Day# 11 - Week ii - 2010

When being late pays off

We were late to return the car to MIA's Dollar Rent a Car agency by 1:25 min. They charged us 44$ for a day rental and 2 x 8$ for every hour we were late (2 hours rounding up). Why? Because Dollar Rent A Car is to MIA what downtown Beirut is to BEY - what Wall Street is to Central Park - what Navy Pier is to Lincoln Park. NOT CLOSE!

Why were we late though? Because we were filling the GMC up up to 7/8th - like we got it!
Why didn't fill it up earlier? Because I had to come by the hotel again and pick up a belt I'd forgotten in the hotel room.
Why didn't we pick it up sooner? Because we were having lunch on ocean drive, in one of Google's "best pork sandwiches in Miami".

That place is queer as folk. And I mean it. The pink beetle you see in the picture does exist! We sat outside until a gay waiter came to take our order in the slowest manner to serve us after 35 minutes. A sleazy pork sandwich and a sleazier bucket of buffalo shrimps. Weird combination. And the sweet fried potatoes he suggested were soggy and mushy as... meh. You get my drift.

In any case, after we got to Terminal E in MIA and realized we had missed our plane by being pushed off the confirmation list for that flight, I begged an attendant to put us on a different flight for no charge. My girlfriend intelligently suggested we try a direct flight. After a gazillion button were pressed on her 1970 keyboard (sitting next to the oldest printer in computer hardware history), she said you're good to go for the next direct flight to CHI.

Little did she know that her late flight that was supposed to take us to DC to connect with another to CHI was no good for us. Since that flight was late, we would already miss our connection in DC. So the direct flight was our only hope. 5 hours later, we were in CHI ahead of the original schedule had we taken a connection flight thru DC!