Bob and the Very Very Bad Day!
The following story about Bob and the very VERY bad day is purely fictional. It in no way has anything to do with the McKinney family’s travels through Switzerland and, for about 5 minutes France. Any similarities would be purely coincidental.
Bob looked up at the bright blue sky and the mountains in the sharp bloom of fall. “Today is going to be a very, very good day” he said to himself. They were in Austria near the border with Switzerland and the mountains were spectacular. The crisp clear air and the open spaces were a much welcomed change from the crowds and smoke of Munich.
They had stocked up on supplies and rented a car the day before in Munich to continue their trip for the next couple of weeks. Bob was behind the wheel again and thought he was in heaven.
For a very short while the day before heaven had looked even better. Leaving the car rental desk, the family had emerged in the parking lot to find that the car allotted to them was s very sporty two door Alpha Romeo sports coupe. “Wow!” exclaimed Bob dreaming of driving through the Alps in the car. “Pile in and let’s go!”
Bob was perfectly willing to overlook the fact that the two kids had to be shoe horned into the back seat. He was even willing to make them sit like that for the next 14 days if that meant he could keep the car. But try as he might he just could not get their 4 bags into the trunk. Sadly and reluctantly Bob was forced to return to the car desk and get an alternative vehicle. “One that we can at least breathe in!” shouted Dobbie to his depressed back.
Thirty minutes later after reshuffling all the baggage around they were in their new and very large diesel powered 4X4 cruising down the highway to Austria. The kids had tons of room so they were happy. Dobbie had tons of room so she was happy. Bob had lost his sports coupe and he was not so happy. But he was back on the road so that counted for something.
They had found a wonderful place to stay that night just on the Austrian side of its border with Switzerland. They had a marvelous dinner and watched the sunset over the mountains. Now Bob was greeting the dawn and smiling. Everything was right in the world.
“Dad, I think I have a problem.” said Bobbin. And with those 7 simple words Bob’s very, very good day began to change.
“I think I lost my retainer” Bobbin squeaked.
“What do you mean you lost it?” Bob responded. “We told you not to lose it. We told you it was irreplaceable. You can’t have lost it.”
“Dad, I think I dropped it trying to squeeze out of that sports car back in Munich”, Bobbin replied.
“No you’re wrong” Bob replied with an edge of panic. “It’s in one of these bags somewhere, and you have to find it. We have a schedule to keep and we can’t waste time searching for your retainer.”
A frantic search for the missing retainer then ensued, with clothes and any other article not tied down being thrown across the room as the 4 bags and day packs were ripped open. Half an hour later, Bob was forced to accept the fact that Bobbin had indeed lost his retainer. Collapsing onto the bed, Bob was frantically trying to think about what they could do when ….
“Bob, we’re hungry! When do you want to go down for breakfast?”
Bob couldn’t believe his ears. In the middle of a crisis of such tremendous proportions Dobbie wanted to eat!
“We can’t eat until we solve this problem!” Bob replied perhaps a bit too sharply.
“Well its not like his teeth are going to fall out of his head right this minute now is it?” Dobbie responded. “Why don’t you just call the car company and see if anybody turned it in?”
It was then that Bob remembered his cell phone. Of course, he had purchased a recharge card for 20 Euro just the day before in Munich. He phone was recharged and working again. All he had to do was call in the code number to get the time loaded and he could phone the rental agency. It would only be a 5 hour side trip. The day would still be salvageable.
“Good idea!” shouted Bob. “Let’s just make this one call and we can go down to breakfast”. And with that Bob picked up his phone and recharge card and began to follow the simple instructions. Only to have it fail.
Bob would key in the phone numbers and the recharge numbers, push the send button and see … “Sorry Invalid Number”. Seven times Bob did this and seven times he got the same response. He couldn’t believe it. What was wrong? It was then he remembered the super special customer service number he had been given. The clerk at the store had guaranteed that if he had any problems whatsoever all he had to do was phone the service number and his worries would be over.
So Bob diligently dialed the number, made it through auto-attendant hell, pushing a variety of other numbers according to the voice system menu and after 15 more minutes he finally got a real person on the other line.
“I’m really sorry sir, but international charge cards can only be used to charge the phone in the city they were originally purchased in. You have to go back to Munich to recharge your phone.”
Bob was silent. He couldn’t believe his ears. “But it’s an INTERNATIONAL Card and the clerk that sold it to me said I could charge it anywhere.” he managed to blurt back. “Do you mean to say that I have to go all the way back to Munich to recover my 20 Euro?”
“Oh no sir. If you don’t want to go back to Munich there is another way. You can send the card back to our head office in Amsterdam along with a letter and a form you can pick up at any store. They will credit your phone remotely. Your credit should show up in 3-4 weeks.”
Totally dejected now, Bob managed to hang up and look about the clothes strewn hotel room. Three faces were now staring at him. “Can we go to breakfast now??” asked Dobbie again. “Yes!” shouted Bob. “Go to breakfast. Have a wonderful healthy breakfast. Eat your faces full of breakfast. I’ll just stay up here and repack!”, and with that, the family decided it was best to go off to breakfast and to leave Bob alone.
Forty-five minutes later, the bags were repacked and the family was checked out. They were only 2 hours late now so the day was not a total loss. A bit of aggressive driving through the mountains would catch them up, and they would have to deal with the retainer later.
Bob was hoping that by getting behind the wheel, he would finally be in his own element. His desires were thwarted however by massive amounts of road construction traffic. Zipping along at a speedy 50 km / hour, Bob was getting increasingly frustrated. Dobbie was frantically searching the maps, trying to chart out the day’s journey when all of a sudden they came to a turn off.
“Turn right here!” Dobbie shouts. The sign post was pointing up a steep sloping road towards the town of Zur. Bob grimaced as all the trucks and other construction traffic were heading in the same direction, leaving the main road in front of him wide open for the first time in almost an hour.
“Are you sure?” asked Bob. “The other road looks like the main highway, not this one”.
“Bob, I’m sure” Dobbie replied. “Turn right”.
Turning right along with the other traffic, Bob headed up the narrow mountain road. His worst fears were confirmed when 8 km later he heard Dobbie groan. “Oooops…”.
“What is it?” demanded Bob.
“Zur and Zurich are the same thing aren’t they?” asked Dobbie. “I mean what are the odds that there is a Zurich, Switzerland and a Zur, Switzerland? Right?”
“Damn!” Bob muttered. The road had now entered into a 10 km long tunnel and there was no chance of turning around. Bob had to resign himself to crawling along up the road behind a large dump truck at the amazing speed of 25 km /hour. Twenty minutes later of total silence, they finally came to a small shoulder and Bob violently spun the vehicle around. Muttering under his breath about the competence of some navigators, he finally managed to get back down to the turn off.
Turning to Dobbie and speaking for the first time in 30 minutes, he managed to sputter out “ Zurich, Zurich is the main Swiss town. That is the direction we are heading in. Zurich, not Zur!”.
“Well Bob you don’t have to get all snitty!” Dobbie responded. “It was an easy mistake. Anybody could have done it”.
Now 2.5 hours late it was coming up to 10:30 in the morning. The planned called for the family to do a quick tour through Lichtenstein, a very small country on the Swiss border. The travel plan had called for a quick 10 km detour across this tiny country followed by a tour of a Swiss chocolate factory in one of the nearby villages.
By this time Dobbie was deeply involved with the maps, trying to identify the correct exit. The family was getting uncomfortably close to the Swiss border and they still had not seen the turn off to Lichtenstein. Having finally decided that they must have missed it, Dobbie suggested quietly that they needed to turn the car around.
Bob by this point was in a near catatonic state. Simply driving. He quietly took the next exit and reversed directions for 10 km so that they could find the correct exit. Twenty minutes and an additional 4 direction reversals later they had managed to narrow the exit point down through a process of elimination. Apparently small countries only merit small mention on exit signage in Switzerland. Buried deep in the sign’s small print, was a small highway number that they had wanted to catch.
Soon they were approaching a border crossing. Welcome to Lichtenstein! “Chalk up another country!” shouted Bobbin, who suddenly noticed an abundance of Swiss flags flying along the roadside. The family had managed to drive through the country in less than 5 minutes, and didn’t even recognize when they left it. “Whoopee” thought Bob. “Twenty five minutes of circling around to find the damn thing, and we don’t even know when we were in it.”
After the morning’s drive, the car was starting to need some fuel. Pulling off into a gas station in one of the many small villages, Bob noticed a small sign. Putting his somewhat limited French to good use, he managed to decipher the fact that all drivers needed to purchase a 20 Franc highway pass to use the Swiss highways. The fine for not displaying the license on the car was over 100 Euro. Frantic now, Bob checked with the highway attendant. Yes he did need the sticker. Yes they do check at checkpoints and stop. No he didn’t have a sticker as they sell out very quickly. Bob would have to stop at various gas stations along the way back to the main highway and hope he could purchase a pass before getting caught!
“Great” thought Bob. “Just Great. Our 5 minute detour is now going to cost us 100 Euro in traffic fines.”
His despair was interrupted suddenly by Dobbie. “I think I know how to get to the chocolate factory” she shouted. “But it closes from 12:00 – 2:00. We have five minutes to go 35 km, or we will have to wait the two hours”.
Bob couldn’t believe his ears. After all they had been through that morning Dobbie was still focused on touring the chocolate factory. It wasn’t possible. At that point Bob blew.
“WE AREN’T GOING TO ANY STUPID CHOCOLATE FACTORY! We have to get a highway license.” he screamed in the car.
“Oh yes we are” responded Dobbie in an increasingly irritating calm and logical voice. “It’s on our list of things to do, and it’s in Lonely Planet as something to see.”
At this point Bob went into Robot mode. Tuning out the shouting and yelling from the front and back seats, he proceeded to drive the car into a long succession of gas stations. He would take the keys from the ignition (not wanting to be abandoned by his now mutinous family) and walked without a word into the various station offices in search of the elusive highway license. Bob got lucky at station number six. By this time however the closing time for the factory had long since come and gone. Their choice now was to stay or go.
It had become a simple decision actually because as Bob emerged from the final station, license in hand, he realized the family had actually stopped speaking to him. Silent glares were all that were waiting for him as he returned to the car.
Looking up he saw the first sign of hope all day long. A sign. A sign that pointed to the freeway and Geneva, only 285 km away. Bob instantly knew what he had to do. He had to drive, and with that he put the car in gear and drove happily down the highway in blissful silence for the next 90 minutes.
“You can be such an asshole sometimes. You know Bob!” Dobbie finally interrupted the silence.
Bob could only nod passively in agreement. He could be. He was. But the bottom line is that they were moving again (in the right direction) and were getting back on schedule.
The weather as they were driving had begun to change along with their mood it seemed. Now, rather than bright blue skies, the clouds had begun to descend and a steady rain had set in. No spectacular views of the Alps would accompany them today.
It was now coming onto 2:00 in the afternoon and Bob knew what was coming next. After the “asshole” comment there had been another 20 minutes of silence, but that was soon interrupted with the quiet and timid question from Harrah.
“Are we going to stop for lunch anytime soon” she asked. “Ask your father” Dobbie replied. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast, and we didn’t get any chocolate either. We need to stop.”
Bob wasn’t really filled with a great deal of sympathy. The fact of the matter was that he hadn’t eaten since the night before as his breakfast was spent repacking and trying to track down the lost retainer. But the way things were going, Bob thought it might be prudent to offer up some kind of peace offering. “Ok, we will pull off at the next rest stop that has a restaurant. But you take what you get, and it’s got to be cheap. We aren’t going to blow today’s budget as well as our schedule!”
Not 5 minutes later the rest stop appeared and the kids let out a cheer from the back seat as they saw the familiar golden arches over the otherwise dull grey building. “Oh no” moaned Dobbie. “Can’t we go on to something else”.
“You asked for food fast” Bob replied. “You got it, but I’ll take a pass on lunch, I got to find us a place to sleep for the night.”
Fifteen minutes later, Bob had finished with the maps. He was just finalizing his plans as the family reappeared. Bob noticed that the family was unusually quiet. Something is wrong he thought.
“OK, what’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. Lets just get going”, Dobbie replied quickly. A little too quickly thought Bob. And before he could pursue the matter any further, Harrah blurted out.
“We can’t not say anything” she moaned. “He’ll find out eventually and then things will only get worse.”
“Harrah, what happened?” repeated Bob, knowing that his only hope at getting an answer lay with the weakest and most honest link in the chain.
“It’s just that lunch cost a little more than our other lunches.” Dobbie interrupted.
“HOW MUCH MORE??”
“Around 24 dollars” Dobbie replied. “But it was for three hamburgers, two drinks, and two orders of fries”.
“You paid how much for what?”, erupted Bob. “We go whole days without spending that much money on food.” Bob was to the point of ranting now, and was beginning to turn a bright shade of red. “Just get in the damn car and let’s go find a place to sleep”.
As they drove down the road, Bob began to calm down. Yes the day was continuing to spiral downwards into that pit of doom he feared. The only way to survive in his mind was to end it as quickly as possible. They had to find a place to stay for the night, go to bed, and start again tomorrow; preferably without having to drive into downtown Geneva. Explaining his strategy to Dobbie he managed to get her agreement. They would pull off the highway at one of the small villages Dobbie could identify before getting to Geneva and overnight there. Failing that they would head to the Geneva airport and try to find accommodations at one of the hotels near the airport. They would start afresh the next day.
As they got increasingly closer to Geneva, Bob began to get worried. They had been passing town after town and so far Dobbie had not signaled him to pull off. “Don’t worry” Dobbie replied. “I have us on the map and know exactly which town we are going to.” Shortly after her comment she indicated that Bob was to pull off at the next exit.
Taking the exit, Bob proceeded to drive down the road. “Finally,” he thought, “things are starting to come together”. That was until he noticed the sign and the official looking building.
“Did that sign just say “Welcome to France”?” asked Bobbin. “I think it did. I think Mom navigated us into the wrong country!!”
Dobbie was in denial. “No! There is no way. France isn’t on the map” she pointed viciously towards the small road map on her lap. But as Bob inspected it more closely he could see quite clearly that she was wrong. The border line was faint and obscured by some letters, but it was there. Dobbie had directed them to France. Bob hated France. He hated everything about France. He almost hated France as much as he was learning to hate Switzerland the way this day was going.
Bob didn’t say anything. He just pointed at the border on the map and threw it back onto Dobbie’s lap. He turned the car around and headed back for the freeway. “Thank God for backup plans” he said as he pulled back onto the freeway and began to look for signs to the Geneva airport.
Getting to the airport turned out to be easy; it seemed to be right in the middle of town. The problem was that try as they might Bob and Dobbie were unable to spot any hotels or any form of accommodation. By this point it was getting dark and even worse they had hit town right in the middle of traffic hour.
“Well we aren’t going to wait it out over dinner” mumbled Bob. “Not at these prices”. Having gotten thoroughly turned around in the dark, the family was now resorting to looking for signs that might direct them back to the highway. Any sign would do at this point. After 30 minutes they spotted “the sign”. The sign indicated that the hotel was just 500 meters down a cross street. The only problem was that Bob had no way of getting across the center median to go in the direction they needed. Having driven for several years and not being totally incompetent, Bob was sure that this problem could easily be resolved with a couple of quick turns that would put them back on track. A left turn a block up, followed by 3 right turns should have put him back on track. Wrong! Now more lost than ever it took the family over 20 minutes to find their way back to “the sign”.
This time Bob was committed to sticking with the sign directions and sure enough 5 minutes later they pulled up in front of a highly uninspiring box hotel. “Well any port in a storm” he muttered. The room was surprising cheap for Swiss standards, only $90 per room per night. “I wonder what we get for that price?” he asked Dobbie.
Walking into the room, he soon found out. You get two small bunk beds, a 12 inch TV and a toilet that is built into a surround around shower. At least it was clean, and there was a mall across the street! They could surely find some cheap dinner there.
With everybody now feeling infinitely better (they had even begun to speak to Bob again), the family headed off across the street. They had hardly made it into the mall when the kids spotted the giant, get anything you need electronics shop. Faced with several hours a day in the car as they drove through Spain, the kids were insistent that they were going to purchase some electronic games. Despite Bob’s strenuous objections, Dobbie supported the purchase. Several dollars and one rude cashier later they had their purchases in hand. It was now time to start to find some dinner.
“Oh my God!” Bob complained. “Even the fast food here costs a fortune.” Dobbin expressed an interest in Mexican food, Harrah wanted hamburgers, and Dobbie wanted to try the small bistro around the corner. Bobs observation that they would be better off just going to bed and avoid paying $100 for a fast food dinner was not well received. After 15 minutes of active public debate held just outside the McDonalds restaurant, Bob offered a compromise. They would purchase some crackers and a couple of bananas. They could share a pop as well. Despite the families objections it was Bob who was the only one with money (Dobbie had left hers back in the room, much to her regret).
Bob won the debate on default but the family was no longer speaking with him again, and he was beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake on the dinner thing. His second thoughts stayed with him until the reached the hotel room and he was about to dig into his portion of crackers and water. Just as he was about to offer up an apology, Harrah spoke up. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it. The game isn’t in English! It’s useless. Dad you got to go back and return it.”
Bob’s urge to apologize suddenly evaporated. “No way in hell!” he shouted. “You bought those games against my recommendation. You made the mistake, you live with it”. And so the family entered into yet another “discussion” as to what Bob’s role needed to be with respect to resolving the problem. Twenty minutes later, Bob found himself face to face with the rude cashier once again trying to explain why it was he had to return the games they had just purchased. He really shouldn’t have raised his voice to her the last time he was here he thought even if she had deserved it. Eventually Bob recovered his purchase costs and headed back to the hotel, only to find his crackers eaten and water drunk by a still disgruntled family.
“Oh well, just so long as it’s over.” Bob thought as he silently set his watch and crawled into his bunk bed at the end of his very, very bad day.