. We decided to take a leisurely drive down the Pacific Coast highway, winding through some beach towns before meeting Terrence and Jen in Dana Point for dinner, a town about half way between where we are in LA and they live, north of San Diego in La Jolla. This picture of a statue of a surfer was taken along the way.Darren and I started our day looking for a car wash. The line up was more than a block long, so we decided to skip the wash and pick up cell phones. It was about 2 pm, and we thought we'd be done within the hour, giving us about 3 hours before our dinner reservation. Ha. First, we had known that having no credit in the US was a problem, but we thought that we had solved it by opening bank accounts with the US branch of a Canadian bank. Not so much. Although we will be able to get credit cards, it will still take about 3 months before we have any credit established, and even then only Darren will have a credit rating as I don't have a social security number (due to the type of visa I have, I can't get one unless I find an employer willing to sponsor me). We had spoken to a few cell phone companies, and knew that the deposit was going to be hefty, but that we'd get it back at the end of the year.
We thought we'd try one more time to get phones without a deposit. After spending about 20 minutes with a nice guy at the Cingular (the new AT&T) store, we had picked out phones, settled on colours, and Darren had selected a new wireless headset. Then we went to go set up the accounts. When the credit department told the store manager how much they wanted for a deposit, even he was taken by surprise. Turns out they wanted $500 for each line. As Darren and I debated whether we should just get one phone now and wait 3 months to get the other, or whether to take a pay-as-you-go plan, Melvin, the store manager, kept trying to convince the credit department that they only needed to take one deposit, to no avail. Finally, he gave us a deal on the phones (no charge, waiving the $100 fee), no activation fees (saving another $60), and a discount on the headset. It took us almost 2 hours to sort out all of the details, and we left the store nearly 2 hours after we got there, after paying the hefty deposit, and consoling ourselves that at least we now had accounts that would help us establish credit.
We headed
for Dana Point, passing through Long Beach, Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach. Lots of people out enjoying the surf and sun, although it was only about 68F. So many people out, as a matter of fact, that it took us nearly 2 more hours to travel the 60 miles. We made it to the restaurant with 5 minutes to spare. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Terrence and Jen, and are looking forward to seeing more of them over the summer.
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