts piercing the night. I love to watch lightening shows and this was the best I have ever seen.
After having driven through the mountains, the next challenge was construction and then the city of Phoenix itself. The speed limit when entering the city of Phoenix is 65mph. In Wisconsin we would be driving 55 and that is what I am used to. I was glad when we finally parked to take a break and eat some dinner. I was beat.
When we were done, it was Dallia's turn to drive and the weather had turned. Whereas the temperature going in was hot, coming out it was now a bit cooler and windy. I started having thoughts that perhaps hurricane Gustav had come our way. Leaving the parking lot a shopping cart shot across our path. Headed toward the freeway it started to rain…sideways. By the time we reached the freeway, about five minutes away, the rain was coming down very hard, so hard our wipers were not keeping up. Traffic was stopping because of the reduced visibility and we did too. Even though we were stopped, the rain being pushed along the pavement towards us caused the eerie feeling of still being in motion. Then we came to a tunnel and thought there would be a small reprieve from the onslaught. Instead, the rain had accumulated into a foot-deep river and was coming towards traffic at the opening of the tunnel. Three lanes of cars now were trying to merge with the other three lanes of traffic in an attempt to get out of the way. It was very chaotic and I am glad I was not driving.
We finally got to the consignee, managed to back into that tiny space between two other trucks amidst the comings and goings of the other trucks, got wet, got unloaded and were really ready to call it a day. Dallia dropped me off outside the terminal saying that if she drove her truck onto the property she would have to take it through the safety lane and possibly get red-tagged because actually the fuel gauge was acting up again like it was the time we were low on coolant. So, OK. She helped me bring my stuff (where did I get all this stuff?) to the guard shack and went on her way saying she would call me Monday.
The guard was pissed. First, he thought it deplorable that she just dropped me there as that was NOT what a trainer was supposed to do and it was NOT Werner policy. He was writing a report about her as we spoke. I agreed but then I knew all the problems she had had up until this point and could better understand her actions. Plus, I did not want to have to wait for another trainer as females, smoking or otherwise, were hard to come by. He told me that he had nothing to do with the training dept and so, could not help me (except write that report) get transportation, etc. He pointed out the direction to the driver's lounge…way over there, assuming I needed to use the phone on the wall in there. Where ever did I get 50 pounds of stuff?! So I went over there, not really thinking clearly at this point, not realizing that I could have just stood there and called my SDM on my cell phone (which was dying) and saved myself the trip. The SDM said that he did not know what the van schedule was, I would need to find shop personnel for that but that my motel room was secured for me, hurrah.
Shop personnel, huh? Oh where, oh where, could shop personnel be? Hello? Boy is this stuff heavy and expensive so I dare not leave it anywhere to freely and lightly walk around. Every step is becoming agony. "Oh, hello, I'm supposed to ask you about the van service here?" "Oh, the foreman?" So I go looking for the foreman, the man who knows. I open a door, whoosh, out comes blessedly cold air at me. Yoohoo! No one. Geez. Where could the foreman be? I open the service window (cold air, ya know) and stand there bringing my internal temperature down to 'not sweating so much'. I call my SDM back and ask him to please call the shop and scare up someone who can help me. I hear the phone ringing and the "unable to help you" person comes to answer the phone. Geez, am I tired! But lo, and behold, he finds the foreman!
Mr Foreman does not know, offhand, what the van schedule is. He says I need to call the motel to get that info. I tell him I need the number. He gives it to me, I call and no one answers the phone. Great! Luckily I notice the schedule behind him on the wall and he tells me the next van to come along is at 6:30. It is 3:30 now. My phone is dying, I'm dying…my husband says to get a cab. So I ask Mr Foreman if I can borrow his yellow pages. He can't find the book with numbers…geez. But he says he'll look a cab company up on the computer…my hero. I call and they say they don't service this address…but, of course! My hero looks up another address; I call, arrange for a cab and head out to the oven where the guard shack is sitting and where I am now sitting so I don't miss my cab.
An hour later I am wondering where my cab is. Did I mention my phone is dying and the only way I can charge it up is with my car phone charger? I call the company back to check on the status of my cab and find out they haven't even dispatched the order yet…geez. I'm too tired to be mad. Did I mention that I haven't slept since 1 or 3 am, not sure which cuz of the time zones? The dispatcher says he'll get right on that. 40 minutes later I call to get the status of my cab again. Oh, he's fifteen minutes away. 20 minutes later I get a call from the cabbie wanting to know where I am located, like I know. So I hand my phone to Mr Guard and ask him to inform Mr Cabbie of our location. Mr Guard says I should just wait another 45 minutes and take the van for free. I wait another five minutes, drum up the required energy to be spiteful and cancel Mr Cabbie. Oh, and Mr Guard informs me I have to catch the van…way over there.
I finally make it to the motel about 6:45 and found out that the reason no one answered the phone is because the phone and electricity were knocked out by the storm. Well, I say, I don't really care because I am just going to drop dead on the bed and I don't need any electricity for that. And that is what I did.
My plans before I arrived in sunny/stormy Arizona were to rent a car and head up to Sedona because my dad and step-mom are enamored of the place and I could see why when I got there. And, of course, the renting of the car did not go smoothly. I got up around four, took a shower (half way through I realized I didn't remember seeing any bath towels hanging around) and called good ol' Enterprise and killed my computer. Putting panic on hold for a moment to get the arrangements with Enterprise handled, I discovered that they were closed on Monday, Labor Day, so I would need to keep the car one more day than I needed it. But they would pick it up the next day in the motel parking lot and get the keys from the front desk. How nice. I was told to call back tomorrow at nine when they opened for business. My computer was still dead. I had killed it by blocking the air vent and overheating it. Now I was really lonely…no transpo, no 'puter, and my phone was dying, still. So I called my honey and asked him to call me on the phone in the room and gave him the number…and waited. I called him back, wellllll? No one answered the phone he said. Correctamundo the front desk said. We have no phone or internet service but Mr Verizon tech is working on it….geez. Later, I called him and told him that I now had a room phone and he could call me on it. I waited, then called him back and he said it doesn't work. I told him the number again and it turns out he had transposed a coupla numbers. He said he'd call again. He called on my cell and said it's that it's a fax number. No, I said, the fax number is on the phone and nowhere near the same. So I called the front desk and it turns out two of the numbers are transposed on the phone…geez.
9:00am I call Enterprise. I say I would like to rent a car and Mr Customer Relations Guy asks me what my reservation number is. I say I haven't one. Hmmm. I say I need to be picked up and he says, "Sure, I'll have someone come by later this afternoon to get you." NO! I shouted at him. No, that won't work. I was already told that I need to pay for an extra day that I don't need the car and now you are telling me that I can't get the car on the day I need it, no that won't work…geez.
So I called the main number to ask if there are other Enterprise locations close to me and she rattles off three. Savvy gal that I am, the first number that I call I only ask their location and my assumption is correct; I just spoke with them. I call the second location and they are all sold out. I call the third and I get to leave a voice message. No, this won't work at all…geez.
Avis to the rescue a mere couple of hours later and ten dollars more per day but I now am mobile. But before I go north I need to take my computer to the Best Buy Hospital where surely they will be able to revive my poor 'puter in a timely manner and for not so much money. Now, savvy gal that I am, I decide to get rid of some of the extra poundage that I have stowed away in the computer bag that is adding stress to my neck muscles and I dump the heavy books and opt not to take the charger. Why do I need to carry that around for; they are going to keep my computer and they have got to have chargers at the store…don't they? No, they don't…geez. But in all fairness to Dr Best Buy who at first was telling me that it was most likely the processor that overheated and that he would ship my computer to the manufacturer and that they would not be able to "prove" that I had killed my computer by setting something in front of the air vent and that then it should be covered under the manufacturer's warranty. Dr Best Buy's smile was killer but I said, NO, that won't work! I won't be here to pick it up and I must have looked pitiful cuz then Mr Killer Smile told me that my processor should be intelligent enough to turn itself off before death could ensue, that I should take my computer back to my room, take out the battery, plug it in and turn it on. I did just that and you should have seen my Killer Smile. Well, then I discovered that I had completely discharged the battery so I wasted a bit more time charging the battery a little and that was when I decided I needed to detour to WalMart to get an inverter. One inverter purchase later I was on my way up the hill and things was looking good!
I actually had a nice time; about time, too cuz things wasn't gonna stay that way, no way. Anyway, somewhere in this story my hubby figured out that he was gonna be in the next town down and that when I got done shopping and having myself a ball I could just shoot on down there…350 miles down there. No prob, hun. Besides, I did miss him. It was funny cuz I got into town 10 minutes after he did. What timing, eh? Anyway, I left the next night and got back to my room at four in the morn. I slept.
Got up that morning around 10 or so to my husband saying, "She hasn't called, has she?" Damn, he was right, but I told him I would have been highly stressed thinking that she would call, ready to roll, and that I would be not so ready to roll. So I called Dallia and she told me we should be headed out in the morning and that I should be at the terminal by 10am. Insight from husband, "You're not going anywhere today, are you?" Damn, he was right again! But I would be OK because I had a car, a phone, and Internet access. What else could a girl need 'cept for her huney.
Time to look up a health food store and get some good grub, "tired of Denny's!" Found a nice salad at Sprouts and hey, looky there, Bookman's is next door. I can't believe I walked in there and came out with a $20 book, not some piddly assed three dollar paperbook. No, I had to find a medical hard back that just called to me entitled "The Hidden Story of Cancer". Oh, well, I was set now. Now I had a car, a phone, Internet access and a book to read. Hallelujah! The rest of the night? No problemo. Not even the discovery that I had no juice in any of the four outlets in the bathroom could faze me now.
Tuesday is upon me. It is 8am and time to return the car. I called the desk to find out when the van would be coming by. I was figuring every hour on the hour so I simply asked to confirm that thought and Ms La Quinta told me that the van would be here at 10am…geez. So I left a message on Dallia's phone telling her that I would be arriving at the terminal a little after 10, was that OK, otherwise I would take a taxi to get there by ten. Dallia returned my call when I was getting a ride back to my room and she told me don't worry cuz we don't have to leave until four so I had plenty of time…and no car. But I was all set with my toys so not to worry. I called the front desk to find out what time I needed to take the van to get to the terminal by four. Ms La Quinta told me I should be catching the one o'clock van. Ya gotta be kidding! But I got my toys, remember. So I get to the terminal with plenty of time to spare, just like she said, and forty five minutes later Dallia is calling me and asking if I've already checked out of the motel. "Why yes, I did." Well, in typical fashion, plans have changed and we are now leaving tomorrow. She'll pick me up at the motel room by eight. Well, that should simplify things, eh? But for now, I have to get back to the motel. Voila, savvy gal that I am, I have written down the number to an 85 cents a mile cab service, who can beat that? Sorry, but we don't service this address. Sound familiar? Looking around for the yellow pages in an attempt to find another cab service but not being able to find the book of numbers (sound familiar?) it just so happens, if I think real hard, I find I can remember the phone number to the cab service that delivered such crappy service to me. So I call 200-2000 (hard number to remember, huh?). We'll be right out they tell me. Knowing full well that I should just stay in that air conditioned room for an hour I head out to the guard shack once again and this time it only takes one phone call to check on the status of my cabbie and one hour to get my $20 ride to the motel. In transit I realize that I don't have a motel room, that I need to call my SDM to make arrangements to get one. Relief! That only took 15 minutes on my again-dying cell phone.
I grab my gear and head on into the lobby. I immediately notice a twin of my phone lying on the counter in front of a man looking distinctly like the owner of that phone standing at the counter and, bold gal that I am I say, "Excuse me, but if I give you $2 could I please borrow your phone charger to charge my phone for half an hour. I only have a phone charger for the car and no car". Gentleman that he turned out to be he says, "Hold on to your money. You may borrow the phone charger if you'll only agree to return it." Simple enough, you're on. Then, because it turns out that my room is right next to his, he grabs my gear and takes it to "my" room. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I was sharing a room? Well, I wasn't about to just walk in but then, I had a key. So I knocked, waited a sec, probably should have respectfully waited two, slid my key in and started to open the door when a pretty big gal opened it some more and said, "Yes?" I said, "Hi, I'm your room-mate". She replied, "No, you're not, I'm a qualified driver." I hope the extremely sarcastic response zinging around my brain did not shoot out of my mouth cuz I can't really remember. Did I mention she was a big gal; not fat but more the type that had kicked some ass in the past. That response in my head was, "And that means what to me?" See how utterly rude that would have seemed? But I think I actually said, "Oh." Because she ushered me in and offered to handle the problem. After awhile she told me that Ms La Quinta was going to put me in another room and then, noticing how I was starting to resemble a beast of burden, grabbed my gear and took it to the lobby for me. That was awfully nice of her. Savvy gal that I am, I kept my mouth shut for once and look what it got me.
But savvy can only go so far and when I inquired about Mexican food I claimed that I could walk the distance, which I did. It was the mile back that did it, I think, and I ended up so worn out by the time I got back to my room that I can't believe I was able to type this. I guess its because I have been wanting to complain ever since Thursday. I believe, after all this, that if Joe were not telling me of his experience I think I would have gone back to nursing by now. I have mustered up an abundance of patience so far along with a laid-back attitude and plenty of positive thinking. I guess having my toys helps. Ya think? I'm looking at 11:30 so I think I'll turn in and see what tomorrow brings. Should be interesting…
PS Happy Birthday, Alizea 8/31/08
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