I have had a lot of experience of hire cars, have made a few mistakes and heard of many more that have ruined people’s holidays – particularly climbing trips. I have learnt by personal experience that having a puncture and not getting the tyre mended can be expensive and that someone breaking into your car by smashing a window does not count as theft.
Kate posing next to a hotel car
You have to pay for the window and it is expensive. I made a howler in Los Angeles when I could not get the car out of the parking lot as I had not taken my foot of the brake – it was an automatic and I had not driven one before. Today I made another howler and I hope that it is only pride that I have lost. The Americans like to regulate everything and car parks are no exception. I have a particular style of parking and I am proud of it, my method is take as little time and effort as possible, no careful manoeuvres for me to get as close as possible I drive in, stop the car and get out. Sometimes people say I dump the car rather than park it. The Americans have put a stop to that by placing white lumps of concrete at the end of each parking bay so the lazy people with the gas guzzling tank type of off road vehicles where the front is too far away for them to gauge where their wheels are can drive up slowly to they hit the white lump of concrete. This does not suit either my preferred method of parking or as this example shows my preferred method of leaving a car park – quickest and shortest method out. I drove straight out of my parking bay as the one in front was empty and was in a direct line to the exit. The mistake here was to forget about that lump of white concrete. There was a grating noise as the bottom of the car slid over the concrete. I was reassured to see when I looked at the concrete that I was not the first. I was not reassured when Lynne announced that there was water coming out the bottom of the engine. Bugger.
We needed to make a trip to the supermarket down the road and it had to be now as it was Christmas eve and we needed supplies. We looked under the car when we arrived at the supermarket, water was still coming out and I felt depressed. When we left the supermarket an alarm was sounding in the car and a brake warning message was flashing red.
I ignored the warnings and drove the couple of miles home and spent the next hour making phone calls and worrying. The phone calls took a long time as the pay phone was free for the first ten minutes and then cut me off. I will not bore you with my efforts at trying to get them to deliver a replacement car to me on Christmas eve. The penny dropped when I spoke to a young lady who suggested to me that I had probably pressed the lever next to the one that opens the boot, this is a kind of handbrake and that was setting off the alarm and the water out that was coming out close to the radiator was water from the air conditioning. It is pretty humid in Florida. Feeling suitably incapable but pleased I started to be on holiday.