Yesterday I boarded a plane and flew to San Francisco where I rented a car and drove to my boat at Coyote Point Marina. As Monday was my last day at Sony, at least for now, I had to clean out my sailboat so I could sell it. I pulled all of the big stuff off the boat and loaded into the back of the rental car and then sold the boat to an old coworker. His one request was that I help put the sails back on the boat so he could start using it on weekends. I obliged and showed him how to get everything set up. I also showed him how to start the engine. Then I got in the car and made the 11-hour drive back to Salt Lake City. The flight was much easier than the drive.
When I made my rental car reservation, I had the option of several rental car companies. Ultimately I settled on Hertz as they had cars available and also the best rate. I set the rental pickup at the airport and then gave myself until 10pm this evening to return the car to the location 2 miles from my house. Talk about convenient.
National has always allowed you to select the car you wanted when you arrive at their lot. This is something Hertz recently started doing and I really appreciated it yesterday. I knew I had a lot of stuff to bring back, including a generator, 2 televisions, and a mountain bike, so I passed on the Ford Mustang. While it would have been a fun car, not everything would have fit. I also wanted something that got great gas mileage as I would be responsible for filling the tank multiple times. Ultimately I settled on a very new Ford Escape. I put the back seats down and the bike fit nicely. Then I just loaded stuff around the bike. The generator rode in the front passenger's seat next to me.
Lately all of the cars I have rented have had key-less starts. You just have the key in the car and press the start button. It is a feature I really like. I also quickly connected the car's sound system to my phone so that I could use all of the hands-free features. It came in handy as I talked with my wife and other family members while driving. That kept some of the boredom at bay. It also had satellite radio that I started using just outside of Lake Tahoe when the traditional radio stations started getting scarce. I began with music but by the end of the drive, I was listening to comedy to help pass the time.
I turned the car back into Hertz this morning and saved myself $50 by not doing it this evening. I have to say that I really enjoyed all of the electronic features in the Ford Escape. Before I connected my phone to the car, its own navigation system did an excellent job routing me and also giving me an ETA into Salt Lake. Of course it didn't take into account the hour nap I would need outside of Elko, Nevada but it did factor in stops for gas and that soft-serve ice cream cone from McDonalds at midnight. Ultimately my favorite feature in the rental car was the fact that I averaged 30 miles per gallon of gas while mostly doing 80 miles per hour (the legal speed limit for most of the trip . . . once you get outside of California). My mother-in-law is looking for a good all-wheel drive car and I highly recommend this one. Full disclosure: I own a Ford F-150 truck and also own 190 shares of Ford stock. While both of these may influence me somewhat, I still liked the car a lot for my California-to-Utah road trip.
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