New York to Los Angeles (14.45 to 17.30)

Once again the check-in placed us on separate rows but we found an agreeable swap again without difficulty. This time the airline wanted to charge us for food and even the earphones used to access the in-flight entertainment. Having not had the fore-sight to steal those provided free on the previous flight and being too tight to invest in either we watched silent movies and the cabin crew feeding the business and first class sections. Of course on all of these travels the clock was giving us extra time so arriving in Los Angeles at 5.30pm actually meant that it was about 3.30am at home, some 22hours since we got up. Understandably we were tired but internal flights have no delay on your escaping the airport so, after just missing our hire-car bus transfer and thus seeing every other possible transfer at least once, we were on the way to the Dollar Hire car centre. To illustrate that there is always an exception to any rule, Julia’s people skills were completely ineffective on the guy behind this particular counter, he was at best monosyllabic, and any question we asked was treated to a one word response, eg; where do we bring the car back to? Answer; Here. We might have guessed that but perhaps a little more detail would have set our minds at ease but, since we were tired, we let matters progress. He tried to sell us roadside assistance the only extra not already paid for in our package, I think it was our joint response to his gruff manner that made us decline his suggestion, he made us aware that we would be responsible for having the car towed back to the depot if it broke down but we still held our ground. Bearing in mind that we intended to drive 2000ish miles through three states of the union I even now wonder about this decision but it illustrates the power of negative customer service. Having got through the paperwork, we were told to go into their garage, pick any car parked in the “1” section, check it for damage, and drive it off. Self service carried to an absurd level, I can remember when we first hired cars you almost had to pass a short written exam to be trusted with one. We chose a Suzuki and thus turned down all the older and more upright styled cars. It took one of the garage hands to explain how to get it into drive for the first time and Julia set off, the hotel for the night was the Howard Johnson International LAX and it was only ten minutes from the hire centre. We checked in and ate in the attached Chinese Restaurant, which was fine at that stage, and retired to bed. Considering the California section of the holiday was to start and finish in LA we were to see very little of the city at either end of our stay. The hotel was fine for our purposes and we slept well.