Month: August 2002

General Filthiness

Made it back to Aiken in the rental car with 3 hours and 50 miles to spare. We left at 7:00am and got back to our driveway at 3:00pm. 8 hours is a long time to be cooped up in that air conditioned cocoon of an automobile, but it served it’s purpose well, we are not nearly as frazzled as we would have been if we had spent that same amount of time and mileage in the Miata.

In spite of the heat, I could not resist putting the top down as I led Donna back to the rental place to return the car. It also felt really good to be connected to the road again, turn the wheel the car turns, step on the gas the car lurches forward and everything was back in perspective again (everything was bigger than me) 🙂

Donna read the whole office of Enterprise people the riot act about the shabby rental the gave us. The very low front tire that made the car ride funny to the melted crayon in the back seat to the general filthiness of the car. She told them of her sister’s comment upon seeing the car, “Did you get this from Rent-A-Wreck?” As their way of apologizing they took the rental fee for one day off the price. A nice offering, but we still probably won’t go back to them when we rent a car in September to take the trip up north.

I-95 Construction

We drove from Walterboro, SC to Daytona Beach, FL on I-95 this weekend and it seems like 50% of the trip was through road construction. Mostly they were widening it from 2 lanes to 3 on a side, but in some spots it was repairing the damages lanes. Fortunately we never encountered any slow downs because of the goings on. In South Carolina there were the standard construction zone signs and the usual reduced speed limit signs. In Georgia the signs were augmented by baby and kid pictures with captions that read like, “My daddy works here, please slow down so I will see him again.” In Florida the had signs that read “Fines doubled when workers present.” I guess a smart lawyer might be able to get you off if you were speeding when there are no workers present, huh?

Crammed Into The Living Room

The only time we drove the Impala today was a 3 mile trip to the New York Pizza World to have dinner with about half the gang. On the way down there were 4 of us in the car, but on the way back we filled the thing up with 6 people. Brother-in-law’s nephew and his 3 boys got dropped off to eat and need a lift back. We were all headed back to our house for cake and ice cream for Donna’s brother’s 50th birthday party. Not only the 16 who ate pizza, but almost everybody else who was there crammed into the living room for the “party.” Paul (said brother-in-law) regaled us with Jimmy Buffet, Jim Morris and other’s songs on his guitar. By 10pm everyone headed back to their respective houses so that Donna and I could get to bed. They all knew we had to get up early for the big drive home the next day.

Free Air?

Needed air for the left front tire on the rental car. We were in a truck stop/convenience store thing and looked all over for the air. Finally found it behind a parked 18-wheeler. Went around to the other side and when I picked up the hose it was just whooshing away. There was a split in the hose near the chuck. Across the street we went to the next gas-n-go place. They had one on the side that you had to put money in to get air out. It said 50 cents, but after I dropped the first quarter in the compressor kicked on, so I tired to pump up the tire. The pressure coming out of the hose was weaker than if I was exhaling through a straw. The sign said 50 cents, so maybe you had to put both quarters in to make it work right. I put the second quarter in and it didn’t get any better. On to station #3. Their air was also 50 cents. More pressure, but not much more. At least I got the tire pumped up before the time ran out. Of course I have no idea what the tire pressure was because the gage thing attached to the chuck was broke. I just made the side wall look like the one on the other side of the car.

Frost On Your Nose

Hit the road about 8am to finish the rest of the trip to Orlando. The Impala is quiet and eats up interstate expansion joints smoothly. It seems to get pretty good gas mileage and the AC is powerful enough to put frost on your nose in the middle of summer. The radio has this cool feature that if you are tuned into a station that has this feature it will put the call letters in the display where the frequency is for every one else. It also keeps playing after you shut the car off and remove the key, but shuts off as soon as any door gets opened. Another feature that is disconcerting until you are used to it is the headlights and dome light stay on for a few minutes after you shut the car off and walk away. One “feature” I’ve never liked is the automatically locking of the doors when the car is put in gear. As a matter of fact we actually locked our selves inside the car for a while. The first time Donna came to a stop she just turned the car off. It was still in drive. The doors didn’t automatically unlock. Just using the lock button on the doors would *NOT* unlock the car. Putting the shift lever into park didn’t work either. We had to put the car in park, start it up and then shut it off again before the locks would release.

Enterprise Car Rental

When we picked up the rental car and were doing the walk around, Donna mentioned to the agent that the left front tire looked low. She replied, “We are on a hill.” I looked, and the way the car was parked, it looked like a reasonable response. After about fifty miles of driving we were thinking about seeing if we could swap cars in Orlando because it had a vibration that was bordering on annoying. At a stop for refreshments on all level ground the tire still looked low. We put some air in it and the vibration went away. What do you know? Never doubt Donna when she says a tire is low!

Barely See Her In The Rear

At lunch we went out to run an errand and it was already so hot that we put the top up. For the afternoon we stretched the cockpit cover over the car with the top up and the windows down to keep the interior cool. Not pretty, but functional. Crazy Red sells one that is designed to go over a raised top (and roll/style bars,) but I’m not sure it would be worth buying at this point as we just bought this one. Maybe if we end up with a lot of the raised top situations…

After work we stopped by Enterprise Car Rental to pick up our temporary ride. This weekend we are headed down to Orlando for a mini-family reunion. If we were going for a week we would have drove the Miata, but where roughly 1/4 of the total 3 day weekend time is spent in the car on the interstate we want something a little more comfortable for the trip. We reserved a standard size with a CD player, we ended up with a full size Chevy Impala and just a tape deck, no big deal. The Impala is BIG (at least compared to the Miata,) on the drive home Donna was following me in the Miata and I could barely see her in the rear view mirror. Tonight we were going as far as Savannah and then finish the trip on Saturday morning.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
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