October 1, Day 110 - In St. Charles

It was not a good day! We had to stay put because of terrible weather.

It started out with heavy rain and that set the tone for the whole day.
First, our friends Michael and Jana were having a rental car come about 9:00 so that they could head home to Colorado and winterize their home and take a few things home. Enterprise had things totally screwed up and sent the driver (and car) to some town that we had never heard of, so we ended up taking the courtesy car to the Enterprise office to get them on their way. Sounded simple, but it turned into a real comedy of errors between two different offices within a mile of each other. They were finally on their way a little after 11:00 as opposed to 9:00 when they were planning to leave.

While we were in town, we decided to get a new GPS for our road trips (the old one was pretty flaky on our trip to St. Louis). We picked up a new one at Sam’s Club (along with a few other items) and headed back to the marina.

Linda decided to do a bit more laundry and Gerry went over to help Carole and Michel load the software for the Verizon aircard to get them on line. That turned into a real nightmare. We loaded the software only to find out that the number they gave us for the aircard was already in use by another customer, so we sorted that out over the phone. Then the system would ask for a password, which is not needed for the system. After several phone calls to Verizon tech services, we decided to take the computer and the aircard to the closest Verizon office and have them take care of it.

At the same time, Linda needed to find a Bank of America to deposit some checks that we had received. We used our new GPS to find the closest BoA branch. That turned out to be in north St. Louis. We were successful in finding the branch and took care of that.

THEN, we looked for the closest Verizon store. The first one turned out to be a vacant mall, the 2nd and 3rd turned out to be cable TV offices that were already closed. We finally found a real Verizon store, and they spent about two hours trying to configure the aircard with no luck. We asked for our money back and they said “sure, but since you didn’t bring back all the packaging (the little lanyard that came with the box was missing), that will cost you $50". That didn’t make us happy and we didn’t hold back our opinions – they invited us to leave after we had received our credit minus the $50. We have to say that we have been mostly pleased with our Verizon service, but this was not a pleasant experience.

We finally headed for home after being on the road (with the complimentary courtesy car) for about 6 hours. Carole had a sensational chicken dinner waiting for us. Although, we were disappointed with our Verizon experience, the dinner with friends like Michel & Carole and drinks with them and Zoltan & Christine afterwards, made up for all of the disappointments we had earlier in the day. This trip continues to bring us all closer as friends and fellow loopers. It continues to be a truly incredible experience.

Sorry, no pictures today – frowny faces are not allowed on this blog!

The weather was pretty crappy today and we are hoping that tomorrow will allow us to head down the Mississippi to Hoppies Marina – a 60 mile run. We need to make up some time to get back on our schedule. Our friends, Jay and Nanci will be joining us at Green Turtle Bay on October 10 and will be cruising with us for a week