Home exchange is about nothing if not logistics. Coordinating the vacation plans, travel schedule and accommodations of one family is hard enough. Try doing it for two different groups of people.
Those details will change, often on the spur of the moment. That's what our swap partners found out when they parked their car in the airport parking lot on the morning of their flight to Mexico.
If you want to start a car, you need a key. Before they left on vacation, the California swappers gave us the key to their home and car. They told us to just lock the keys in the glove compartment when we dropped off the car at the park-and-fly hotel they chose for their first night back after vacation.
But the airport parking lot insisted that the exchangers leave their only remaining copy of their car key, in case the lot attendants needed to move the car for some reason. That is the parking lot's policy so the swappers had no choice.
That means we have their car key and they don't.
Home exchange takes a lot of trust. These exchangers are counting on us to drive their car carefully, return it in good condition, and, most importantly, bring it to the place where they need to find it after their trip.
When we drop it off, the swappers now ask that we bring one set of keys to the front desk of the hotel and lock the other set in the glove compartment in case the hotel staff lose the first key.
The day the exchangers fly home, I have a flight to catch as well. I have to allow enough time to leave their home thoroughly clean, drive to the hotel they are using, and take a shuttle back to the airport.
As I have said before, home exchange is for responsible adults. It might be more convenient for me to just park the car at the airport for the owners to drive to their hotel, but that isn't what the swappers want us to do.
The least we can do for these folks, who are letting us use their home and car for two weeks, is drop off their car when and where they want it. Home exchange is a two way street. I will be driving this car on the two-way street of my swap partners' convenience.
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