Well That Wasn't What I Was Expecting

Ahh travel...

We have a saying in this house.

No one remembers when things go exactly as to plan.

I mean seriously, who likes a travel story  that goes like this:

We showed up and breezed through security.  Then we boarded a flight that was completely uneventful and comfortable.  Then we got to our destination, and the hotel was exactly as we expected.  Then we wandered around the city, and the people were friendly and accommodating.  We ate exactly what we were expecting the whole time.  It was almost like being at home.

Ugh, shoot me.  BORING!!

So, what makes me revisit our travel mantra this time?

We just got back from a trip to visit some friends and family in Colorado.  Before we flew in, I did some research to see the cheapest most efficient way to get us where we needed to go.

After looking at getting a car service to drive us to our friends' house and back down to see the family, then back to the airport, it was going to be over $100 in just car service fees, mainly through Lyft or Uber.  The tricky part was that there were probably not going to be many cars around to drive us where we needed to go at the times we needed.  I mean how many Lyft drivers are cruising around at 3:30 AM to take someone to the airport?

Regardless, I looked online and found a killer deal on a rental car. $14.50 a day plus taxes.  To rent a car for the 4 days came out to be ~$80.  Of course we would have to put gas into the thing, but sure... we now have the freedom to go where we wish when we need to.

So, we get off the plane, gather our bags.  And make our way to the rental car place.

They were just busing people into this place.  There had to be a line of about 35 people waiting to get their cars.  I guess that's what happens when the rate is so cheap.  So, we waited in line for about 45 minutes, until it was our turn.

At the desk the girl was nice enough, I'm sure she was getting shit on the entire time for people having to wait almost an hour to get a rental car at 11PM.  We were cordial, as we tend to be, I mean, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, it's not like she's dragging her feet to make everyone stand in line, she wants to go home too.

So, after signing away my life, she says:

So, you have a Yukon. It's in stall XYZ.  Walk out the door and it's too your right.

I kind of stood there, and replied:

Wait, did you say a Yukon?  For $14.50?

Yup

Ok, thanks?!

So, we walk outside, find our stall.  And what do we see?  It's not a Yukon... It's this thing:

Yes, that's a Suburban!?!

I did a doubletake, looked at the rental agreement again.  The license plate matched, and sure enough the description on the agreement said, "Chevy Suburban".  WTF??

Ok, we get a suburban for the two of us... and two our carry on bags.

Our Bags certainly had enough space.

And this wasn't just any Suburban, this thing was fully loaded.  Heated leather seats, Sunroof, navigation, dual climate control, I mean all the creature comforts you could imagine.  The driver's seat even vibrated if you got to close to something while parking.  It even had more TV's in it than we have in our house, and by that I mean 2, we only have 1 TV.

We hop in ready to go and start laughing.  The damn thing is literally almost half the size of our house.  We jokingly said, "Well, at least we have a place to stay if things go south this weekend."

So, here we are about to pull away in a Suburban, and we both make comments about how much gas we are going to have to put into this thing. Mrs. Wow drives a Mazda CX-5. Yes, an SUV, but a tiny one, that gets about 35 MPG.  And I drive a VW GTI, when I drive, mostly I'm on my bicycle.

As we're pulling out of the airport and driving down the road, I look down at the gas gauge, and can see the thing moving towards E.  We had driven all of 10 miles and the thing was almost at half a tank.  We started freaking out to the point that Mrs. Wow pulled out her phone and looked up the gas mileage that we were supposed to get.  (It's 16 city/23 highway btw).  I commented, "There is no way this thing only drives 20 miles on a tank."

Turns out the gas gauge was broken, in 15 miles, it went from full to below half.  But once the car warmed up, it moved back up to full.  Then next time we stared it, it just sat on E the whole time.  After the scare, I did some quick back of the napkin math that said we were going to have to put about 10 gallons of gas in the thing over the weekend.  So, about $30 in gas, not horrible.

So, yes, we spent the weekend cruising around in a Suburban.  And I don't know that I will ever get a chance to do that again.  But I wanted to give the thing a little review, so here we go:

The good parts:

• The creature comforts were nice.  Being that we live in LA, the heated seats were a life saver for the cold weather. We're weak and we know it.


• On Friday, we did a brewery tour where we met up with a bunch of other Bloggers.  It was actually handy to have a bus that we could tote everyone around in.  We even picked up the kids from school on the way back to the house.


• It was only $14.50/day to rent.  So, that might actually be cheaper than buying or leasing it.


• Being that the thing weighs like 2 tons, it was really nice to drive in the snow on the last day we were there.  We got about 4 inches of snow over night, so that made things nice.

Yes, It also had 4 wheel drive.

The bad parts:

• It is HUGE!!!  I don't know that I ever felt comfortable driving it, and for the 2 of us, it was beyond excessive and we really felt awfully wasteful.  It's also hard to park, since it doesn't fit in any spots.  And it's hard to maneuver.  I'm sure you get used to it, but still.


• It eats gas.  Gas gauge problems aside, we ended up feeding it about 15 gallons of gas to drive about 200 miles.  Not as bad as I would have expected, but certainly not good.

All in all, it was nice to drive and made for a fun weekend, but I can't see us rushing out to spend $60k on a new Suburban anytime soon.

Yup, that's a Suburban wedged in to a spot at MMM HQ.

Plus, It also makes for a good story, I guess I'll know what to expect next time.