Magic Zipcar Bike Guy

[dmaze]

On Saturday I took a trip out to Sudbury. I figured I'd get there by Zipcar, so I reserved the car behind the Davis Square Brooks Pharmacy from noon to 4, bussed to Davis, had burrito at Anna's, and found the car. The car opened up fine, but wouldn't start. So I called Zipcar and said, "the car won't start!" The person on the phone ran me through his tech support checklist -- is the wheel locked? can you turn the key? does waving your card at the card reader help any? -- and finally concluded that the car was, in fact, having issues, and that there was someone about ten minutes away that they'd send by.

So I'm sitting in the car, expecting the magic Zipcar tow truck to come by. And since I'm by the end of the bike path, various people are going by, some on bikes. One person rides by on a bike, but pulls up in front of the car instead of behind and gets off; I figure out that this is, in fact, the Zipcar person. He plays with the car, tries to start it, disconnects their boxes and tries again, finds an inside light that got left on (oops) and determines that low battery is the cause of the failure.

The Zipcar guy gets out of the car, goes over to his courier bag, pulls out this smallish battery with jumper clamps and jump-starts the car.

Zoom!