2. Harvey the RV
On the day that we flew from the East Coast of the USA to the West Coast,
we spent the night in a hotel close to San Francisco airport. Mostly this was
because we flew in too late in the day to pick up our 'Tin Can' from the rental
company. However it also gave us a chance to recover from our second bout
of jet lag in the space of a week, something that both the vehicle’s owners and
we were pleased about prior to us hitting the road.
We had already organised the details of the rental whilst still in the UK -
including pick up and drop off times and locations; insurance; and the mileage
we intended to cover. We had even viewed photographs and floor plans of the
different Recreational Vehicles (RV) available and chosen the smallest one,
which still seemed fairly big at 19 foot. Most of these plans had been made in
cyberspace via one of the company’s agents. However, where some of the
details were not available on the company's website, or we needed
information more quickly, we resorted to telephoning the USA. This was a
very novel and exciting experience for us and the calls were always started
with the phrase: 'I am calling from England, so I cannot stay on long'.
What made these calls really special was trying to avoid laughing while
listening to the agent, who we nicknamed Arnie because he sounded like
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since we were calling California, we began to
wonder if this was a little moonlighting by the new Governor to help the state
economy. Every time that he had to break off the conversation to search out
some information he would even remark 'I'll be back.'