Whoever said Mondays are rotten? For too long I’ve said Mondays are the best day of the week because they offer a new opportunity to make somebody else’s life miserable. There is nothing like the start of the week to get things going.
I’ve been working on my piles of unanswered correspondence and finally I can see I’m making a dent in the last pile, when the phone starts ringing and several more calls come in as I was getting everything ready for my trip to St. Louis and then Orlando.
I had an appointment to get my car serviced at the dealer in town, which is about 50 miles from home, but since my flight was at 3 p.m. I thought I had plenty of time to get everything ready for the trip, except for the many phone calls I was getting where everyone needed some document immediately. Between getting the suitcases in the car and the phone calls, I spent most of the morning getting nothing done.
Finally started on my way to the dealer; the county trucks have been at work clearing roads, making it better but they didn’t count on the amount of rain and snow pouring down on us, and now it’s a mess on the gravel roads. There are ruts on the road, the mud is sticking to the bottom of my car and if I go fast, I know I’ll end up in the ditch.
When I finally get to town, signing all kinds of forms before they agree to work on my car, I let him know there seems to be a crack on the windshield and there was a vibration in the front. He promised to get everything done before I returned. The service manager then tells me we need to get the loaner car at the hospital where another person has borrowed it. No problem, as it is on the way to the airport. We then spend the next 20 minutes re-arranging my suitcases into her car, knowing we will have to re-arrange again once we find the loaner car.
This is the time before GPS is available to the general public; we depend on paper maps to find our way around and I know I’m lost because I don’t know how to get to the main highway from where I picked up the loaner car, and I lost another 20 minutes looking for the right road.
Found the airport and after loading up the luggage and running inside, the clerk tells me my bags are in route to Orlando. Wait, I’m stopping in St. Louis first for two days and then to Orlando. She makes the correct changes and away we go to St. Louis.
Arrived in St. Louis to find the luggage did not arrive with me; the luggage was on the way to Orlando. The St. Louis rep had called to let me know a tornado had touched down by her house and she cancelled all appointments. This created another call to the rep in Orlando, change the flight to accommodate my new itinerary and all is well in Florida.
After a week in sunny Florida, I returned to Kansas City late at night, picked up my car which was parked outside of the dealer’s to find a note with the bill which said: “there was no crack on the windshield, there was a thick hair glued on the inside of the glass which was removed with a little soap and water and the vibration was caused by the high pressure on the front tires. We corrected the pressure and the car is doing fine. Embarrassed? You bet, and I still had to pay the repair bill.