The Tale of the Unattainable Rental Car

"Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance." -- Author Unknown

I apologize for my brief hiatus from blog-world. Working with insurance companies, car dealers and chiropractors has proven to be a full-time job (in addition to that other full-time job that I have). For the past two weeks, this has been a day in the life of Stephanie:

Drive my rental car to work.

Work until my lunch break.

Return phone calls from insurance company people named Melvin and Dodd.

Go back to work until 5pm.

Drive my rental car to the chiropractor.

Get aligned and cracked.

Drive my rental car home.

Eat dinner.

Talk to my dad about insurance people and learn how to haggle with them.

Go to sleep.

Repeat.

The main things worth writing about are what happen in the time between dinner and sleep. Here is one of several anecdotes, for your reading pleasure.

The day after I was almost flattened by an SUV, I realized that I had no car and would probably need one in order to successively drive places. Seems like a simple idea, yet I had overlooked it. My dad wisely noted that the other guy’s insurance should be expected to pay for a rental car. In an ideal world, that would also seem like a simple idea.

We quickly learned that due to my lack of being alive for 25 years, I could only rent from Enterprise (where you only need to be 21… 4 years makes a big difference? Slash do they know that it was the 70 year old man that was the incapable driver and not the 22 year old? Ageists.). So naturally, we called them… only to discover that every car in the city was currently in use. Really? I did not know that was even possible! How can a reasonably sized city like Charlotte be completely void of rental cars? Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. But my dad was even less happy than that because he had the pleasure of driving me to work on Monday morning prior to the crack of dawn. I made some smart comment about how he should wear a chauffeur hat, which did not amuse him. But not much does amuse him at 7:30am.

I was finally able to get a rental car four whole days after the incident. Good thing 37 friendly lawyers sent me some light reading material about how they would love to help me sue the other guy. So I didn’t get bored.

For most people, the Tale of the Unattainable Rental Car would have ended here. But not for me. First of all, I was given the ugliest car in the world. It was some modern looking version of a station wagon with excessive amounts of blind-spots and immediately branded Loser across my forehead. Also, it reeked of smoke. Most people could handle this if it was their only option. But my body revolts in the presence of smoke and what can only be called its “after remnants.” So it was giving me headaches and not helping my neck and back to heal appropriately.

My father, being the loving and protective parent that he is, politely phoned Enterprise to tell them about the entire saga. And when I say politely, I mean that I’m pretty sure he threatened to shoot up the place. The very next day, I got a call from Enterprise telling me that they had a 2010 Hyundai Sonata (the exact type of car that the SUV man totaled) waiting for me. As I pulled up in the smoky monstrosity, they were polishing the Sonata and smiling widely. They also noted that they had gone out and smelled it themselves to make sure it was to my liking.

Moral of the story: it pays to complain, especially to the Regional Vice President of Enterprise. Go big or go home.

Car 101

“If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” --Thomas Edison

It all started when a friend of a friend needed female volunteers for a trial Car 101 class. He had recently opened a garage where people can rent space and his tools and fix their cars… for much cheaper than taking it to a mechanic. Since not everyone knows how to fix their own car, he also wanted to have classes. Naturally, I thought that this class had been made just for me and my car ignorance.

Here are some highlights:

The first thing the “teacher” asked us was what we do when something goes wrong with our car. Unanimous answer: call a boy (husband, father, brother, etc.)

Next we learned that cars are very complex entities, much like the human body. Go with me on this. It makes sense, I promise.

--The frame of the car is like its skeleton. It holds everything up in a supportive fashion.

--The engine of the car takes gas and air and makes energy, allowing the car to do fancy things like move. This process is similar to how our bodies take food and turns it into energy.

--The transmission of the car is akin to muscles in the body. In the same way that muscles help the body to move around, the transmission helps transmit energy from the engine to the wheels. Try moving your body without muscles… or try moving your car without a transmission (or very steep hill).

--The suspension in your car absorbs motion through springs, tires, and struts when we go over bumps and hills. This is just like how our tendons and ligaments help us absorb motion/stop moving when we run, jump or fall.

--The electrical system is like the car’s brain. What good are the crazy intricate parts without a mastermind behind them?

I hope that makes as much sense in writing as it does in my head.

That’s pretty much all that I took away from the lecture portion of the class. You have to remember that I knew NOTHING prior to setting foot in that garage. Thus, this was a lot of information to take in. However, we quickly moved on to the participatory part, which was handy because I tend to learn by doing.

Ok. You might want to sit down for this (although, I don’t know many people that read blogs on their computer while standing, but I digress). I, knower of nothing car related, can now change a tire without asking a male person. You have my permission to be impressed. It’s really not as hard as I thought it would be. I will go into further detail about how to do this (in case, you don’t know and want to know, like I did) in a later post.

I hope you’re still sitting down. If not, heads up; you might want to be. I, knower of nothing car related except how to successfully change a tire while being supervised by other knowers, can now change her own oil. I’m less confident in my abilities on this one because if you do it wrong, there are more serious consequences. But if there was ever a pop quiz on oil changing or if someone dared me to do it or if I lived in a world without Jiffy Lubes (what a sad place that would be)… I could totally do it!

This is intense progress, people.

Top 5 things I learned in Car 101:

1.      I really did know nothing about cars before I took this class. Wow.

2.      If it leaks, it’s broken.

3.      Changing your own oil, while it can give you a sense of accomplishment, is much more inconvenient than taking it to Jiffy Lube.

4.      Every car is different. It’s a conspiracy to make you feel stupid.

5.      Chassis (rhymes with Lassie) is a really fun word to say.

I definitely felt like taking this class was a productive use of 3 hours.