A Nightmare Come True: The Rental Delima

Once the initial shock of "holy shit our car is dead" wore off, I began to focus on the next piece of business: finding an alternate mode of transportation for our planned weekend of chasing April 9-10. Bridget and I did some quick research, and found a rental company not too far from us. We don't have many close friends, so when we don't have a vehicle, we're walking everywhere. I did a Google Maps distance/direction check to find the shortest path to the Avis rent center, which is about four miles from our place. We went online, reserved a car (for a really good price because we'd done it online), and set the pickup time for 8am Saturday morning. The lady on the phone alerted Bridget of a credit card hold which was standard policy, and their website listed said hold amount as $140. Bridget asked the woman on the other end of the line to confirm the hold amount of $140 as it was advertised on the website, which she did. So we added up the price of the car, insurance, and the $140 hold....we would have enough to rent a car for two days, maybe enough left over to eat and put gas in it. This was early April and we'd not seen much of anything; the gamble seemed well worth it.

I made my way out of our complex the next morning around 5:30am, not really knowing how long it would take me to walk the four miles through largely busy city streets. As I walked alone, through the darkened city that was still sound asleep, I imagined what the day's events might hold; would we come away with our first ever Iowa tornado? Gradually the early morning darkness yielded to morning light, as I neared the rental facility. It was around this time that I realized I had severely under-estimated my walking ability; I was arriving a full hour before pick-up time. Fortunately, I had my phone with me, so I just surfed Facebook for an hour until the doors opened.

A little over an hour later, I finally gained access inside the Avis rental center to start my transaction. The lady ran me through all the normal policies and whatnot, and I passed the credit check and all that good stuff. Then she began to tell me about the credit card hold. I cut her short and said "yeah, we saw that online last night while we were making the reservation....$140." She looked at me funny and said, "Actually sir, the hold is $200." I said "but your website says the hold is $140, and the woman my girlfriend spoke to yesterday confirmed that amount."

"I'm sorry sir, but the standard hold rate has always been $200."

"Then why does your website say $140?"

"I don't know sir, we can't check that because we don't have internet here."

So I had her add up the total amount to rent the car, plus the now $200 hold. I had plenty of money to drive away with the car....and enough left over for maybe enough gas to get us to the target. Our weekend of chasing was suddenly, unceremoniously, over. The feeling that came over me standing at that counter was one of equal parts disbelief, sadness, and rage. I walked out of the building, crumpled my reservation receipt in my hands, and threw it on the ground as I walked across their parking lot. (It should be noted that, while I'm not a whackadoo environmentalist type, I do respect the Earth as a living thing and always go out of my way to not litter). I was livid.

I started the long walk back home in a daze. My entire storm season had just been destroyed right before my eyes; if we couldn't afford a rental today, I didn't see how we could afford one every 3-4 days for the remainder of the year. Getting a new car wasn't even in the realm of possibility, and regardless of how desperate I am, I will never ask a friend to lend me their car to chase. A kind of calm began to slowly come over me, the way it always does in the first few minutes after I start processing a huge disappointment or failure in life. I've been blessed (or cursed) with an uncanny ability to cling to hope, no matter how dire the situation seems. I started to think towards the future and of the past simultaneously; I knew that somehow, someday we'd recover from this and shine once again...because I'd done it before so many times over my chase career, and life in general. During this epiphany, little bursts of the present would inject themselves into my thoughts, like little sharp pains of reality that kept screaming "you're going to miss stuff this year."

While juggling all of that in my head, a car pulled up next to me. It was two people who were lost, and they showed me the address of where they were trying to get. I actually knew the area well (despite the fact Bridget and I can't afford to go out and actually "experience" where we live), and was able to point them towards their destination. They thanked me and, as they drove away, a warm feeling of satisfaction came over me. It felt good to be able to help someone else, and do it with a smiling, helpful attitude, during a moment when I was trying to recover from a dreadful personal situation. It made me realize that yes, we were going to suffer in the short term, but we'd find some way to make things better, make things right again. I smiled a little, and continued to walk home.

About halfway back, my phone rang. It was Mickey, calling to see how I'd been. I gave him the Reader's Digest version of my morning, to which he of course offered his condolences and well-wishes. I told him "You know, it really sucks for us, but right now, there's a lot of people in the world who have it a lot worse than we do. My missing out on some chases isn't shit compared to what Japan's dealing with right now." Again, in that moment, I began to see light at the end of the tunnel, and pulled myself out of the pity party I'd been throwing since I left Avis. Nope, this wasn't that bad a deal when I took a good look around.

I got home, and Bridget met me at the gate with a look of concern. "What happened?" she asked...."where's the car?" I explained everything to her, and she took it even better than I did. She's always been great at dealing with disappointments, probably because she's been dealt more than her fair share in her life, and the three years she's spent with me have certainly added to that total. We resolved to forget that weekend, go to the shrimp boil we'd been invited to, and just eat shrimp, drink beer, and enjoy a weekend with friends. We'd figure out our chasing problem on Monday.

We had a great time at the party, filling ourselves to the gills with delicious, spicy boiled shrimp and ice cold beer. The day was going well, but eventually afternoon turned into evening, and I slowly gravitated from the back patio into the game room, and onto the computer. I started pulling up live streams from chasers who were out where we should've been, and sat there and watched as Ben Prusia streamed the development of the Mapleton, IA tornado. I called Bridget and Joe (the host) inside to show them. Those familiar little reality pains started jabbing again, as we watched a large barrel tornado develop. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.