Milton & Martin

Our journey starts with a very early flight (6:20 am) from Boston to West Palm Beach on a surprisingly full Jet Blue flight. The original flight was scheduled for Monday, December 21st, but was canceled at 4 am that morning due to the very typical snow-stormy Bostonian weather. The day of the original flight, we had everything packed up and ready to go and then came the shocking telephone with an automated message "Hello, your flight has been canceled. Please log on to our website to find out how badly you're screwed". Well, maybe that wasn't the exact wording but it's as much as I could understand at 4 am in the morning. After we got over the "What the F***K!" moment, we quickly regrouped and rescheduled our trip...and that brings us to today...Wednesday, December 23. The flight down to West Palm Beach was pretty smooth. Logan airport was packed and the plane had no empty seats.
After landing in West Palm Beach, we made our way to Miami, to pick up our car from Budget. We had charted a course which included a short shuttle ride to the Tri-Rail Transportation Center and from there a train to Miami's Metrorail-Tri-Rail transfer station and from there, yet another train to Brinkell station. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. The shuttle ride went through many of the local neighborhood where we got a chance to experience the "real" West Palm Beach and the experience intensified with a 2 hour (!) train ride to Miami, with a screaming Nigerian baby and a train official which took his job very seriously and threatened to do a cavity search on several Nigerian passengers who did not have the right ticket. Needless to say, those threats did not deter the Nigerian baby from crying some more...

Around 1 pm we finally set foot on Brinkell holy soil and armed with a Google map attempted to navigate to Budget's car dealership. I didn't mention this so far, but at that point we were tired, jet-legged (if that's even medically possible) and very late for our rental's pick-up (which was 12pm). However, a little sandwich bar, called La Baguette, caught our eye (and nose) and we decided to stop for a bite. It was the first time since we got to the states that we found ourselves in a Tel-Aviv-like scenario with a sandwich bar right on the street where you can actually eat outside...while enjoying a cool and refreshing breeze. The place was reminiscent of "Bar Gurion" and "Capesito" on Ben-Gurion Avenue in Tel-Aviv...our luck and overall mood was getting better by the minute. Having swallowed a gigantic sandwich with everything on it, we decided it was time to face the music, get our car and get this road trip...well, on the road.


Ten minutes later, we are standing in a room 1x1 meters (how much is that in feet!?) with a huge Mexican guy called Milton who is wearing a gangster-like leather jacket and trying not to hit two keys at a time on the keyboard with his enormous fingers. Milton looked like a guy just off the set of "The Sopranos". Milton took my credit card and Israeli driver's license and started processing our reservation. When I noticed he was starting to sway uneasily, I asked him if there's something wrong. "Yes", he said, "Your card won't cover the full amount of the rental". I'll spare you the gory details of what followed, but let's just say it was nerve racking. Here we were in Miami after an horrific shuttle and train ride (see above if you're just joining us) and our sole means of transportation has just been denied. And then came Martin, Milton's young assistant, with a plan so elaborate and insane that it just might work. Here's how it went: we rent the car for a week, which is the maximum we could put on our card, when the week is over, we give Martin and/or Milton a call from the road, they cash in the reservation and open a brand new one for another week, and another one the following week. It turns out that this way we even save some money (if you want to know how/why, let us know). Also, for some bizarre reason, Milton really took a liking to us, and not only approved Martin's harebrained scheme but also gave us an upgrade. To make along story short, we got the car (and a discount, apparently). Being late and all, we got in the car and started heading towards Key West...but that's enough excitement for one day, so we'll tell you all about Key West tomorrow. Cheers!

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