My trip to Big Bear Lake, California was from the 13th to the 15th. I took a long ass flight from Orlando to Ontario that had me arrive around noon. I had a couple hour drive up the mountain to make, so I quickly went to try and find the place I had booked a rental car from a week ago.

It did not turn out to be as easy as I hoped it would be. When I went to the counter to pick up the keys they needed the credit card that I ordered the rental with. I did this with my girlfriend’s credit card as I only had a debit card at the time. They told me that this was unacceptable, and that they wouldn’t be able to give me a car because she wasn’t present with me.

It’s not like I could use my own debit card either. They were going to do a deposit worth a few hundred dollars in addition to the rental. I think I had seriously $1 in my bank account at the time when I went to check my account.

The lady who was helping me was very nice though, and she tried calling somebody and having me explain to them the situation. I explained it to him, and he said he couldn’t help me. I was in public, in front of the lady helping me, and to the side of a couple talking to Hertz, but I couldn’t help myself: I started to fucking cry. Crying in public like a little kid when in fact I was 20 years old. I couldn’t help it though. I needed this job. And how the hell was I supposed to get up the mountain? Spend a few hundred dollars on an uber?

Not only that, but this was one of my first times being an adult. No school is huge. When you’re in college, you’re an adult, but not really. You don’t have to worry about being jobless because you’re a student. But the moment you graduate, the burden of finding a job is heavily placed upon your shoulders. And every month that burden is on you, it sucks. So when the opportunity to get a job is right in front of me, and I fly across the country by myself to do an interview for that job, and an obstacle blocks my path to this interiew, you bet your ass I’ll start crying in public like a four year old.

Luckily, like I said, the lady helping me was great. She called up some random car rental place who was willing to work with me to rent a car. I told the guy my story, and he came to pick me up from the airport. He brought me back to his store, and my girlfriend, her mom, and me worked out a deal with him to let me rent a car. It took a couple hours at least to do this, and some things like my age almost broke the deal, but this dude was a lifesaver.

Having secured a Nissan Versa with 130,000 miles on it, I was ready to drive up the mountain.