So on my MQ travels this week, I elected to drive to visit a customer.\u00a0 Typically driving to a customer who is less than 200 miles away is faster and with less hassle then flying (Take off your shoes!\u00a0 Put your laptop in a bin! Bend over!).\u00a0 Or so I believed.<\/p>\n
Beliefs are meant to be tested, and mine were.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I had arranged to pick up a rental car at 11 am, after the morning rush and in plenty of time for me to make it to my destination (2 hours) for a 3 pm call, both early and late enough to avoid the dreaded Atlanta rush hour.<\/p>\n
There were no cars.\u00a0 Yes a car rental place with no cars available.\u00a0 This was not a walk-up rental, I had made it well in advance and I do have a certain status with this company.\u00a0 No cars in the class my company allows us to rent at any rate, there were a couple of nice Mercedes in the lot.<\/p>\n
A waiting gentleman just rejected a Jeep, on the grounds that the whole reason he had rented a car was to avoid the gas bill of an SUV and where was his sedan.\u00a0\u00a0 I was told a 10 minute wait as a return was being prepped. And as you have surely guessed, it was 30 minutes and I received the rejected Jeep.<\/p>\n
Then there was a classic error on my part \u2013 in something of a hurry now, I drove it back to my house (<2 miles) before adjusting all the mirrors.\u00a0 I just did the rear view.\u00a0 After getting my overnight bag and laptop aboard, I ran thru the full trip prep.\u00a0 And the side views would not adjust electronically. All the buttons pushed, prodded and sworn at and it ignored me like my cat.\u00a0 Well, I can do it manually I thought.\u00a0 I adjusted them, and before leaving the drive they were by to their original skewed focus.<\/p>\n
Back to Hertz, where they tried and got the same effect.\u00a0 And the refrain, ‘We have no cars at the moment.’\u00a0 ‘Oh if you wait 10 minutes we have one being returned.’<\/p>\n
40 minutes later I had a Mazda 2, or 1.5 as an extended teammate calls it (“They rounded up on that.”).\u00a0 It ran. sort of.\u00a0 It was subject to sway with every passing semi – and there were a whole lot that passed me.\u00a0 The sway almost pushed me into a long line of orange barrels several times. \u00a0The driver seat is equivalent to a coach seat on just about any airline.\u00a0 It had the same size fuel tank as a riding mower, with less power.<\/p>\n
It got me there, even though I did have to get off the highway for my conference call.\u00a0 The trip back was just as exciting, as the road construction in various places slowed all traffic up just enough for me to hit Atlanta at the awful afternoon rush hour. \u00a0Did you know that a disabled vehicle has never been seen on I-285 before?<\/p>\n
A slightly more than 2 hour trip took > 5 each way. \u00a0It would have been faster to fly. \u00a0Of course if I elect to fly next time, there will surely be tornadoes.<\/p>\n
Safe travels!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"