Vehemently Vitriolic

The annual pilgrimage down to San Francisco. Every year my wife and I head on down to see her great aunt (or “The Trust Fund” as my father in-law likes to say) at “the home”. Its always an entertaining trip, fraught with peril, surprises, tears….maybe even a life lesson or two. Yes, its like one large after school special.

Last year when we went, we drove down to Seattle and got on Southwest (which was an interesting trip seeing as we had never flown Southwest before and hence were not aware of the cattle-call like system they have apparently perfected, nor the much-coveted “A” ticket, which, from what I saw when we were given such manna from heaven, there have been minor wars over). On the way home, Southwest lost our luggage. Not a big deal…we had planned on staying the night in Seattle anyway. The lady was very apologetic, and must have figured we were Canadians when we offered to come pick oit up from the airport tomorrow morning on our way home. For this, we got a $100 gift certificate. It was due to expire this year, so we thought well, we may as well use it up.

Off we went down to the border. My wife and rarely get more than a glance when we head across the border. This is becuase my wife has figured out that the border gaurds asking the questions tend to be on the drivers-side. And I have a very bad tendency to say exceedingly stupid things when I talk to said guards, such as the following discourse that took place a number of years ago on one of our first trips across the border:

Border guard: “Do you have any guns, sir?”
Me: “No, why do I need one? I’ve heard America is kinda rough…..”
Guard: “Pull over there sir.”
Me: “Crap”

This trip through was un-eventful except for the guard losing it on me for saying we were going down to see “her great-aunt”.
“Who is she?” he asked as I pointed to the passenger beside me in the tiny small little car.
“She your wife? Then shes YOUR aunt to! You going to see family, right son?”
“Um, yes?”
“Then say family dammit.”
I didnt have the heart to tell him we were in fact godless heathens not married but for the word of Canadian law.

Our plan was to stay in a hotel for the night. You essentially buy the room and some extra for a parking space. We had done this before and stayed at the Days Inn. This time, however, we had to make do with a hotel that went by the Skyway Inn.

Off we went to the hotel. We met with the wonderfully perky desk clerk. It was our mistake, but we attempted to talk with her while she was on the phone with one of her friends. She pushed a piece of paper towards us, but my wife, ever vigilant against women 7-times her size, waited until her call was done and she could get on with the unpleasant task of dealing with customers.

The last time we had parked, the hotel simply made us move our car into their “secured” lot. This time, however, she wanted our keys.

My wife said this was essentially valet, paying someone to shuffle your vehicle around with a zillion others like some maniacal version of that game where only one piece of a puzzle moves at any given time. The difference here, though, was that, in my albeit somewhat limited knowledge of valet parking (okay, I’m not even remotely rich enough to ever have used valet. My tax bracket makes me use places where I’m happy if employees only urinate on my doors) is that they have some sort of uniform. Maybe a vest, a hat, a nametag, something. If the analogy here was to be believed, the valet uniform at the Skyway Inn was eyebrows from Sharpie, teeth from the NHL and girth that could block the sun from the earth should a pen or other errant writing instrument go off the counter causing her to bend over to chase down.

We handed over our keys and trouped off to our room, which Sharpie was nice to point out was behind us in the “concrete building”. US laws differ from ours, which is why I was shocked to find out there was, at most, a square foot of concrete in the ENTIRE building. A sleepless night ensued as we listened to every single noise, and listened to the heard of wildebeasts someone smuggled in grazing majestically in the room above us. Numerous times throughout the night the herd got spooked and stampeded causing the structural integrity of the “concrete” building to become compromised.

The next day we went back to the front desk to get the shuttle to the airport. Sharpie had been replaced so no witty reparte awaited us to start our day.