Arriving in Idaho
After quickly skipping through airport security this afternoon, the flight to Boise was uneventful, except for the aborted landing attempt. I sat next to a precocious eight-year-old girl named Alyson, who was travelling by herself. What a smart kid.
I remembered the temperature being about 79° F when I walked on the tarmac at San José. It felt 30 degrees warmer on the tarmac at Boise. I found my luggage and headed for the rental car venue. Then, I bent over and took it right in the ass.
The price quoted online for my rental car was $11/day. So, that’s about $55 for five days, right? No. The first invoice was for $193. That’s the $65 ($55 plus an airport fee) plus an extra $128 in insurance and all kinds of other bullshit. You have to be kidding me. I told them to take the insurance off. That left that big chunk of “you’re not responsible for any damage to you car” insurance. Even then, the bill was almost $150. Holy shit. I better crash this damn rental car.
The car, a new Mitsubishi Lancer, was anemic, but got decent gas mileage. I’m glad I didn’t allow the woman behind the counter at Dollar to talk me into “upgrading” to the Chrysler 300. The Mitsubishi gets a little better gas mileage than my old beat up Cavalier. I jumped in the car, called Jay, mapped out the route to his house with the software on my PowerBook and went over to hang out.
Jay’s studio is much bigger than the last time I saw it, which was about five years ago (I think). He’s got a few more electronic toys, a decent set of speakers, and we could jack my PowerBook in and listen to how ridiculously horrible my music sounds on his speakers. He gave me lots of great tips about doing various things in Reason that I’d never thought of and hooked me up with some video tutorials. His music has steadily gotten more and more impressive.
After a while, we ate some of the most pathetic pizza slices ever constructed at a new place near the Walmart strip mall in Ontario, Oregon, inappropriately named “Primo’s”. Finally, after a little more messing around with music, it was time for me to head on over to Grandma’s house, where I’m staying until Thursday.
Grandma was, amazingly, still awake at 10:30 when I got to her house. We talked for a little while before it was time to crash. I think I finally fell asleep, after messing around with the new tutorials I got from Jay, at about midnight. What a long day.
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