In which I make an unexpected visit to the University of Connecticut
So I went to the Apple Reps meeting in Boston. I woke up at 7 am and made it to the parking garage in the Prudential Center 2 hours later with no hitches. The meeting was actually pretty fun considering it was a hoity-toity corporate kind of thing. Afterwards the higher education manager guy, Dave, took many of us out for a fairly expensive dinner at a nice restaurant a few blocks away. I walked back to the parking garage in the rain feeling pretty good, with Kyle, one of the UConn reps, in tow. It was raining fairly substantially. Despite this, we made it out of downtown Boston without even being honked out and began rolling down the Mass Pike back to Connecticut. It was dark and still raining.
Somewhere between exit 11A and exit 11, my windshield wipers failed. Windshield wipers are a pretty silly contraption when you think about it. They're very simple mechanically and you take them for granted. But mine failed in the driving rain and I could see nothing, so I pulled over. I called Molly and complained for a while. Then I called AAA. They could not tow me because they are not allowed on the Mass Pike. They called the state police, who showed up and prompty called AAA. You get the idea.
Eventually, over a hour later, a tow truck showed up clearly very perplexed as to why a seemingly intact car needed towing. He asked us awkward questions along the way, seeming very confused as to how a guy from Rhode Island and a guy from Maine just knew each other.
Then he dropped us off in a desolate park and ride lot near exit 11 in Worcester.
So I was sitting in a parking lot on the Mass Pike, in the rain, with a perfectly good car that I couldn't drive, $102.50 poorer after being positively gouged by the towing company.
After both of us called our friends at our respective schools repeatedly, tt was eventually arranged that Kyle's girlfriend, Amy, would drive us to UConn, and then Molly and Charlie would schlep to UConn to take me back to Wesleyan. Amy was extremely annoyed by the proposition and kept making logistically unfeasible suggestions, like how we should start driving and meet her halfway (think for a second about meeting someone halfway on an interstate. Also about how if we could drive at all we wouldn't need to be picked up.) When she showed up she berated me for a while about how the rain wasn't that bad and encouraged me to get in the car and follow her tail lights as far as I-84. That did not happen.
Then, as if to prove a point, she drove most of the way down the Mass Pike without her wipers on. Until Kyle began to be sort of freaked out (you could not see anything) and encouraged her to turn them on. I mean, I was freaked out the whole time until she did. It reminded me of the scene in Fight Club where Tyler takes his hand off the wheel and Jack freaks out and tells him to steer the damn car and Tyler responds that he needs to just. let. go. Except that was a movie, and this was real life.
It was now about 11 pm, and we left Boston at 6:30 or so. I waited in Kyle's dorm for about 20 minutes until Molly and Charlie, thank goodness, showed up.
And this is how my car came to be left in a deserted parking lot in Worcester.
I wonder if my Apple expense account covers inconvenience and emotional distress.