Bad Zip Car, great weekend

Well, I guess it was inevitable. We had our first negative experience with Zip Car last weekend. But we still had a great weekend.

The weekend started early with parent/teacher conferences on Friday. Of course, it’s just kindergarten so let’s not get carried away here, but it’s really nice to hear teachers say wonderful things about your daughter. And since our conference was at 4:00 we asked our nanny to work late so we could do (gasp) an early dinner and a movie. Truth be told, we don’t get out that much.

There’s a new place near us that we wanted to try. It was a beautiful day so we sat outside. The food was great and so were the drinks. (My wife had The Fair Harbor and I had the Ommegang Witte – tasty)

We saw State of Play which was good, not great. But for someone who hasn’t been to the movies in ages, just relaxing with the popcorn was worth it.

The next day we were visiting my wife’s sister. But we had also agreed to take Danielle’s best friend while her mother was doing an all day class. It was another great day. We went to the park in the morning and Danielle had her swim class after lunch.

Have I mentioned who her new swim teacher is? You can look him up here or here (Anthony Ervin). Really, an Olympic gold medal winner teaching 6 year olds is serious overkill, but he’s really nice and good with the kids.

To look at him you wouldn’t guess how good he once was. Yes, he’s tall and thin with 0% body fat (and tattoos covering both arms). He’s a bit geeky looking. When you get close you notice the huge feet. And teaching in the pool you can’t tell. Except for one time when he was out of the pool and the three kids were doing the backstroke. They weren’t supposed to go all the way to the other end of the pool but they did and once they started they couldn’t hear him. So he walks about halfway down the pool, does kind of a sideways dive into the water and about a split second later he emerges at the other end of the pool. OK, he’s still fast.

After swimming we we going to my wife’s sisters. We had the Zip Car reserved for 4:30. When I left swimming I had a voicemail from Zip Car. The person who had the car before me wasn’t going to be back until 6:00. Well that sucks. I called them to see if there were any other cars available. The first totally gorgeous weekend of the year. Any guesses? No cars. So we’re basically stuck. It was very annoying, though in truth it didn’t really impact our weekend overall. Funny how an hour and a half can seem like a disaster at first and be a non-event later.

Apparently Zip Car has a pretty emphatic no tolerance policy on lateness. The other driver will get fine $50 for every hour she was late (would be nice if the inconvenienced party got some of that…).

We got up to my wife’s sisters place a bit late, but the girls napped on the way so they were ready to go. Everyone played and had a great time. We played the next morning had lunch and headed back. And since Danielle’s friend’s mother wasn’t going to finish her class until 6:00 on Sunday, we did a picnic in the park.

There’s a park in Brooklyn tucked in between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge called Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park. It’s a great little park, and will eventually be park of a much bigger park. It’s also very close to one of the best pizza places around (at least according to Zagat’s). You can count on standing outside in line for at least a half an hour to get a table. But they take pick up orders. So 45 minutes ahead of time, I call them. Then later I just walk from the park, skip the line, pick up my pizza (really annoying the 30 people waiting in line) and walk back to the park.

A delicious end to an awesome weekend.