#19…rent a car. Done.
I have no idea why this was on my LIST. There is nothing particularly thrilling or exciting about renting a car. It’s not very difficult to do, however it is pretty expensive. I think renting a car made it on the list because its something you’re not supposed to be able to do before you’re 25. It is supposed to be one of the things to look forward to about 25. I can remember lamenting the passing of my 21st birthday, claiming I had nothing left to look forward to birthday wise. Several people, in an odd attempt to cheer me up, said “hey, when you’re 25 you can rent a car!” Yup, and you get a break on car insurance-woohoo!
Turns out, you don’t actually have to be 25 to rent a car. Yup, true story, sorry if I shattered the illusion for you. If you’re willing to spend more cash, rental companies will rent to you even if you’re 21, and some of the shadier companies even rent to 18 year olds.
So ya, I put it on my list of things to do before I turn 25. It’s my small way of standing up to the man, the man who told me “hey! you can’t rent cars before you turn 25, everyone knows that!” So there. Take that man.
I rented a car for the big Vegas trip. Ollie and I had always talked about renting a convertible and driving through the dessert, turn out, they’ll rent to you if you are 24 + change (for a fee of course) but they won’t rent you the fun cars like convertibles. Drats, there went that dream.
I originally had a reservation through some super shady discount rental company, but then I figured the car wasn’t really the best place to cut corners. What if it broke down in the middle of nowhere and I got blamed for it? Huh? What then!? So I upgraded and went with an economy car from Enterprise-which turned out to be an excellent idea because the line to pick up your car at Enterprise was teeny tiny, while the line for the discount place was out the door.
We checked in at Enterprise and paid for the car with relative ease, and then were directed to the Enterprise lot to pick up our whip. Cameron, a very chatty and friendly Vegas native (his family had been in Las Vegas since the 30s) had some difficulty finding us a car. Apparently all the economy cars had gone missing. We tried to talk Cameron into letting us take a convertible, alas we were not successful. Cameron tried to talk us into taking a minivan, alas he was not successful. He was very enthusiastic about how the minivan’s doors opened automatically-but we weren’t falling for it.
Eventually we found a happy medium, an all black SUVish Nissan(?) that Cameron claimed he had never seen before. We hopped in the car, got all situated, and took off.
I was a wreck driving the car. I was convinced that even though we had paid the fee for the insurance, some sneaky Enterprise employee was going to follow us around, waiting for the perfect opportunity to key our car or run us off the road-all so they could collect more money from us. Thankfully that didn’t actually happen. And that was the only time I had to drive the car. Ollie drove us around all week (even though I was the only one registered to drive the car-BADASSES)
We made it through the whole vacation and a drive out to the Hoover Dam without injuring the car, ourselves, or any helpless third parties-so I am deeming this venture from the LIST a success!
Thanks for reading! xo Whitney