So after yesterday’s post, we had many difficulties. The flight we were scheduled to take kept delaying and delaying until finally it canceled and the airline offered us a flight too late for us to make our Dublin connection. Eileen was very stressed so she handed off making arrangements to me. However, before she did this she had the brilliant insight that if we were going to attempt to catch the Dublin connection in Chicago by driving down, we should rent a car instead of trying to retrieve our vehicle to do this.

Our old Subaru’s parking was already paid for. So instead of catching a shuttle and renegotiating all that, we rented a car.

I say “we rented a car” but nothing ended up being simple. The first dealer refused to acknowledge that my 5th 3rd MasterCard was a credit card.  They needed the name on the card to be the name of the driver. I had promised Eileen that I had the energy to make this drive so it was important that I be the driver.

The next rent a car dealer was more helpful. She pointed out that Eileen (whose name was on a more valid credit card) could add me as a spouse and rent the car. This is what we did.

When we got to the car, we could not get it started. It was one of those new fangled vehicles without an actual ignition switch. In order to start it, the “key” just had to be near the vehicle. But the dash kept informing us that it could not find the “key” and that we should put the “key” in a designated validating area. After messing with this for quite a bit, I flagged down an employee and explained our problem.

He instantly hit the “honk” button on our key and pointed out we were at the wrong car.

But we were at stall written on our paper work.  We either had the wrong car or the wrong key. A quick check after walking all the way back to the office revealed that the error was on the part of the company (the “computer” in the words of the sales person).

We had been rented a different car which we easily found and drove away.

I drove a bit like a mad man for this trip, when I could I went as fast as the rest of the traffic (80 MPH). But when the speed limit went lower than 70 unlike the rest of the fast drivers I slowed down.

Our GPS took us a route to O’Hare I had never gone before. I guess the last time I went to Chicago was preGPS. The Toll Road took us almost to O’Hare. At the last exit, we had run out of quarters and had to drive through. This was easy to do, but there were signs informing drivers to contact the Toll Road and pay for any unpaid tolls.

The Aer Lingus people didn’t delay us even though we were well under the two hour limit before international flights. We checked in, checked our bags, and arrived at the terminal just before they began boarding.

(to be continued tomorrow)