Not the best day to forget my wallet

I woke up yesterday morning with a simple plan.  I would drop my car off at the local Mazda dealership so that they could look at my A/C and decide exactly what was wrong and how much it would cost to fix and order the parts.  I would then take the dealership shuttle to school for my second day of orientation.  After orientation, I would call a cab, get a ride back to the dealership, pick up my car and schedule a later time to have the repairs made once the parts had arrived.  Simple plan, should have been easy, right?  Not so fast.

I was running a bit behind and knew I needed to make it to the dealership before 8 so that I could catch the shuttle, in my hurry I neglected to grab my wallet.  Not noticing my lack of driver's license and money, I dropped off my cars and handed them my keys, not realizing that my house key was on the chain.  As I rode the shuttle to school I realized my mistake and was filled with a sense of dread - how was I going to get back to my car?  If I called a cab to go home, I had no way of getting inside my house to the money, if I called a cab to go to the dealership, I had no way of paying him cuz all that I would have there is my car and keys.  Also, I had no way of paying for lunch, but that was okay - I can survive without eating one meal.  Anyhow, orientation ends for the day and I decide "it's not that far, I'll walk!"

Well, google maps tells me that's only 3.5 miles, I can walk that easily!  Except that it's along busy roads that aren't designed for walkers... and I'm from Wyoming which is a cold, dry state.  Virginia is not cold nor is it dry, luckily the weather was fairly mild but I sweat more than I am accustomed to as I made this walk.  Well, the dealership had called and left a message saying my warranty claimed not to have my contract under record and that I should fax the contract to them.  Seeing as how I was on foot and my contract is in Wyoming I called my Mom to save the day.  She said she had the stuff and would fax it right away and actually ended up calling the warranty company who said that my records came "right up" with no problem.  Strange.  After calling the dealership and telling them the warranty should be there, they said they would call and get it taken care of.  About 20 minutes later I got another phone call from the dealership saying that, unfortunately, the warranty company refused to let them do any work on it or order any parts until they had an inspector look at it, and as such required that they keep the car for the next 24-48 hours - they couldn't give a more specific time than that.  

Joy of joys!  Now I was walking 3 1/2 miles to a dealership where my house key was but I wasn't going to be able to take my car or rent a car, because I didn't have my driver's license or form of payment.  Great.  When I finally arrived the dealership was kind enough to let me borrow my car for a few minutes while I ran home and grabbed my wallet, they called the rental company and had a car brought over for me and now I am driving a lovely yellow Volkswagen Beetle.  Good times.  Other facts of note - the warranty company covers rental cars but not until they approve the repairs, which means I may or may not be reimbursed for a car I had to rent because they demanded that my car be kept at the dealership.  Also, the guy at the dealership, Matt, was great and said that the person on the other end was quite the pain and dubious of every claim he made about the damage to my A/C compressor.  In other words, I don't recommend getting an extended warranty through these people, they make it a real pain in the rear end.  

Those were my adventures yesterday!  Fun fun fun.