7. Angela’s Adventure
As some readers requested, I posted our old missives to a blog, California Daze. Feel free to catch up with us.
Which is what my automobile had to do: Catch up with us.
I had arranged to have my car shipped out to California, to arrive a day or two before us. Shipping our car would be cheaper than renting for 3 months, but it hadn’t been picked up by the time we left. And as our Delta flight traveled from Detroit Metro to San Francisco at 560 miles per hour, our car wasn’t in California when we landed.
Alas, neither were many rental cars. It was Christmas week and the rentals had all been rented. After scurrying from website to website, we secured a Hertz minivan for slightly less than king’s ransom. Maybe a duke’s ransom.
It turns out that the car shipping business is complicated. When you arrange to have your car shipped, you are actually contracting with a broker who puts your car’s trip up for bid on something called a “load board.” Truck drivers who haul cars agree to pick up the vehicles offering the highest bids. I was assured that a commitment of $1,200 was enough to cover the broker’s fee and a bid that would satisfy a truck driver. But it wasn’t. I don’t know if there was a sudden groundswell of interest in shipping cars from Michigan to California, or if too many drivers were out with COVID, but the bid offered for my car didn’t make the cut. When I first called to find out why my car hadn’t been picked up, there were 455 cars waiting to be shipped from Michigan to California, and the next week there were 612. I was losing ground.
I own an Audi Q5 that my daughter Helen named “Angela,” after Chancellor Merkle. Angela the Audi is a proud, competent vehicle who, frankly, was a little hurt when not a single driver showed her any interest. She sulked into Mike and Wade’s garage, Mike and Wade being Ann Arbor neighbors who kindly agreed to keep her out of the snow while awaiting a pickup that didn’t come. I can only imagine her humiliation.
A week passed. Then another week. “Where is our car?” Marcia asked me. “You should have hired a student to drive it out,” chastised daughter Clara. “Show some initiative, Dad.” Finally, I called another broker and asked what was going on. He laughed. “Your bid is way too low,” he said, looking at the load board. “There is a huge mismatch between vehicles and truck drivers right now.” “What would it take to move my car up the queue?” I asked. I was told $2,000 will do the trick, and one day after increasing my bid I got a call from a driver with a Russian accent who said he was going to pick up my car that day. “I drive now. I vill be zhere in 2 hours to pick up car from neighbor Mike,” he assured me.
The driver sounded sketchy, and two days later, in the middle of the night, I started being notified every few minutes about strange credit card charges from some company called “IND TWY.” Finally, I realized that the EZ-Pass I had left in my car was triggering charges as Angela —carried on the back of a hauler driven by a sketchy Russian — traversed Indiana’s toll roads. Lesson to readers: remove the EZ pass before shipping your car.
The drop off was also problematic. A few days after the Indiana toll road charges stopped, the Russian calls as Marcia and I are finishing dinner. “I vill be zhere in 3 hours to give you car, and you vill pay me $2,000 in cash, no?” Marcia and I visited two ATMs and loaded up. Around 9 at night, the Russian calls again and tells me he has arrived, but can’t drive up the twisty Oakland roads in his truck and I am to meet him with the cash by the side of an exit ramp coming off the nearby interstate.
Marcia parks the Hertz minivan about a block from where we are supposed to meet, and I get out of the rental in the dark with $2,000 in my pocket, walking in the general direction of the ramp while looking for a car hauler parked next to a sketchy Russian. “Why was I cast in this movie?” I asked myself, as I approached something that looked like it might be the backlit silhouette of a truck.
Of course, the fact that I am typing this note suggests I survived the exchange. The sketchy Russian turned out to be a polite Serbian who unloaded Angela and turned her around so she would be facing the right way when I drove off. He apologized for the road dust as he cleaned off my car’s windshield. I could sense that Angela was happy to see me when I got in; she adjusted the driver’s seat to make me comfy and gave me a little hug.
Now, Angela accompanies Marcia and me as we explore the Bay Area. She looked a little nervous near Oakland’s Lake Merritt, with the homeless encamped under the overpasses. It was unsettling. And she felt out of place next to the beat up urban Toyotas and Subarus.
In Palo Alto, Angela is surrounded by Teslas and feels a bit, well, old and unhip. It doesn’t help that she is still wearing her Michigan snow tires; she didn’t dress for California.
Yet, all in all, I believe she is enjoying the warm weather and trying to fit in. As are we.
Next letter: Grandchildren!
Paul