Have you ever seen your car vanish? Now you see it, now you don’t.
I have a history of tough travel karma. My parents joked that I shouldn’t drive more than fifty miles from home because inevitably, something went wrong. My battery died. The engine overheated. The on board computer fizzled. Triple A lost a lot of money on my membership.
But for the worst trip of all, I didn’t even take my car. And STILL somehow it still managed to fail me.
In the past, I’d ridden Greyhound, but was anxious to leave those trips behind. It was worth the extra money. Things were always a bit tight for me, financially speaking…
…which was why I called Amtrak the day of my departure to reschedule my return ride to a cheaper day. When asked if I’d paid by credit card, I replied “yes”, having used my Visa-logo bank debit card for “credit card” transactions many times before. The service representative on the phone didn’t simply change my dates around and refund the difference. Instead, she refunded my account the ENTIRE amount of my previous reservation and charged me instead for the new reservation.
My card was declined. We conference-called the bank to discover why, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed: A debit card won’t receive an immediate refund. It will take several weeks to process. In the meanwhile, the scant amount that remained in my account wasn’t nearly enough to buy my trip back again. Now I was supposed to leave in a few hours and was without tickets.
We added my mom to the conference call to negotiate with Bank of America and Amtrak for some compromise that would allow me to get to Florida. But customer-no-service at both companies insisted their hands were tied. Mom offered to buy me a one-way flight out of Greensboro, but there was no guarantee of a reasonable return flight. Instead, mom graciously purchased me new Amtrak tickets via American Express.
By the end of the transaction, I was woefully unpacked. The train station was in Charlotte, an hour south of me. I now had about 50 minutes before my train left.
I drove like a bat out of hell down highway 321. Once, I pulled up behind a state trooper, but thankfully he took the next ramp. I was doing 100 miles per
hour until I reached Gastonia where I was stymied by lights. To reach the station, I needed to take I-85 into Charlotte. Once I reached the interstate, I resumed my breakneck speed.
Only to find myself in South Carolina about 20 minutes later. In my haste and confusion, I had taken 85 in the wrong direction. I used an exit to U-turn and finally made my way into Charlotte – now twenty minutes late.
I was informed that the train had already left. But if I wanted to wait, my ticket would still be good for the next train coming through – sometime the following morning. Having spent my fair share of nights in airports and bus stations, this was a poor solution. I yelled at the ticket agent that Amtrak’s customer service was the reason I was late in the first place, and now my mom had paid for a ticket I couldn’t use. He assured me that her card would not be charged if I never used the ticket, but my return ticket was still available to me.
I consulted again with mom, who advised me to give it up, and with the girlfriend who spoke similarly. But I was stubborn, and there was still the dreaded alternative:
Greyhound.
I drove several blocks over to the station, had mom buy reasonably priced tickets, and after waiting several hours I was on my way.
Unlike the Amtrak itinerary, Greyhound took all night and most of the next day to arrive in Palm Beach. The seats were cramped, the smells questionable, and sleep came only in fitful snatches.
I made it to Palm Beach, stayed with my cousin, helped him by valet parking for a golf tournament, and visited my girlfriend. At week’s end, she drove me to the Amtrak station for my return journey.
The train ride wasn’t bad except that I now had absolutely no money in my account, and very little cash on me, a scant $6. And I remembered something else:
The car’s gas tank was empty, thanks to my reckless driving and my detour across the state line. I’d never make it from Charlotte to Hickory. I hoped and prayed the $6 would buy enough gas if I drove conservatively.
I skipped lunch aboard the train, a poor choice considering I’m hypoglycemic. But my seat-mate was a charitable young lady gracious enough to buy me dinner when the time came. I thanked her profusely. She knew about the $6, but had also heard about the rest of my trip and the empty tank.
Finally I arrived back at the Amtrak station, but my car was parked at Greyhound. I walked 12 blocks to reach it, a total of 1.7 miles, hauling all of my luggage the whole way.
But eventually, exhausted and famished, but greatly relieved, I stumbled into the Greyhound parking lot to look for my car.
But the car wasn’t where I remembered parking. It was a loaner car from my parents and had Missouri tags, so I began scouring the lot to find it. After three trips around the parking lot (hauling my luggage each time so as not to be robbed with my back turned) I gave up and concluded that my car was GONE. Vanished as neatly and effectively as the object of a David Copperfield performance. I was sure it had been stolen.
I went inside to get Grehound to call the cops about my stolen car. Instead, I was informed that Greyhound did not permit overnight parking, as stated by their sign. I assure you to this day, no such sign was posted.
The day after I’d left, the car had been towed and impounded. I also learned that cars with NC tags parked overnight were generally ignored, but out-of-state tags were immediately noticed. My Missouri tag on a ’99 Stratus had stuck out like a sore thumb.
I was thunderstruck. A place devoted to TRAVEL won’t let you park your car overnight? What was I supposed to have done – paid a meter for a week in advance? Parked at the airport and walked? From my perspective, my car had just been stolen and was now being held for random by a crook with the law on his side.
It was time to call my best friend and roommate, or at least his parents, who lived in Charlotte. Surely they would give me a ride – they’d helped me with airport trips before. I probably could spend the night with them at the very least.
I took out my trusty Palm Pilot to look up their number – and found the batteries were dead. I had a calling card so I could make long distance calls from a payphone using change, but now I had no phone numbers, and precious few committed to memory. I couldn’t reach my girlfriend, I couldn’t reach my parents, and I couldn’t call my friend’s parents. Nor could I call the impound lot, but they were closed anyway.
I was now without any means of transportation, stranded, homeless, and with a grand total of $6.00 to my name. If I’d had any money, I could have bought a Greyhound ticket from Charlotte to Hickory, overpriced though it would be. If I could’ve reached my parents, I could have asked for them to buy it again.
Actually by this time it was $5 and change after having taken the city bus. Just enough money to eat breakfast the next morning. After that, my fate was anybody’s guess.
There was only one number I remembered: My roommate’s line at school, and the only reason I knew it was because it was off one-digit from mine. But I had no return number, so I had to give the number of the payphone and pray it was allowed to receive calls.
Furthermore, I wasn’t sure if my friend would be returning to campus that day (Saturday) or the next day (Sunday). He might not even be around to get my message. And he wasn’t the most diligent checker of voicemail.
But terrified of my plight, I was persistent, and he (like me) enjoyed time off and away from parents too. He did in fact return to campus Saturday night, and eventually I was able to reach him. He understood my circumstances and was willing to drive back to Charlotte to pick me up.
But he had no idea how to get to the Greyhound station nor any of the landmarks I knew. Instead he gave me a different landmark, some sort of concert hall I’d never heard of. I furiously scribbled his directions. He didn’t know the address, but he did know the street. He THOUGHT he knew the street. He could find this landmark, he said. That is, he could PROBABLY find it.
An inquiry to several Greyhound patrons yielded directions combining more travel on foot and the city bus system to reach the desired landmark. When I arrived, I met a clearly homeless man who passed the time in conversation with me. I shared with him the remainder of my granola bars (now partially crumbled) and gave him what was left of my cash after taking the bus. My roommate was on the way, but if he was unable to reach me, the $5 and change couldn’t be of much help.
As I waited, I grew more and more apprehensive. The venue behind me was closed up tight, so now I didn’t even have access to a phone. If my roommate got lost, or if he was in an accident, he’d have no way to reach me. Nor did he own a cellular, so even if I’d had a phone, I had no way to reach him.
After an interminable period, it began to drizzle. The homeless man vanished, and I reflected that it was all the more important to stay dry when you only had the clothes on your back. I hoped and prayed I wouldn’t be joining him before long. There was no place in view of the road where I could shelter from the rain.
Before long, I was drenched and shivering as well as exhausted. I cursed every Chevrolet pickup that passed without stopping for not having been my roommate.
Eventually, he arrived, and there have been few times in my life I was so happy to see anyone. We stowed my luggage in the truck bed and made our way back to Hickory. On the way, I entertained him with the rest of my story, some parts of which I was finally about to laugh about.
I was charged for a week’s worth of parking at the impound lot already, and it took several days before my parents could loan me enough money to get it out. In the end, it cost over $600 to release. My original Amtrak tickets were about $400, and the one-way Greyhound ticket had been just over $100.
The trip that had been planned over a month in advance at a manageable $400 ended up costing me well over $1,000, not to mention untold heartache, irritation, discomfort and fear. But thanks to the generosity and understanding nature of my parents and my friend, I came out all right in the end.
I have never ridden Amtrak or Greyhound since.
