So I went to pick up Frosty from the airport. He was slightly late, since his plane had to take a detour. 

• (Listen to his commentary here - Frosty's Flight (3.03MB))

Then we drove to the U-Haul location. This particular location wasn't really an office, per se. It was more like some lady's unkempt ghetto-ass front yard/meth lab, where there just happened to be a couple of trucks and maybe a dog or two. Imagine clucking chickens, cars on cinderblocks, an old man in a rocking chair smoking a pipe while playing a banjo, and you'll have a nearly accurate yet slightly exaggerated image of the exterior of this "office" in your mind. (Those are sarcastic quotes on the word "office", by the way.)

Anyway, it looked like somebody set up a U-Haul office at a flea market. Mounds of paperwork were strewn about and dusty yard sale items, clothes, boxes of trinkets, and children's toys littered the counters and floor. 

We stepped inside the office yelling, "I love yard sales! Hey, how much for the desk?" and the lady cackled, "You here fur th' fourteen foot? It's rat otsiiiide!" as her few remaining teeth vibrated loosely in her rotting mouth.

So, we stepped back outside. Now what? Do we just drive off? Are the keys in the truck? Is there paperwork? We waited outside while the lady finished chatting with her customer/bingo partner.

"Ding dang dingy doo dang!" she would holler, as her customer replied with "Gee durn blingity shucks!" Frosty believed they were talking about him (and was about to become violent), but I held the belief that they were in fact discussing Wal-Mart's wonderful, soul-saving bargains using their stereotypical southern dialects as a substitute for normal human speech.

By the way, it was beginning to rain. Four or five kids were running around in circles, as kids often do when hyped up on the "devil sugar" aka "Pop Rocks". A little girl approached us and began mumbling about an umbrella. Slightly slurred, drunken baby talk combined with a southern accent made her sound as if she were speaking in tongues, channeling ancient demons. So we pretty much ignored her. If there's one thing I've learned from experience, it's that little kids possessed by dark gods are usually pretty boring. "Lake of fire", "Ashes and torment", "Skin peeled from bones", blah, blah, blah.

The lady, who will from now on be known as "The Lady" finally put two and two together and decided to "help" us. I had reserved my U-Haul and a trailer online with a credit card, so she should not have had very much to do. The reservation for a truck, trailer, dolly, and furniture pads was close to $600 for the trip to Richmond, *BUT* 

She decided that I only had to pay by the day, or something, because she began backspacing every price on my reservation, replacing said prices with much lower numbers. In my head, I began to get the idea that I was being undercharged, but I was still very confused about it. Where was she getting these numbers? Is this extra? Because I'd already reserved everything.

She kept repeating, as she held my precious credit card in her hand, that they never completely trained her. In actuality, they probably simply gave up on her. Perhaps she was hard of hearing, or dyslexic but everything that required spelling or numbers had to be repeated several times.

"Your name?" she would ask.

"Michael" I would respond.

"M-I-C-O..."

"No, M-I-C-H-A..."

"M-I-A-G..."

"No, damnit! I give up. Call me Mike."