Ohio Is Being Mean to Me
My nephew repeatedly exclaims that various people or objects are "being mean to him." For instance, I was with him at the water park in the wave pool. He had a couple of surprising encounters with waves and exclaimed, "the waves are bein' mean to me!" He often tries to wrench whatever toy my niece, Lexi, is playing with and when she refuses to relinquish it, he declares, "Lexi's bein' mean to me."
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I am stuck in Ohio right now. I have been driving back to Boston after bringing a close to the production portion of my adventurous filmmaking. After leaving B.C., I hung out in San Francisco with Silvina and Sean, visited my parents, sister and niece and nephew in the east valley of Phoenix and now I am on my way home. Or, I was on my way home, but now I am in Springfield, Ohio, passing the time and writing in my blog.
I was driving yesterday beginning at 7 a.m. I had spent the previous night at a Super 8 Motel in Miami, Oklahoma. So, I drove through the remainder of Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana and into Ohio. Late in the afternoon, the wrath of Katrina reached out in the form of pouring, hard pounding rain and it became difficult to drive fast or to even drive at all. Visibility was next to zero. Ultimately, I determined to end my driving day a bit early because of the pouring rain and the difficulty driving that came with it.
I pulled into a Super 8 Motel in Springfield, Ohio and checked in. I prefer Motel 6, but Super 8 has wireless internet access. I am always paranoid about my vehicle when I stop as I am carrying quite a bit of expensive equipment as well as the tapes from my last production shoot. Most of the stuff is in the trunk, but I have two bikes on my roof and I'm sure that attracts attention from those interested in acquiring goods for free. I try to park the car under a light and near my room window. Last night I was a bit nervous and got out of bed and looked out the window repeatedly to insure that the car remained untouched. I finally fell asleep around 11 p.m. to the sounds of Kyra Sedgewick as Brenda on the TNT series, "The Closer." TNT does know drama.
About 45 minutes later, I am awaked from my drugged sleep by the sound of a horn honking repeatedly -- a car alarm. Because I have somehow trained myself to listen for this as I sleep, it woke me up. Briefly, I thought, "oh, it couldn't be mine. . ." But, then I came to my senses, jumped out of bed and rushed to the window. I pulled aside the curtain and saw that it was my car -- my headlights were flashing on and off. I ran toward the door of my room, but turned back to put more clothes on. I pulled on my shorts, slid my feet awkwardly into my sandals, grabbed my room key and ran down to the parking lot.
I found that the passenger side window of my car had been smashed and my giant red duffel bag was missing. Rain was pouring into the car and I realized that I was in a dark parking lot where a thief or thieves had just assaulted my car -- I had no idea if they were still around. I muttered some expletives and made my way to the front desk.
The young man at the front desk looked surprised as I recounted my tale. He exclaimed, "the police just drove through the lot -- they must have been watching and broke into the car as soon as the cruiser left the lot."
"Can you please call the police?" I asked.
He called and spoke to the dispatcher who connected him to an officer. He looked at me and said that the police wanted to speak with me. I took the phone from him and spoke to a very unsympathetic officer.
"Do you want to file a police report now?" he asked.
"Aren't you going to send someone out? This just happened. . ." I replied.
"Uh, we can just take the report over the phone unless you insist on having an officer come there."
"This just happened -- don't you think that you might be able to look around for them, take some evidence. . .something. . ." I asked, incredulous.
"Well, it's raining so the fingerprints are probably all washed away, so, unless you insist on having an officer come by, we can just take a report over the phone for your insurance company."
"I would like an officer to come by."
"Uhhh, lemme see, yeah, nope. There's no one available." He said.
"So, you won't send someone here?"
"I'm sorry -- we don't have anyone. Do you want me to take the report now?"
What choice did I have? It seems to me that if they had hurried a bit, they may have been able to catch whomever was lugging around my giant red duffel bag. In this bag were all of my biking clothes, the majority of my clothes (I had a small duffel bag with just a few items to take into the motel rooms at night), power cords for many of my electronic devices, my exercise GPS, my heart rate monitor, my business checkbook, and, most distressingly, all of my paperwork from my last shoot, including the log sheets, my notebook for notes on the footage, and my personal notebook with notes from the last year or so of my art making. This hurts. I can't stand that someone else has my personal stuff.
After I hung up the phone, I asked the desk guy if he had some plastic bags and tape so that I could seal up the shattered window. He told me that I could park the car out front under the roof and that he would keep an eye on it. I moved the car and then went back in to ask him again for some plastic and tape. I told him that trash bags would work. He found one and some packing tape and I went outside to tape up the window. As I began, a man approached me and asked me for some money. He started telling me some story about being locked out of his apartment and needing to make a telephone call. I told him to fuck off, in a nice way -- that I'd just had my car window shattered and stuff stolen. He seemed taken aback and began helping me tape up the window. In my distress and negative outlook, I suspected that he thought that if he helped me that I would give him some money. I did not. The desk guy brought out a piece of cardboard and some duct tape to further assist in blocking the open space left by the shattered window.
Right now, I have to take my car to the glass place, so I will have to finish this later.
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Friday, September 2, 2005
I have made it home in one piece, but am invested in finishing this story, so. . .where was I?
The morning after the incident, I tiredly stuck to my plan of arising early to hit the road. I planned to get home that day and thought I could drive with the window taped up with cardboard and plastic. As I pulled out of the motel parking lot to go to the gas station, I realized the folly of that plan. Because of the cardboard and opaque plastic covering the hole made by the shatter window glass, I could not see anything on the right side of my car. I realized that I had to have the glass replaced before driving the last 800 miles of the drive. I used my car GPS to locate a Toyota dealer. Unfortunately, they were unable to replace the glass as they did not have it and would not be able to get it until the next day. The gentleman at the dealership was nice enough, however, to send me to a glass store.
At the glass store (Gates Brothers Glass Shop and County Glass Shops, Inc.), they were able to locate the glass and said that it would arrive at their store at noon. It was approximately 7 a.m. I had no choice, really, I was stuck in nowhere, Ohio until I could get the glass replaced. As I spoke to the woman at the front desk, a gentleman in his 60s came through the front door of the shop. As I was waiting for the desk clerk to complete some paperwork, he asked me, "Did your car get broken into?"
"Yeah, " I replied.
"Mine, too. Damn meth heads." He stated.
"Oh," I said, a bit surprised, "is that what it is?"
He nodded. I turned back to the front desk to complete my paperwork. I arranged to come back at noon to have the work done and then went to find myself a Starbucks--not an easy feat in Ohio. I had to drive back to Dayton. Sitting in the Dayton Starbucks, drinking a triple macchiato and eating a scone, I began writing this entry.
Finally, it was time to return to the glass place and have the window replaced. It took about an hour for them to complete the job. I was eager to get on the road so I quickly signed for the work and went on my way.
About an hour and a half later, I stopped to get food and use a bathroom. I got out of my car and pressed the button on the keyring to activate the alarm and lock the car doors. Nothing happened. I thought that maybe one of the doors was not closed all of the way. I checked the passenger side door and found that it could not be locked. The mechanism that usually activated the lock now acted to open the door. I also found that the automatic roll-down of that window did not work. So, the Gates Brothers had replaced the glass, but totally fucked up my door. And, I was way too far down the road to do anything about it. I could no longer lock or arm my car doors. I had 800 miles to drive and now had to worry at every stop that my car would be violated again. I certainly could not stop for the night given the vulnerability of the vehicle and the amount of valuable equipment in the car. I kept driving and arrived at my home in Boston at 3:30 a.m. Coffee is a useful drug.
I plan to avoid Ohio in the future. While it may be somewhat irrational, I feel that Ohio's been very mean to me.