Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

 So Rachel figured I should go and get the tire fixed on the RAV4.  She made an appointment at the nearest Toyota for 8:15am (that’s 6:15am real time).  Sure, I’ll get up early one day, but then Rachel tells me I have to get there by myself.  Ya right.  After complaining a bunch and finding out Rachel was working a few blocks from where Toyota was she decided to come with me most of the way.  After I dropped her off I managed to get lost within a block. 

I eventually saw a big sign for Toyota and started to look for a service door of some kind.  The thing is that this was essentially downtown Montreal so there is no big automall like in Saskatoon.  I end up finding this little sign pointing into a back alley saying something about Toyota and then a bunch of French words.  I figured this had to be the service bay.  Half way down the alley I find a big garage door that automatically opens so I drive in and start patting myself on the back.  I park the car and look around, I’m in the back of the Toyota show room, not a service bay.  So this guy comes up and assumes I’m in the wrong place and offers to show me how to get to the Toyota service bay (which apparently is a few blocks away, can’t they just keep everything in one building?)  I end up going up and down one way streets until there is another Toyota sign and an automatic door.  This time it has a ramp up to the 2nd floor.  Whoever thought of a service bay on the 2nd floor? 

Rachel had told me a guy’s name who she knew spoke English so I went to each desk until I found the guy.  He figured it would take about an hour to get the tire fixed (Rach told me 20-30min), good thing I brought my DS.  2 hours later they come and get me and let me know that the tire is fixed, cost $18.  The English guy sends me off to pay with the receptionist.  I start off with my normal ’please speak English banter’, “Hey, how’s it going?”.  She bites, “Good.”  She asks for my name so I start to spell it out, “vanneste” and she writes “vannisti”.  I’m like ”no, no, it’s vann-E-st-E, EEEEEE.”  She ends up giving me paper to write my name on.  Problem solved.

Getting back to the apartment wasn’t too bad.  Montreal has all these stupid rules where you can’t turn at certain times of the day.  It’s like ”8:47am, drive straight only, 8:48am go wherever you want.”  Of course the street I need to turn on doesn’t allow turning left so I end up going for blocks and blocks and they never let me turn left.  Eventually I just turn around in a gas station and go back.  I finally arrived home, stabbed free.

[tags]jeffrey,montreal[/tags]