Arrival - a rough start.

Last Monday was the day I moved out of my apartment. I cleaned my room and bathroom with a hand cloth and a dish sponge, vacuumed the carpet and threw away the trash. A tube of mayonnaise and ketchup, some strawberry jam and a box of Rice Crispy's was all that was left of food items in the cupboard. I bagged them in Ralph's supermarket plastic and decided to do the same with my bathroom paraphernalia. I struggled with fitting all my clothes into a black square suit case but managed to close the lid by using my weight and the force of my butt. I left the keys to the apartment on the counter top in the kitchen, along with a goodbye note to my (ex)roommate who had already moved out a few days ago. Closing that front door felt like closing another chapter in my life.

That night, Mom and Ton were expected to fly in at LAX at 8:40 PM. As usual, I arrived waaaay to early and since I had all of my belongings stuffed in the car I decided to try to check in early at the El Segundo Travelodge before picking them up. I said 'try to check in' , because I didn't make the reservation for the room, my Mom did. But hey, they can probably look up her name in the system, I would check them in ,get the keys to the room, pick them up, get to our new car at the rental car place, and open the door to the room with a big 'Welcome home'!
Turned out they couldn't find my Mom's name in the system. So as far as they were concerned, there was no reservation. I ended up booking a room for us for one night, hoping Mom would have a confirmation number so they could look it up in the Travelodge data base.

Mom and Ton were already standing at the baggage claim when I entered the arrival hall. They both looked tired after 15 hours of flying and 25 hours of traveling from Brussels. We hopped into my black Chevy and zipped over to the Alamo Car rental place where I had made a reservation for a mid-size car. Cost: 1250 dollars ! I had to use my credit card because Mom's credit limit for this month was already maxed out. It was an awkward situation for the both of us but I managed to keep my cool. The moment we saw the car that we were supposed to drive out of the lot, we knew this car was just too big. It had 7 passenger seats.. mid-size supposedly means 'Suburban Van'.

After some discussion we decided to go back and downsize the car.. which of course was not allowed by the car rental company. In fact, I had to cancel this reservation, make a new one by making a personal phone call to the central call center of Alamo to make a reservation at the place I WAS STANDING AT, then go through the whole process again of filling out driver's license numbers and swiping the credit card again. The latter seemed not to work for the new car. Of course, the bank had an automatic safety stop on large charges to my credit card. So there we were, with no chargeable credit card, all of their suitcases, 10 miles from our hotel at 1 hour before midnight. Finally, the customer service person decided to rent us a car for three days, so that the block on my credit card would no longer be in effect when we return on Thursday to book a new car for the remainder of our trip. As I took out my Debit WaMu Card, Mom saw the 'Mastercard' logo on my credit card, and suddenly remembered having a card from her business that has the same logo. Now, I know that this means that this card should work as a credit card and so we managed to pay for the car for the next couple of days with her Mastercard.

Of course, that still leaves my Mom with an original credit card that has reached it's limit for this month. We hope it will be solved by the first of May, so we can pay for the remainder of the renting period with her credit card this Thursday..

When we finally got to the hotel later that night and showed the front desk person the confirmation number, they still couldn't find the reservation that my Mom had made. Of course, the room was already paid for online through Hotels.com. So I had to call the 1-800 customer service number for Hotels.com to ask them to send a fax to the front desk that would confirm our reservation and payment for the room. That took them about half an hour. Meanwhile, at almost 1 in the morning, we headed out for food and ended up going through the drive thru at MC'D for a Big Mac.

When we got back, the fax had gotten through and we were officially assigned to our room.

I didn't sleep much. Ton was snoring all night. I think I slept like 3 hours. Thank God our second day is a relaxed day. Maybe I even get to take a nap on the beach.

Anyways, Mom and Ton, Welcome to the USA !