wire coat hangers - we love 'em

Here's the tale of the final u-haul incident before leaving seattle:

Everything took three times as long to do as we thought it would. Finally, on Saturday night at 10:30 pm Riff and I climbed into our car and prepared to leave the Biltmore (our apartment) with all of our stuff in the u-haul trailer behind us. Marta was in her carrier, our bed was in the free pile and all that remained was to come back in the morning to clean and drop off the keys. We were staying with Riff's sister, Erin, in Redmond that night because everything was packed and the apartment was emptied. Riff asked me to check the lights on the trailer before we headed out and guess what? That's right, nothing! We checked the wiring (done by the Rainier Ave U-haul when they installed the hitch,) but it seemed fine. Riff called the U-haul main number and tried to explain our dilemma to the nincompoops at their call center.
"So you've got a flat tire?" the third person Riff was transferred to asked. "Read me the number off the keytag." Of course there is no keytag since it's a trailer - which we had already told them several times - duh!
"Well, you say it's parked in front of your domicile? We'll send someone over in the morning." Said the next person.
We explained that we had no bed to sleep in that night and the operator assured us that they would call within a half hour to tell us when to expect a mechanic.

Meanwhile, two girls from our apartment building came out to the car that was parked behind us in the load zone. They had locked their keys in the car but the passenger side window was rolled down about an inch.
"Do you guys have a wire hanger?" one of them asked. We did. Wire hangers were actually one of the few items left in our now vacant apartment. So we spent the next half hour killing time by hanging out with them while they tried to catch the lock on the door handle and trigger it to open. Finally, I suggested that they extend the wire hanger to it's full length and hook the keys out of the ignition. A few minutes later they had reeled the keys in and were on their way.

Not long after their departure a mechanic called Riff's cell phone. He told us that he was a 2 hour drive away but that he would try to help us over the phone. He and Riff spent the next 10 or 15 minutes testing the connections from the car to the trailer and ruling out possible causes for the malfunction. Finally he asked Riff, "Do you have any wire?" Riff ran upstairs to get another wire coat hanger. Within minutes he had created a ground for the circuit by attaching one end of the coat hanger to the hitch and the other to the pin under the car. Success! Our lights came on and we were on our way. The next day, Riff's dad got some copper wiring and they rigged up a better connection.



So u-haul still sucks, thanks to the technical support from the far away mechanic (who did not work for u-haul, but saved the day,) and thank goodness for wire hangers!