6:50 p.m. - Sunday, May. 04, 2003
Ms Leslie Buys a car
I�m home!
I can�t believe how well this all worked out!
I flew from Gulfport to Pittsburgh with no real problems. As a veteran of two recent trips to S.E. Asia, the few hours flight time on this trip were a piece of rice cake. I was nervous about the car though. The closer I got to P�Burgh, the sicker I felt for putting myself into this situation. I had a certified check for $5800.00 in my handbag. I was about to meet a guy at the airport, eyeball my car for ten minutes and then hand over permanently, irretrievably and non-refundably that check. Then I was going to drive an unknown car about 1200 miles to Mississippi, trusting that it would run all the way home.
I missed my contact at the airport. I had asked him to hold a sign with my name on it, but he apparently didn�t feel the need. His bad. He thought he was looking for a guy. I thought I was looking for a sign with my name on it. Neither of us found what we were looking for. I finally ended up, after wandering Pittsburgh International Airport for the better part of an hour, teaching myself how to use the pay phones to call his office. Don�t laugh. Pay phones aren�t the same as they used to be. Once I found a card that would work for me, I called and asked them to contact him on his cell phone, tell him he was looking for a woman in tan pants and white blouse and tell him where I was waiting. A few minutes later, he appeared out of the crowd.
My inspection took all of ten minutes and consisted of a walkaround, a thoughtful look under the chassis, and a quick tuning of the radio.
Sold.
In no time, I was standing by a car with no name in the short term parking lot of the airport, wondering how I was going to drive this boat of a Lincoln out of there, and which way I would go to find an exit anyway. I suddenly had a hard time swallowing. I was dry and thirsty. I was also very, very lonely.
I took almost forever adjusting the seats and the mirrors. I turned the radio off, deciding I didn�t need the distraction just then. I fiddled with the air conditioning, only to learn that it didn�t need my help. It was going to make the car 68 degrees inside no matter how much I fiddled with it. That�s what it was born to do. Finally, just this side of forever, I ran out of things to do except to put it in reverse and back out of the parking space.
I�m not good in big cities. I�m not even good in small ones. Ann can tell you. I get lost. I get flustered. I go in the outs and out the ins. One way arrows mean nothing to me. I sweat and tremble at the same time, and I become incapable of following the simplest directions. I had prepared myself by printing driving directions on Mapquest, but each time I looked away from the paper, I forgot what I had just read. As near as I could tell, I was to follow the signs to �Rental Returns� which, instead of allowing me to return a rental I didn�t have, would apparently lead me out of the airport environment. I finally decided that if I could find my way out of there, I�d just follow any road that claimed to be heading east, since my rendezvous with Carol and Jessy was to take place at a McDonalds just east of Pittsburgh on US highway 22. Surely if I just went east enough, I was bound to run into it, no?
GGGBOF, was I thirsty!
(Next� Finding Ronald McDonald. And Carol and Jessy)
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