Rough weekend that I’m glad is over.
Long story short, I had to help move the Girl back to Reynosa. She lost her job in January and hasn’t had much luck landing a new one. Her best prospects are out of state. I had a coworker at Lucent that was a native down here that said it best; DFW can be a very cruel place if you don’t have a job. I’ve found that in my own life. When I was laid off, friends I thought I had treated me like getting let go was contagious. Hell, not a month after it happened, we had some friends over. The idiot wife was chirping about getting to ride on the company jet to an achievers weekend.
Dude worked for Cisco. No thought of offering help or any advice. I asked what it was like working for a company that culled the bottom 5% every year. He said to just do not be in the bottom five. Nice. So getting laid off in DFW is tough. It’s at least 5-6 months to score a comparable gig. Far longer if you are older than 50, if you can find one at all.
In her case, the husband died without a will, and she’s not on the deed to the house. She has that tied up in court. She inherited a lot of his debt from bad choices, and her situation here became untenable. But she owns a house in Reynosa. She has savings and retirement there as well a family that can help her with her autistic adult son. What would she do if she were here and needed to travel for an interview?
So we left Friday, way later than we should have and cannonballed 8 hours to McAllen and the border. The original plan was to leave earlier, move her stuff into her house, and me being across the border before dark. Didn’t happen. So I checked into the hotel room I reserved, and she got one for her and the kid. We moved her stuff in the morning, and got back through the border. We parted ways at the Whataburger right over the border.
It was a heartbreaking weekend. I’m stoic about such things.
That said, I thought I’d throw some shade on the rental car we got. Not a fan. Also not a fan of Enterprise rentals. Enterprise is where you go when you drop the car at the body shop to get fixed after an accident. They usually have a desk at the shop. It’s punishing to rent a car there otherwise. We were supposed to get a Nissan Rogue, but they gave it to a woman (a brother hooking a sista’ up. That’s all I got to say about that). They told us that she was turning it back in but needed it longer. Bullshit. That car was there when we rolled up, and she wasn’t. Not for nearly 20 minutes.
Whatever. They gave us a Jeep Wranger for the same price.
Good thing? Plenty of room for stuff. More than a Nissan. Bad thing? It’s a Jeep. It has the aerodynamics of a chicken coop, a bad thing with wind and storms. It had a weezy 4 banger that wouldn’t pull unless the turbo was spooled up. The mighty Excursion I have has gobs of torque. A small press on the pedal and you get seamless, linear power. Not with this buggy. Slight press of the pedal, you get a sigh. Then it takes off. A manic/depressive acceleration event.
Driving I pondered what the hell the instrument cluster designer was thinking.
I didn’t get a shot of what I saw. With the steering wheel set the way I like it, You couldn’t see the Tach or the Speedometer. The wheel blocked the middle of both. The biggest display was the arcade game MPG meter, with an instantaneous MPG number to the right. Who the hell cares about that? Is that information integral to operating the vehicle? It isn’t. On my truck, that info is on the ceiling console, along with the compass.
The seatback control is the dumbest I’ve seen on any car. There’s a bid dial for lumbar. There’s a lever to manually raise and lower the seat. To move the seatback forward and backwards, it’s a nylon strap that is nearly unreachable if you aren’t stopped and looking right at it. Unfortunately, I was grabbing at it like a mental patient trying to relieve my aching back from the stiff ride and seats.
And, of course, it did what nearly every “American” rental car I’ve driven, it would ping like a ’72 pinto under load.
Back in the day, I had a ’94 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It wasn’t an awful truck. It had the bulletproof 4.0L inline Jeep motor. But it had weird clunks and shudders in 4WD that had me thinking that if I bought it new, I’d be pissed. Same here.
I guess I’m spoiled. I went from a 4Runner, to a Sequoia, to an Excursion.
Inspected By Pat 