Loser Report

After the flood, part 3

Running heaters and fans all night did almost nothing to reduce the moisture (it did, as you can imagine, do quite a bit to increase the electrical bill).  With no clean-up crew in sight and the basement continuing its unstoppable devolution into a man-made, plastic wetlands -- about 100,000 years ago NW Ohio used to be known as the great black swamp -- Will knocked on my office door.
 
"Given it was already eleven and no one's here," she said.  "I called 1-800-WE-FIX-IT again."
"What did they say?"
"That they didn't have any record of you calling yesterday."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No, I talked with Brenda," Will said.  "She put us back on her list and wanted to know who you talked to yesterday."
"Brenda!  That's who I talked with yesterday."
 
Picking up the phone, I called 1-800-WE-FIX-IT. 
 
"Hi, Brenda, you just spoke with my wife about our basement," I said.
"Yes," she replied.  "Like I told her, we've got a lot of claims going on right now and seventeen crews in the area.  You're on my list; I'll get someone there as soon as I can."
"Yesterday, we were number eighteen on the list.  When will someone finally get here?"
"I don't know, everyone's currently dispatched to jobs.  Do you remember who you spoke to yesterday?"
"I talked to you."
"Me?"
"Yeah," I said.  "You tried to send a crew here, got my voice mail and then sent them to another site.  You promised someone would be here this morning by 10:30."
"Oh, I remember you now.  I'm so sorry; I don't know what happened; you must have fallen off my list somehow."
"So when will someone be here?" I asked again, growing concerned about the competence of 1-800-WE-FIX-IT and wondering just what place we now sat on its list. 
"I'm not sure.  I've got so many claims going on right now, let me see what I can do," she replied.  "Looks like I ought to be able to have someone there by 2:00 pm today."
"Are you sure?  We've already been promised someone would be here twice and really want to get this taken care of."
"Yes, I'll have someone there.  If no one shows up by two, call me again."
 
At 2:15, I punched 1-800-WE-FIX-IT's number into the phone.  At this point, I probably should have just programmed it into the speed dial.

"No one's here yet," I said to Brenda.
"Really?  The national office told me they'd have someone at your place this afternoon."
"Well, no one's here and my basement is still soaking wet.  I know you've got a lot of cases going on, but we've been waiting more than a day."
"This is really frustrating," she replied.  "The last time Findlay flooded, I handled more than 500 incidents and only had two complaints.  This time, though, nothing seems to be going right.  The national office told me they put you on their list, but I don't know where you're at on it or when they're going to dispatch a crew to your place."
"You told me yesterday that we were number eighteen on your list," I said.  "With seventeen crews in the area, how come no one's been here yet?"
"I don't know, let me call national and find out what's going on.  They told me they'd take care of you.  You can call them too if you want to follow up about your case, just ask for Angie."
 
Dialing another 800 number, I spoke with Angie, a national account manager.
 
"I'm sorry no one's gotten there yet," she said.  "Let me look into your situation because that shouldn't have happened.  We've got crews all over the Findlay area.  I'll get back to you within three minutes with an answer."
"How about you take fifteen?" I said.
"All right, I'll find out what's going on and get right back to you.  There's no way you should have waited this long for a crew to be dispatched."
 
Forty-five minutes later, with no response from anyone, I called 1-800-WE-FIX-IT's national office again, got Angie's voice mail and pressed zero for an operator.
 
"I need to speak with Angie," I said to the call-center representative.
"I'm sorry, she's in a meeting."
"She told me she'd call me back forty-five minutes ago," I said, repeating the soggy story of botched customer service for the third time today.  The agent promised Angie would call once her meeting ended; I felt less than confident that would occur. 
 
At 4:45 pm, the phone rang.  The caller ID showed 1-800-WE-FIX-IT and I picked up the receiver thinking I was finally going to get this thing resolved. 
 
"Hi, this is Brenda from 1-800-WE-FIX-IT.  I found a note on my desk that says to call Jim and Melinda at this number about a basement problem."
"What?"  I replied, incredulous.  This had to be a bad joke, right?
"I'm calling to find out what your issue is.  How can I help you?"  Brenda said with total seriousness.
"You know, we've been trying to get someone from your company to take care of our basement for the last day and a half," I said, trying to maintain an even temper.  "I've spoken with you at least a half-dozen times.  And now you call and tell me you don't even know who we are?  No wonder we can't get this resolved."
"Oh, ah, no," Brenda muttered.  "Oh, I'm so sorry, that's right, I remember you now."
"You know what?  This is ridiculous," I said.  "When will someone actually be here?"
"I don't know, we're having all kinds of problems scheduling crews.  I'm really sorry about your situation; someone ought to have been there by now.  Did you call the national office?"
"Yes, at your recommendation," I said, getting even more perturbed, "but they haven't gotten back to me either.  You know, you guys have a sterling reputation.  My plumber recommended you, and everyone says you're the best company to deal with this type of problem, but I'm starting to wonder if you can actually serve us."
"Believe me, this is as frustrating to me as it is to you.  My reputation is getting ruined by this.  If I can't get someone out there tonight, I'll come there tomorrow morning myself."
"Just get it done, get someone here," I said, hanging up.
 
Five minutes later, Angie, the national manager, called and assured me someone would be at our house tonight.  Three hours later, Dan of 1-800-WE-FIX-IT, rang our doorbell.  When he entered our house at 8:45 pm, Will and I gave him a standing ovation.
 
"Wow," he mumbled, "that's the first time anyone has ever applauded for me.  Usually, I'm the last guy people want to see."
"We've been waiting for someone from your company to get here for almost two days," I said.
"I know, please accept my apologies about that," he replied, "There's no excuse for what happened to you.  Let's see what's going on."
 
Touring the swamp-basement, Dan gave us the bad news:  the clean up would cost twice the high-end amount Brenda quoted us on the phone.  After going back and forth on the cost and with no other options available, we agreed to have the work done.  Every minute we waited, things only got worse.  After signing a dozen forms, I watched Dan's crew amble down the basement stairs at 10:30 pm.
 
"The longer carpet sits in water, the more likely it is to start delaminating," Dan said.  "We can try to save it, but I don't know what it will look like when I pull it up.  I also need to drill holes in all your walls.  If the insulation has gotten water in it, we might have to tear that and the drywall out too."
 
Ten minutes later, Dan called me downstairs.
 
"The carpet's already delaminating," he said, holding up a soaked corner with the backing pulling off the fabric.  "If this was an insurance job, I'd tear it all out.  But, given you guys are paying for it, I figured you should decide what to do."
"Do you think we can save it?"  I asked.
"In my professional opinion, no, it's too far gone at this point."
"All right, tear it out," I said.  "But, let me ask you something:  if someone had gotten here yesterday, could the carpet have been saved?"
"It's hard to say," he replied.  "Maybe, maybe not.  But, I can tell you one thing for sure, the longer it takes to remove the water, the less likely it is to save something like your carpet."
 
It took the crew until 1:00 am to finish tearing out eight-hundred square feet of heavy, soaked carpet and padding, rearrange the basement's contents and set up a half-dozen heaters and air filters.  During the endless treks up and down the stairs, one of Dan's crew noticed the Hello Kitty scrawl hanging above the drawing table.  Turned out that, in addition to drawing, he fought as a bantamweight on the local cage-fighting circuit.  Giving him a stack of old FIGHT and UFC Magazines, I wished him luck with both his pursuits before handing Dan the down payment for the clean-up effort. 
 
After the flood, we got pretty lucky:  the walls and insulation survived as did all the furniture, television, treadmill, water heater, furnace and water-conditioning system.  The industrial strength driers and filtering equipment ran for three straight days before Dan declared the basement dry and mold free.  The total monetary damage:  just a smidgen more than I saved on insurance premiums by moving to a higher deductible.  Given the carpet cost $3,500 to install, one could add that to the final tally, but still fail to reach the $10,000 deductible threshold. 
 
Getting our lives disrupted by the great deluge -- basement crap remains scattered every which where -- losing the man-cave carpet and spending money on the clean-up sucked, but it's only money, which, while important, can be replaced.  The folks who've experienced calamitous disasters, like the Haitian earthquake or Japanese tsunami, lost loved ones in addition to their possessions, livelihoods and, as it looks increasingly likely in Japan, the ability to live in surviving homes near the devastated nuclear facilities.  People suffering from tragedies like those and living through wars, disease and starvation deserve your sympathy and assistance.
 
So, please don't feel bad for losers like us:  we'll continue saving a few bucks on our home insurance premiums and, compared with the suffering of so many on this ancient rock, ours is just a little sorrow.

****
Up next:  finally running the report on Marc G's awesome event before the 2012 version occurs.  Be here for 62 loopy LOSER laps.  Excelsior!

After the flood, part 2

Inside the concrete-floored "mechanical" room, Will and I watched a continuous stream of water pour into the sump. The pump kicked on, but something had gone quite wrong last night.  No standing water existed; maybe due to it being absorbed by eight-hundred square feet of carpet and padding.   
 
"It had to be the sump pump; something must be wrong with it.  We should have replaced it when we thought about it," Will said.  "I'll call the plumber to check it out, but what do we do about the carpet?"
"We've got to get someone out here to dry it out.  If we're lucky, we can still save it."

 
Climate change's devastating impact on future UFC pay-per-view events
 
Punching numbers, I called 1-800-WE-FIX-IT.

"Our basement flooded, can you guys dry it out?"
"We can," Brenda, 1-800-WE-FIX-IT's representative, said.  "Right now, we're putting people on a priority list.  As you can imagine, we've got a lot of flooding issues we're dealing with."
"When can someone get here?"
"You're number eighteen on my list.  We've got crews coming into the area from several states to assist with the clean-up effort.  As soon as I can get someone there, I'll give you a call."
 
Plugging in the shop vac, I spent the next two hours avoiding swamp-spawned electrocution while sucking twenty gallons of water out of the guest-room carpet.  The net result:  an aching back for mr loser and, for the carpet, absolutely nothing.  The squishy fabric floor remained wetter than the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  As my nose dripped sweat on the sopping entertainment room shag carpet, Tom the plumber strolled past, checked the sump pump and declared the verdict.
 
"It's still working fine," Tom said.  "All I can figure is the pump got overwhelmed during the night.  Given it's been here since you built the house, you probably ought to replace it."
 
Installing a newer, more powerful pump failed to solve the problem:  water continued gushing into the sump as if a bazooka shell had blast a gaping hole in an imaginary dike surrounding our property.
 
"Hmm, I don't get it," Tom said, wiping an arm across his forehead.  "The pump's working, but the sump keeps filling as soon as it removes the water.  I'd like to put a back-up pump on it, in case the primary fails, but the water's coming in too fast for me to do that.  Where does this drain tile go?"
"I think it drains into the leech bed," I said.
"If it does," he replied, "that might just be your problem."
 
Outside the casement window, he unearthed the drain tile and delivered the afternoon's second soggy verdict.
 
"When they built your house, they tied the drain tile into your leech bed," Tom said.  "Given all the water in the area, the leech bed is probably saturated and the water had nowhere to go.  That's what caused your basement to flood:  the pump just kept recycling the same water over and over.  It couldn't ever get rid of it and it backed up into the basement."
"So, what do we do?"
"I don't know why they put it into the leech bed in the first place.  I think we should reroute the tile to dump the water in your backyard away from the foundation."
"Can we do that?"
"Sure, it's not a problem, it's just rainwater.  And if your leech bed gets overwhelmed again, you won't experience the same problem."
 
In the midst of sucking up carpet water with the shop vac while destroying the lower lumbars, I missed Brenda from 1-800-WE-FIX-IT's call.  When I returned it, the bad news continued:  when it rains, it pours, right?
 
"I had a crew ready to come to your house," Brenda said, "but when you didn't answer, I sent them to another job."
"But you just called me half an hour ago," I replied in frustration.  The longer the water stagnated, the worst things would become.  For all I knew, an army of mold spores might already be assembling behind the drywall.  "When will someone be here now?"
"Crews are starting to arrive in Findlay," she replied.  "I'll have someone there by 10:30 tomorrow morning at the latest."

****
Tomorrow:  the moisture keeps rising

After the flood, part 1

Papers in the roadside
Tell of suffering and greed
Here today, forgot tomorrow.
Here beside the news of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrow
-- Duran Duran
 
Where I grew up,
Life goes on,
After the flood.
-- Lone Justice
 
Opening the home-insurance-policy renewal, I found -- quite the shocker -- the rates had increased again. 
 
"What can we do about this?" I asked the insurance agent on the phone. 
"Well, you've got a $500 deductible," she said.  "If you increased it, you could save some money."
 
Higher deductibles (i.e., more risk) led to somewhat lower home-insurance premiums.  But, as anyone who purchases health insurance understands, risk assumption doesn't always mean lower premiums.  For instance, participation in Workplace Development's HSA insurance plan ($5,000 individual/10,000 family deductible, no prescription coverage, no dental, no eye care) still required more than $6,000 in annual premiums.  While what I received for that $6,000 remained a mystery, applying that thinking to the house would save some shekels.   
 
"If I increased the deductible to ten grand," I asked while gazing at the majestic, lightning attracting, ninety-foot-tall pecan tree looming thirty feet beyond my office window.  "What happens if the house gets destroyed?" 
"If it was worth $150,000, we'd pay you $140,000."
"So, I wouldn't have to pay you $10,000 to collect the insurance?"
"No, we'd just subtract the deductible from your proceeds."
 
Believing in insurance for total disasters and in the time value of money (i.e., money now is better than potential money), I increased the deductible and made the payment.  Six weeks later, with temperatures rising, rain falling and snow melting, forecasters predicted the Blanchard River would crest seven feet above flood stage, enabling Findlay to once again, alas, become a national news story.  I'm no wooly-bear-loving meteorologist, but with three 'hundred year" deluges inundating Findlay during the last four years, massive floods have become the new normal for the Blanchard River. 
 
Excess water might be the new normal for downtown, but not for us.  We built our house on the highest spot in a four-acre plot and live on the northern edge Findlay, five miles from the river/flood zone.  With late-night news reports calling for the worst, we awakened to "good" news:  the river crested "only" five and a half above flood stage.  Much better than expected, but still the sixth worst flood in the city's history.  Flooding and accidents closed Interstate 75 Monday morning and, unable to cobble together an ark to escape the spreading quagmire, I postponed the day's work in Michigan.  Water-covered roads also shuttered all the local schools and numerous businesses and government offices. 
 
"Did you check the basement to see if it's dry?"  Asked Will as we stood in the kitchen.
"I didn't.  It's never a problem, but I guess we should."
"I'll do it," Emily said, running down the stairs.
"Eww, the floor's wet," she yelled.
"Are you kidding me?"
"No, it's all wet."
 
Stumbling down the carpeted stairs, we found the entire 25' x 25' carpeted entertainment room soaked.  Opening the door to the smaller 12 x 14' guest room, thread-bare magic socks squished across another fabric bog. 
 
"Got &%$#!," I muttered.  "What the hell happened?"
 
In over a decade here, we'd never been affected by water problems, until now, six weeks after changing the insurance deductible.  Keeping it at $500 would have guaranteed this would never have happened, right?  I'm sorry Findlay; it's all my fault; I should have known better than to try to save a few bucks.

****
Tomorrow:  it gets even soggier

Recalculating the Glamorous Life (3 of 3)

On the flight to Vermont, the head cold spawned by the bad night's sleep in Ft. Lauderdale continued expanding, growing into a full-blown sinus headache.  Swallowing aspirin and swilling cold medicine, I ambled through the Burlington airport's freezing parking garage, hopped in the rental and drove snow-covered roads toward Grand Isle, VT.  When I booked this project, the client told me the best way to reach their facility was flying into Burlington and then taking the ferry from Grand Isle across Lake Champlain to Plattsburgh, NY.
 
Avoiding the possibility of GPS recalculations, I followed printed MapQuest directions to the ferry dock without incident. 
 
"How much?"  I asked the skull-cap wearing booth attendant.
"It's nine fifty one way or eighteen for a round trip."
"Ok, let me get a roundtrip," I said, pulling out my credit card.
"Sorry, no credit cards, cash or check only."
 
Looking in the wallet -- a place where cash is often in very short supply -- I found, praise quantitative easing, fifteen big ones.  Plunking down the moola for a one-way voyage, I wondered where I would secure the necessary funds to travel back across the lake in two days.  The ferry arrived a few minutes later; shivering dock hands waved all the vehicles aboard, including a couple semis with trailers.  Tucked into a tight spot on the side of the boat -- port? starboard? leeward? who the hell knows? -- I turned off the lights and engine and looked out the window into complete and total darkness.
 
A minute into the voyage, weather generated waves caused the craft to bob and weave like a drunken boxer.  Things grew progressively worse; my stomach gurgled.  Desperation for the awesome power of Sprite rose as the twelve-minute ferry ride became yet another trip into the travel twilight zone.  I'd been on ferries before, but never inside a car, never at night and never during winter.   Trapped with nothing but my own thoughts -- always a horrifying place -- I envisioned what would happen if the ferry started sinking (e.g., I'd roll down the car window, pull my soaked form from the steel tomb and then, of course, experience a hideous death courtesy of hypothermia, drowning or both).  Steam-breath fogged the windows and claustrophobia grew as the craft slammed through wave after wave and spray sloshed over the vessel's sides.                
 
We docked in NY without incident and wheels spun across pavement as I left the ferry of fear.  Never, not once in my existence, had I been happier to be stuck in a rental car in the middle of nowhere.  The next day, we held sessions in upstate New York and traveled across the border into Quebec for another.  Following sensi-Wally's advice, I kept my big mouth shut at the border and handed over the passport.  It took approximately sixty seconds to make it through the incredible security between the US and Canada.   
 
Begging off dinner with the company representative, I consumed an over-the-counter drug cocktail and crashed in the hotel room without exercising.  The hotel solved my monetary problem by adding twenty bucks to my room charge and handing me a crisp twenty dollar bill the next morning:  enough to cover the return ferry voyage and a couple cases of Sprite.  With Lake Champlain much calmer and the skies much sunnier, the return trip proved almost pleasant, if not for that nagging vision of drowning still floating around my addled psyche and the pain of a throbbing skull. 
 
The return flight and drive home proved absolute head-throbbing misery -- ramming an ice pick through my cranium seemed the only way to relieve the constant pain.  Dr. R. settled the manner the next day:  sinus infection.  The proscribed treatment required a double daily dose of anti-biotics for the next two weeks.  Luckily, with Christmas and New Year's on the immediate horizon, I didn't need to fly (i.e., change the pressure inside my head) until January's first week.  Take it from me, when you get a sinus infection, avoid airplane travel even if that means missing the unmitigated thrill of scaring yourself silly bouncing across Lake Champaign through a pitch-black night in a rocking and rolling ferry boat.
 
Swallowing a hefty pill, I strolled out to the mailbox the next day and found an envelope from Delta containing this
 
 
Ah, the glamorous life. 
***
Up next, lots more stupidity to share

Recalculating the Glamorous Life (2 of 3)

The sunny vacation ended a day later and, the next week, I found myself standing once again in a Detroit metro security-screening line to get on a flight heading the opposite direction from balmy Florida.  The airport had just installed the millimeter wave-x-ray scanning technology where you walk into a gigantic tube and put your hands over your head while it creates a full body image of you.  Preferring to go through the magnetic scanner beside it -- not due to worries about anyone seeing my junk (I don't know why anyone would care about my "junk"), but due to x-ray concerns -- I made the mistake of asking the TSA agent a question.
 
"Can I go through that scanner instead of this one?"  I asked.  The millimeter wave/x-ray and magnetic scanners stood beside each other.  While waiting in line, I'd watched the TSA agent send people through both of them. 
"Male assist, lane two," she barked.  "Follow me."
"What?"
"You requested a pat down, that's what you're getting."
"That's not what I asked for," I said, "I just said I wanted go through the magnetic scanner instead of this one."
"No," she replied.  "You requested a pat down."
"Look, I don't want to stand here and wait, I'll just go through this one, ok?"
"NO," she snapped.  "You will stand right there and wait for your requested pat down."
 
Three minutes passed before a male TSA agent approached.
 
"This guy requested a pat down," she said while reaching to open the gate.
"Wait, you can't bring him through there," the male agent replied.
"What are you talking about?   I need you to do a pat down search on him."
"If he's going to get a pat down, he needs to go through the magnetic scanner first," the male agent said.
"What are you talking about?"  She replied.  "That's not right.  You wait here while I get this figured out."
 
Leaving to find a supervisor, she reappeared five minutes later, none too happy.
 
"Follow me," she barked.  "Is this all your stuff?" 
"Yes," I said as she put it on the belt.
"Remove all items from your pockets and go through there."
 
There being, of course, the same magnetic scanner I asked to go through almost fifteen minutes ago.  Once I made it through, I experienced the pleasure of an additional pat-down search.  Responding to my complaining text describing the incident, multi-year Delta platinum-man and travel sensi Wally put the incident in proper perspective.
 
"You're acting like a rank amateur.  You need to keep your mouth shut." Wally texted.  "Don't tell me you don't know any better.  You'll never reach platinum elite status if you keep doing stuff like that." 

***
Tomorrow:  lame 80s references continue as I Don't Pay the Ferryman

Recalculating the Glamorous Life (1 of 3)

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect
-- Paul Theroux
 
Looking forward to another whirlwind project, my smile tipped into a frown as the scheduled 7:55 departure delayed.  At 8:35 pm, I found myself in a strange place:  sitting among the beautiful people in the back of the Detroit Delta bus en route to Ft. Lauderdale.  Hollywood Airport, aka, Ft. Lauderdale, sat twenty miles from Miami, location of many leading the glamorous life, including a certain individual who "took his talents to South Beach" (aka, he who will not be named by all Cavaliers fans).
 
Surrounded by over-dressed, over-blinged, over-talkative, semi-plastic people -- several of them stored actual hat boxes in the overhead bins (a hat box, seriously?)  -- I yanked out the sketch pad and attempted to scrawl, but the combination of fatigue, weak light and a growing head cold ruined the number two effort.
 
Vitor Belfort completed later at 30,000 feet.  Cage fighters are beautiful, right?
 
Touching down fifteen minutes behind schedule, it took two dozen more to leave the land of the beautiful and grab the rental.  After successfully turning a simple, twenty-minute trip into a fifty-minute adventure in travel frustration, I yawned as the clock behind the check-in counter ticked one am.  The problem:  I needed to meet my client at H. Aviation, a private hanger near Ft. Lauderdale airport, at 5:45 am. 
 
Ostensibly thirty seconds after falling asleep, the alarm blared.  Blinking, bloodshot eyes peered through crusty contacts as I punched the destination into the GPS touch screen and discovered that, if I followed the computer's directions, I'd reach the private jet terminal in twenty-two minutes.  Digital digits displayed 5:00 am.  In other words, more than double the estimated trip time existed.  Even if I deployed the entire repertoire of travel "skills" in my possession, even I couldn't F this up, could I?
 
Twenty minutes later, succumbing to computer-generated confusion, travel "skills" enabled me to take the wrong I-75 exit.  A fact I failed to realize until semi-open ears soon heard that five syllable utterance (i.e., the GPS version of a four-letter word):  "recalculating"
 
The wrong turn, of course, led straight onto another freeway.  So, instead of being able to execute a simple u-turn, returning to the proper route required multiple exits and re-routings.  In other words, several more:  "recalculatings."
 
With the stress level rising, I followed the droning GPS voice to an airport driving circle.  Motoring half-awake through darkness toward an unknown destination had already proven tricky and, alas, my inability to follow the GPS's suggestions increased the trickiness.  Entering said circle at 5:30 am -- still in decent shape -- I zipped around it, looking for Perimeter Drive.  Unable to see street signs in the darkness or decipher just when or where to turn (i.e., in fifty feet, in twenty-five feet, in fifteen feet), I once again heard.
 
"Recalculating"
 
While the GPS failed to say "you should have turned twenty feet ago" as I executed another u-turn, it seemed to judge me an unfit travel companion.  Back at the same circle, I failed to find the promised land of Perimeter Drive and encountered something much worse: driving the wrong direction down a one-way road.  The GPS "recalculated" as the bright lights of an oncoming airport parking bus illuminated the shimmering stupidity of my error.  Accustomed to dealing with lost idiots leading the glamorous life, the driver stopped (I couldn't see if he folded his arms, sighed heavily and shook his head with disdain, but I'm certain he did all those and more). 
 
Reversing course for 500 feet, I re-re-entered the circle of confusion.  During the process of traveling forward the wrong way and backward the right way, the GPS lost its mind and began recalculating the recalculated recalculations (I'll be forever grateful to the bus driver for not rumbling right over my puny vehicle like a gigantic monster truck).  Tired of being confused, I twisted the steering wheel to the side of the road, rammed the gearshift into park and did my own "recalculation".  Unplugging the infernal GPS, I yanked out the actual paper map the company sent me and -- incredibly -- followed it right to H. Aviation's parking lot.  Arriving with one minute to spare, I found the lot completely devoid of humanity, including other vehicles.  Wondering if I'd stopped at the wrong hanger or arrived too late, I called the company's pilot. 
 
"Hi, Butch, I'm sitting in the parking lot, but no one's here," I muttered.
"Where are you exactly?"  He asked.
"I'm at 34th Street."
"You're in the right spot," Butch replied with good cheer.  "Just pull around to the side of the building and we'll open the gate for you."
 
Gears whirled as the chain-link fence opened; I parked inside the private jet hanger.  The company personnel pulled in thirty seconds after me and, five minutes later, the plane left the ground.  Thanks to the corporate jet, we completed meetings in two different locations and returned to Ft. Lauderdale in the late afternoon.  Striking a tentative peace with the GPS, I used it to navigate the one-hour northward trek to another company facility.  Either my woeful "skills" improved or the GPS -- realizing just what a geography-challenged LOSER it had to deal with -- adjusted its approach because we (aka me and GPS) arrived at the hotel without incident.  Sitting on the room's balcony, I munched dinner while listening to the ocean crash into the beach.  A far cry from Ohio's snowy, frigid December and not too bad for the glam life.

****
Tomorrow:  he wants to lead the glamorous life, but without Shelia E, it ain't much