CLEVELAND CAR RENTAL NOTES

They built this great facility for people renting cars when they fly into the Cleveland airport. The problem is, it's not at the Cleveland airport. It's not adjacent to the airport. It's not even close to the airport. You get on a bus at the terminal and you ride and ride, for miles. Past wide open fields. Past buildings for rent. But I guess it wasn't really that far from civilization. As I was going in (finally) I saw a pizza delivery guy leaving.

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So I found the Avis counter (it was the furthest one, of course). There were half a dozen stations for agents there (only one of which was in use, of course). The agent did call out to me that someone would help me shortly. I noticed another Avis employee come out from a doorway behind the counter, but she just went over to a soda machine (excuse me, a pop machine, this was in Cleveland). She bought one and returned to the room behind the counter (I'm guessing to a recently-delivered pizza). Meanwhile, the agent at the counter was explaining each insurance option to this quartet of guys, who debated the pro's and con's of each one at length. Actually I'm just assuming that, because they were speaking a language with which I am not familiar. After a couple of these debates the agent excused himself, walked over to the doorway and stuck his head in, presumably to talk to someone. Then he came back and called out to me that someone would help me shortly. But no one came out of the doorway. I'm guessing it was a large pizza.

Eventually all of the insurance questions were debated and answered, and the fuel service ones as well, and everything was signed and initialed and the quartet departed for the car lot. At last it was my turn. The agent apologized for the wait. I told him I had a reservation and gave him my name. He checked and informed me I was a Preferred Customer, and I should go directly to the lot to get my car. So I had been waiting for nothing. (I did check my Avis card later, and by golly I am Preferred. I never noticed, because I had only rented from Avis here in Manhattan, where being Preferred makes no difference, as far as I can tell.)

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The car I got was a very nice Chevy Malibu. I could adjust the seat and steering wheel to my liking (I like to sit very straight up when I drive). It had good acceleration (not that I'm into jack-rabbit starts these days, but it's nice for getting on highways) and, more important, good brakes. It even turned on its headlights automatically--one less thing to worry about. It also had more buttons than I could possibly learn in a three-day weekend. I don't ever remember driving a car with a "menu" button before.

When I got to my mother's house and went in I noticed yet another button new to me, this one on the key-chain transmitter thingy. It had a circular arrow on it. There were actually instructions for using it on the back: first press lock, then press the circular arrow button for two seconds. I then guessed, correctly it turned out, that this was the anti-Mafia hit button: it would start the car remotely. As a bonus, it would warm up the car before we got in (assuming it hadn't exploded)--not a bad thing when the outside temperature was 9 degrees, as the car informed us. It could also be used to scare the shit out of someone, if you parked on the street and you used it just when they were walking by. But I didn't get to use that feature, because nobody was walking by in the 9 degree weather.

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I was not surprised that the highway exit to return the car was a different one from the exit for the airport. I was surprised that there were no gas stations between the highway and the car rental facility. Avis soaked me for a quarter tank at their "fuel service" rate.

And the Avis lot was the furthest one, of course.