Sadly we did not get to meet Arnie and instead completed the details
and picked up the van with another agent – Fred ‘Zak’ Isaacson. We were
collected from our hotel around midday by a young man who we took to be a
junior employee. We had to take a fairly circuitous route to the Company's
area office because another customer was being picked up too. During this
time we got to see quite a lot of San Francisco from a distance. We saw the
Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island, but what was most striking was how
the city contrasted with New York. The architecture seemed quite different, as
most of the buildings were small and white compared to the towering grey
skyscrapers in the Big Apple. There was a distinctly Spanish feel, certainly to
the buildings on the outskirts of the city, and there was also more space
between the buildings. Most of these differences are presumably due to the
city's precarious position on the San Andreas Fault.
Whilst travelling to the office we also discovered that our driver was in
fact Zak, and was in charge of the San Francisco office and only picking up
customers because of a lack of available staff. We gathered this when he
repeatedly referred to 'my vans' and 'my staff'. In fact he seemed very
possessive of the vehicles, speaking in a tone of voice where 'my babies'
could easily have been substituted for 'my vans'. We began to wonder
whether he would actually let us take the van away.
Once we arrived at the office we spent the next hour or so filling out contracts
and being shown the vans. Zak dealt with us and his other customer at the
same time because we were both hiring the same type of van. This meant
that he took very little interest in the personal details of our itineraries. This