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Chad and I popped open his Chess program, and brought up some endgame puzzles. This kept us occupied for an hour or so. We did KR v K endgames. Chad sucked at them. I was better, but not perfect by any means. One really should be perfect at KR v K endgames. They are trivial. Someday I will work on them again.
So, Chad was all excited about the finale of Joe Millionare. I had not watched any of it. Was not really impressed by the idea. Would not have watched it under any other circumstances. But hey, I was at Chad's place. He wanted to watch. I guess we would watch.
Soon it was over. But I would never get back those three hours of my life. What a lame show.
It had been nice hanging with Chad, but it was time to go. So I got my shoes on, and headed out.
I was getting tired. I drove highways. I went back to the B&B.
As soon as I got back, I conked out right away. Sleep is a good thing.
8 hours later I got up. Then after the usual morning routine, I went down for my last breakfast at the Broderick House. I had Froot Loops.
After breakfast, I took an hour or so to do email one last time before getting on the road. Then I gathered together all my stuff, packed up the car, and headed out.
Then I realized that I hadn't finished my postcards yet. And if I wanted to actually mail them from near my spot, it was now or never. So I found the Marysville Post Office, pulled over in a nearby parking lot, and sat in the car finishing the rest of the postcards. After a quick trip inside the post office, it was goodbye to Marysville.
Now, as much as I felt like just driving home to New Jersey at this point, there was that little catch of the broken tail light. It was now time to deal with that. I had an appointment at the insurance place to get to. I pointed myself at the "drive through assesment" place and got there a bit early for my apointment.
The lady there had already finished with the appointment before me, so she took me right away. I drove into the little garage bay, and she came out and took a bunch of pictures and wrote up a damage estimate. Because my car was not paid off though, she couldn't just make the check out directly to me. It had to be made out to both me and the place I would have it repaired. Hmm... so I would now have to make a decision about driving back to New Jersey, or getting the car fixed here and renting a car for the return trip and then coming back later to get the car once it was fixed.
It did not take too much debate. I decided to leave the car in Ohio. She looked up the local Saturn dealership, and the autobody place that did all the stuff for the Saturn dealership. I walked out with a check, and headed for the Saturn dealership.
The nice folks at the Saturn dealership told me that for this kind of stuff I should deal directly with the Body Shop rather than go via them. The last time I had had body work, I dealt with the dealer, who in turn dealt with the body shop, so tthis seemed a little odd to me, cause I prefer to just deal with the dealer, but whatever, that was fine. Especially since the body shop was literally right accross the street.
I got all checked in with the person at the front desk. Did my initial paperwork. Gave her the initial check. All that. But then there was a problem. They were out of rentals at the moment. They thought they would have one in a few hours though, if I wanted to wait. Um. Well, I didn't have much choice really. I didn't want to just wait in their lobby for hours though. So I gave them my cellphone number, got my car back, and drove to find some lunch. They would call me when they had a rental for me.
So I found a place to eat. I found a Fuddruckers.
I found a seat near a plug. Got all wired up. Used my cell to get online, and sat there eating my burger, then just sat there for another hour and a half waiting for the call. They weren't very busy, so they didn't mind.
When I got back to the shop, my rental was parked right next to my Saturn, ready to go.
But I wasn't quite ready to go yet. I had to sign the Enterpise papers, but then I had to move all my junk from one car to the other! The Enterprise guy helped me, but it still took awhile. There was a LOT of stuff in my car. And I had to set up all the electronics. And then I had to finally go in and finish handing over my old car. They said it would probably be about a week, perhaps a bit more before my car was ready. Not because it would takle that long, but because there was a line, and they probably wouldn't even look at it for four or five days. Well, OK.
In any case, I was done here, it was time to go. Time to head home.
But first, one last look at the damage:
Notice there are a couple pieces of the broken headlight just sitting there in the light?? Chad had noticed them earlier. The entire time I'd been driving around Ohio, those pieces had just been sitting there. You would have thought they would have fallen off or something, but no, they held on tight. I should have takena couple of them for souviners, but I didn't. I let them stay with the old light to the end. They probably would like it better that way.
The trip home would not be back roads. I had limited time, and had already done a bunch of back roads. So, boring highways it was.
And then, as I was driving in annoying traffic, I saw a car with a broken taillight!!!
Driving with a broken taillight is WRONG and UNSAFE. So I called the cops on him! Nobody should ever drive in a car in that condition! Imagine that. How could someone be that unsafe and that evil? Uh, um... OK, no, I didn't do that. :-)
A bit later, I stopped at a rest stop, and discovered that I wasn't just driving east on some normal Interstate Highway, no, indeed not, this was the Dwight D. Eisenhower Highway!
So, as I headed east, attempting to escape Ohio as quickly as possible, Day 6 ended.
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