I was so anxious to tell you all about the craziness of only being able to use cash as a method of payment on the college campus where I was attending my conference, that I forgot to tell you what I actually had to go through in order to get some cash to use. The day before I departed from Indiana on my flight down to Florida for the conference, things just ended up getting pretty busy, and by the time I finally got out of class and made it home to start doing laundry and packing, it never crossed my mind that I needed to get to my bank to use the ATM with no service fee so that I would have some cash for my trip. I don't really like to have cash on me for several reasons. The main reason is that, if I have cash on hand, I'll spend it too quickly, and secondly, cash is so inconvenient in most cases. But anyways, I had fully intended to get some cash from my bank's ATM, but I managed to muss that up. By the time I made it to Indianapolis on the shuttle bus, I remembered that I was going to need some cash for a taxi cab from the airport to the hotel once I made it to Florida. Things were pretty rushed on account of a really bad thunder storm that was making the lights in the airport flicker, so we thought it best to not putz around and get to our gate quickly. Well, by the time we made it through security, I realized that there wasn't an ATM in sight. I looked and saw that the security line was getting longer and longer, so I resolved that I would just hold off and wait until I got to Atlanta for my connecting flight so that I could get some cash.

When I arrived in Atlanta, I learned two important things. Number one...there are no ATMs in the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport that are not owned by Wachovia Bank. Number two...all the Wachovia Bank ATMs are the kind where you slide your card in and out quickly, rather than having the machine take the card internally. These two important fact caused two rather irritating problems in my search for cash. Problem number one...I do not have a checking account through Wachovia Bank, and hence I had to pay a ridiculous three dollar service fee just to use the ATM. Problem number two...as you all well know, my debit card has a magnetic strip issue and so these "in and out" machines would not read the card. This made me nervous at first, but I later used my card with no problem at all to get my sandwich for lunch shortly afterwards. So, once again, I had to resolve to wait and try again once I arrived in Florida.

When I finally did arrive in Florida, I found a lone ATM in the entire airport, and realizing that it was going to read my card, I didn't even think twice about the service fee that I was going to have to pay to get my cash. Also note that this was long before I knew that I was going to be having a twenty dollar cab fare coming up and having to use cash only on the campus. Without these two facts in mind, I only got forty dollars out of the ATM...which didn't last me too terribly long. The next day, after having paid for the cab fare, my dinner, and breakfast the following morning, my supply of cash was dwindling again, so I was scouting out another ATM. Lo and behold, Wachovia Bank has some deal with the university I was at, and I was afraid that I was going to have another problem. Luckily, I found an ATM that was an "insert the card" type, and so my card was read just fine and I took out plenty of cash to make it through the rest of the trip. Can you possibly imagine all these problems on account of a stupid little magnetic strip?!