We attended Bryan's law school graduation this past Friday. For those of you who don't know, Bryan is a good friend of Ted's and was the best man at our wedding.
The graduation was very nice. It was a relatively small ceremony at the Ft. Worth Convention Center, which was a short walk from our hotel. Below is a slide show of photos from the ceremony, along with pictures from our hotel room. In the photos, you may notice that Bryan was "hooded" by a gentleman who looks a bit like him - his father is the CFO of the university the law school is affiliated with and had the honor of giving him the hood.
After the ceremony, we headed over to Bryan's graduation party, hosted by his parents. We were lucky to make it - we had quite the adventure prior to getting there.
Since the hotel we stayed at was located in downtown Ft. Worth, we had to use valet parking to keep our car in the hotel garage. No big deal - we've often left our vehicles with valets without incident. Several hours later, after the graduation ceremony, we returned to the hotel to retrieve the car and drive over to Bryan's apartment. We waited some time for the car, only to be told that it wouldn't start. We were escorted into the garage to see what we could do. With the help of a valet, Ted tried to jump start the car. Nothing. The valet who was helping us had noticed, however, that the key was removed from the ignition while the car was in the "accessory" mode (and he was quick to point out that he had not been responsible for parking our car). That's odd - you shouldn't be able to remove the key unless the car is off . . .
We ended up calling a tow truck and had the car towed to the nearest dealer. While waiting for the truck, we arranged for a rental car but couldn't pick it up until the next day. Oh well - at least we could leave Ft. Worth on Saturday as planned and drive back up to pick up the car later if necessary. The tow truck arrived about an hour later. Ted and the valets had the fun job of pushing the car out of the garage since the tow truck would not fit on the third level, where the car was parked. Luckily, they knew a few tricks, so it wasn't as difficult of a task as it sounds.
Soon after, Bryan's roommate showed up and drove us to the graduation party. We were able to destress while enjoying a good meal and good company.
The saga continued the next morning. I called the dealer to see if the service department had my car. They hadn't processed it yet, but when I told them I was stranded, they were very helpful and got my car in right away. A couple of hours later, we got the final assessment: we needed a new car battery. On top of that, whoever was the last person to remove the key (the valet) did so forcibly and did a good bit of damage. Total estimated cost of the repair - just under $1000. Ouch. And we thought this was going to be a relatively inexpensive weekend trip.
Having little choice but to go ahead with the repair, we licked our wounds, checked out of the hotel, and loaded up our rental car. The original plan (before we knew we would have car problems) was to go to Babies R Us on Saturday to purchase some baby gear. We decided to go ahead with the plan since we had a couple of hours to kill before the car would be ready. Besides, why should car troubles cause us to miss out on our baby shopping excursion?
We had fun wandering around Babies R Us and got a good deal on a car seat and play yard (thank you Babies R Us coupons). From there, we went to retrieve the car. The final repair bill was roughly $150 less than we expected (a bit of good news!). Then it was back to the rental car agency to return the borrowed vehicle. Afterward, we made a quick stop at the hotel to leave copies of our bills with the manager, who will *hopefully* make sure we get some sort of compensation for our troubles.
Having thoroughly exhausted ourselves, we went back home, tired but happy to have *survived* a weekend trip that we hoped would be a little less eventful.
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