A Thousand Times No

Several weeks ago, I used Orbitz to reserve a rental car for use this past Sunday, planning to visit friends who live about 30 miles away to take in the Oscars with them and with another mutual friend from the city. When booking the reservation, I opted for a small car with a pickup location that was a reasonable walk from my city home. Everything was simple and straightforward, just as it had always been every time I rented a car through Orbitz.

On Sunday morning, when I arrived at the address indicated in the confirmation email, there was no car rental lot to be seen for blocks in any direction. I circled about on foot for a while, and spoke with the attendant in a nearby private parking garage. “Nope, no rental car lots anywhere around here,” he said, shaking his head. What the…?

Already running late, I called Orbitz. Apparently, there was fine print at the bottom of my confirmation: I was supposed to call for a pick-up from the mystery street corner in order to be transported to an undisclosed location. Oddly, instructions for performing the secret handshake when I arrived were not included. (”Wait, is this car rental lot like that mythical kingdom that appears through the mist only once every number of years?” my friend asked when I called her to report my wheel woes.)

Meanwhile, the weather forecast for the day continued to sound nasty: The dreaded “wintry mix” of snow, ice, and sleet that had paralyzed portions of Pennsylvania’s interstate highway system less than two weeks earlier. (Note: This is not to be confused with the “frothy mix” that had frozen out huge swaths of the state’s electorate for twelve years.) Miles away from my actual rental car, with time running down before a fixed appointment, I canceled the rental reservation and booked a car share Prius just for the afternoon, opting out of sledding down the road in a mystery subcompact after the midnight hour.

I was sorry to miss the group-ogle (groogle?) of Hollywood’s big night, and the chance to see my friends’ bouncing baby boy, but it simply didn’t seem to be in the car(d)s. Here’s hoping we won’t need to wait another hundred years for the chance to get together.