Josh had rented some vans (for a YL trip) last Friday and we had to return them on Monday. He'd rounded up some other folks to take the other vans back, but he needed me to take one back with him on Monday morning. We returned the vans around 10:15 am on Monday and learned that our friend John was going to be picking us up at 11am. We didn't really want to stick around a car-rental place for 45 minutes....but we didn't see what we could do given that our location was right next to a major highway.
Josh decided that we should walk a few hundred yards down the road to a shopping center. I reluctantly agreed.
Tip #1: If you don't want to be asked about buying a car....make sure you walk up to the car lot. We couldn't figure out why no salesmen were approaching us....and then we realized that they noticed that we walked up to the car lot instead of driving up.
I literally squealed with delight when we found sidewalks! No more pretending like we were hitch-hikers!
And then the clouds parted, the sun shone through, I heard someone singing and there it was:
a mall.
A we approached the mall, got a call from John. It turned out that he was stuck in court (he's a lawyer, not a criminal) and that it was going to be closer to 12:30 before he could pick us up. He was so very apologetic on the phone....but all I was thinking was "Really? I've been stranded at a mall? OK!" Josh ended up buying a book at Books-a-million and I shopped around a little bit. I met him later at a little cafe outside the bookstore....he read The Screwtape Letters while I emailed and surfed the web. It was almost like vacation.....except we were stuck in Gastonia, NC. I think we might really need a real vacation if returning vans, walking down the side of a highway, outwitting car-salesmen and shopping at Old Navy feels like a vacation.
1 comment:
yes, you do need a vacation....to Destin...with us.....and that other roommate of ours whose supposed to be planning this whole thing....
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