Don't Try This at Home. . .

I spent half of yesterday traveling to Virginia. My flight was at 3:40 - but took off about twenty minutes late. After a plane change in Chicago, we got to Baltimore at midnight. We caught a shuttle to the rental car place and picked up our rental car. All the cars were in a parking garage. In order to get out, you had to insert a ticket to lift the gate and lower the spike strips. The ticket we were given wasn't working in the machine, so we went back to the booth, but everyone had disappeared. We waited and waited, but to no avail. Finally we saw someone headed out of the garage. So we get the bright idea to just follow them out. Bad idea. The spike strips came up after the front tires cleared, slashing our back tires completely. The thing is that we didn't know it had happened until we got about a mile up the road. By then the tires were completely toast. We tried calling the rental place, but only got an automated message that led to nowhere. A good samaritan that was working in the place where we had parked came out and gave me a ride back to the rental place where I sheepishly had to explain what happened. All I can say is that it's a good thing we got insurance! It had already paid for itself! They gave us another car and another ticket to get out of the garage. This time it actually worked - although I was sweating as I went over the lowered spikes. We drove about an hour to Chantilly where we crashed at the hotel (maybe crashed isn't the best word here) at 4:00 am. Good times.