Rental Car
I've often been told I drive to fast. I know, you don't believe it, but it's true. Well this morning, I was coming out of work and hit some sand on a sharp turn. Now usually this isn't too big a deal... then again, usually people don't take sharp turns at 50. It started off as a nice gentle turn... followed by my front right tire hitting the curb. Now, if your all ready spinning down the road at 50 miles an hour, the last thing you want to do is tap the curb with your front right tire, among other things, such as structural damage to the vehicle and curb, it tends to spin you quite a bit faster. One might think that this would make a person quite dizzy, but that is what happens to lesser people, I was not dizzy. Using my remarkable driving skills I manage to drive my car up onto the curve... sideways. Ok, maybe it wasn't so much my driving skills as just natures way of stopping a spinning car, but in either case, I stopped.. facing the wrong way on the curb. The damage wasn't too bad... or at least that's what I thought until I started driving again. For some reason, my car was now making random turns completely unrelated to the direction I aimed my steering wheel. While this did make for an exciting trip, it was none to amusing and so I figured it might be time to take my car in to the experts.
I got my car into the Mechanic early the next morning where I found that the damage I caused cost enough money to purchase one of the smaller great lakes. At least my insurance was going to pay for most of it up to my deductible. We called around from the service center to find a rental and found much to my surprise, everyone was out of rental cars. Mind you, I know how to drive on snow and ice, but other people don't seem to, and because of the snow causing so many accidents every rental place was out. We finally called Hertz who reported that they had one vehicle in, but that I probably didn't want it. What was this person thinking? Of course I wanted it! I figured he was probably trying to hold onto it for a better customer so I told him I didn't care what it was and that he should hold it for me. Looking back all I can say is, "Boy was that stupid..."
I got down to Hertz and went straight to the counter, plopped down my credit card, and quickly signed away for the vehicle, which I had not yet seen. I sat down and waited for a few minutes wondering what was taking them so long to bring me my car. "Oh, we are just washing the van before we get it to you." Van? Oh great, I'm going to be stuck driving a mini-van around for the next week... I guess it could be worse... A few minutes later they told me my vehicle was ready, I stepped out front and gaped in awe at my new vehicle. It wasn't a mini-van. It wasn't even a passenger van... it was a cargo van. A huge sparkling white van with the proud words 'Hertz Rent-a-Van' painted boldly on either side of the van.
I thought to myself, "Wow...". What else was there to say... I was in awe of the size and beauty of this vehicle... all size, no beauty. I climbed up into the cab to admire it's sleek AM Radio, the Hertz workers barely concealing their glee at suckering me into renting this beast. Ok.. it's just a week. I can live with this for just one week. That's what I thought for the first few hours, then night came. What a great time to find out that I have no lights. None. Well unless you count my high beams which seemed to work fine and endeared me to the hearts of many fellow drivers. Trust me, people love to see a cargo van with it's brites on coming up in them from behind. The next day I waited a few hours at the rental place til a new car came in which I gladly took in change, a Mitsubishi Mirage.