Since I got more than one request on this, I took a picture of my rental car. Here it is. It’s a pretty nice, new, Pontiac Grand Am that sports a turning circle of a medium-sized truck, but hey, it’s got all the niceties, like A/C, a good stereo, cruise control, automated everything, so why should I complain?
Actually, there’s more about this car, another nice and unexpected story:
Out of total stupidity, I managed to lock myself out of the car. Let me explain: I got one set of keys from the rental agency, so I should better not lock them in the passenger compartment. So far, so good – I didn’t do that.
What I did, however, was to load some stuff into the trunk of the car, and because I needed both hands, I quickly put the keys inside the trunk. Next thing, I slammed the trunk shut, and about half a second later, I realized that I had just effectively locked myself out, since the trunk will only open with a key. Of course, my rental documents and everything were in the trunk, too. While this happened about 40km from where I am staying, it fortunately didn’t happen in the rain forest, but rather in the nice little town of Ucluelet [you-clue-let].
I went to the art gallery that was the closest shop around,
and the nice lady working there was extremely helpful. With a little bit of prodding on my side, I convinced her to use the internet to find the hotline number of my rental agency, and she even called for me. A short while later, I had a customer care representative on the phone, who verified my identity with some tricky questions.
Next, the representative had to do some serious research and figure out where the next affiliate that could help me would be. After about three fantastic muzak on-hold songs, I was transferred to a towing company in Tofino, who’d send out someone to help me.
Fourty-five minutes later, this surfer guy turns up in a totally battered and rusty VW Golf I and brings his little toolkit. While I talk a bit with him about his Golf, he fiddles around with my passenger door, then, about 2 minutes later, he packs up his stuff and says “There you go!”. Yes, it is that easy to open up a car, if you know what you’re doing.
Actually, we then spent more than 10 minutes to locate the
trunk opener inside the passenger compartment, so that was actually the toughest part. But then, I was the happiest man on earth again,with my keys in hand.
So after all, it was not too bad, my visions of staying a night in Ucluelet dressed in T-shirt and jeans did not become reality. Phew!
