The initial few days of the trip were less than stellar, this being before we've even turned a playing card. The journey out from the UK was a tad horriffic. Firstly the delays aforementioned in the earlier post pushed the arrival time in America right back. To compound this, once on the plane there was an extremely loud and crass bunch of lads on board, on a stag party to Las Vega. Fine, stuff like this goes on, and boys will be boys, etc. However, a few of this lot were less than considerate of anyone else around them. They had sneaked on their own booze, f*** and c*** was flying out every other word, much to the dismay of a couple of people sitting nearby with very young kids. I tuned it all out for the most part, assuming that Darwinism will take care of most of them eventually. The upshot was the police were called, and a few of them were removed from the flight before we left the runway at Gatwick. Ironically what started out as a few of them being big and brave and loud ("bruv"), ended up in one of them crying his eyes out as he finally had to leave the plane. I make no judgement, but there you have it. Anyway, more importantly, this now made our departure form London even later still, and when I arrived in Nevada, I was now well over three hours later than I normally would have been, meaning....
I arrive at my rental car office at 5.03 pm, after a driving scene in a taxi cab that would have made the director of the French Connection proud. Sadly, the office closed at 5 pm, and no-one was there, meaning no rental car for me for the day, and no way to go and collect all my stuff which was in storage with a pal, and also no way for me to get to my new accommodation. The domino effect. Great.
Tomorrow came, and threw another slice of muck at me when it transpired that since my rental car wasn't picked up on my arrival the previous day, rather than simply letting me collect the next day, the brain trust at RentalCars.com had decided that cancelling my entire booking was in fact a far better idea, meaning I now had to rebook the entire rental car allocation for my trip. Of course booking it now would be about the same price or maybe cheaper, right?
Yeah, sure. Err, no,that'll be more money please Mr O'Leary.
As before, no point stressing. Fork it over, have the conversation with Virgin Atlantic later on about the delay on the flight, extra money needed for cabs etc. It's ostensibly their fault and I'll take it up with them as and when. No point letting any of that clog things up right now.
Finally I collect my rental early the next day. If I was going to be critical, I'd say for the amount of stuff that I needed to collect and transport, it's not entirely practical...however they always look after me at the office, so I'm going to find it in my heart to forgive them since so many people are creaking around Nevada driving a Chevy Aveo or a Kia Rio....