2022, Automotive, Family, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized

The Rental

65 Comments

When we were planning our trip to Hawaii, we were using “award credits” from our company.  YA had quite a few and I had a small fortune, all of which had to be used within a certain amount of time after my retirement before I would lose them.  This made it easy to plan things that would have seemed atrociously expensive if it were coming out of my checking account (and have I mentioned how expensive everything is in Hawaii).  

Adding a rental car on Maui was a no-brainer.  It’s a 45-minute drive from the airport area to the two major resorts areas (Lahaina/Ka’anapali in one direction, Wailea in the other).  Even getting around once you are in the resort areas isn’t all that easy.  No sidewalks, no buses, a few rare shuttles and extremely expensive Ubers. As YA was scrolling through rental cars on the award credit site, she was looking for small, inexpensive models.  When I said “get a convertible” she just about fell off the bed.  When did her mother EVER advocate for something more expensive?  But there is backstory.

I’ve been is the islands many times over the past 30 years for work.  Yes, work.  And my job, even in paradisical places like Maui, was work.  Early on, I decided that one of the ways I would take care of myself was a convertible.  Usually it turned out to be cheaper than private transfers but while I used that as my “excuse”, the main reason was that for the day or so that I had on my own before clients showed up, I had the sun on my face and the wind in my hair.  In addition, Maui (and the Big Island) are fabulous for someone who is directionally challenged… so few roads!

When we got to the rental car center at the Maui airport, they sent us down to the big parking lot, saying “turn right and pick your convertible”.  There were three to choose from, all three white Ford Mustangs.  Easy peasy, right?  The two gals who had met us, helped get the luggage into the first car and said their goodbyes.  YA was hanging back as I got into the driver’s seat and then suggested that we “look at the other cars”.  I’m not at my best on travel days and I certainly didn’t see what there was to look at; they all looked identical to me.  She was adamant however and after poking through all three models, she announced that the farthest one was bigger inside and had leather seats.  Despite some whining on my part, I let her move the luggage to the bigger/leather interior.  I figured if the rental car company didn’t care which one we took, I shouldn’t care either.

I can’t tell you if this was a better car but it made YA happy and as we rounded the first hill on the West Maui Mountain Highway, coming upon the sun shining on the water, it made me happy as well.  This is why you want a convertible on Maui:

How do you keep your hair from getting mussed with the windows open or the top down?

65 thoughts on “The Rental”

  3. You don’t. : )

    Back in the day (well, my day, the 70s), we would just use a scarf or bandana tied at the nape of the neck, for such situations, but also just practically all the time – I don’t remember why.

    Other smart-alecky answers below, I’m sure…

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  4. Baboons are grateful that you picked a Mustang convertable not a Thunderbird in which to let your hair blow. Too much of Thelma and Louise vib in two ladies, mountains and Ford Thunderbirds.

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  5. T and L is one of my favorite movies. When I worked in CD treatment, we would show this to our teenage boys who were in treatment for addiction, and collecting the phone numbers of the “hot girls” on the female unit. Next we would discuss misogyny with them.

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  6. Rise and Drive the Coast, Baboons,

    Wow, VS, what a fun experience for your retirement trip. Getting this for nearly free is even better. So I must know, when you use credits to get such a benefit, do you have to pay all the fees and taxes in real money (meaning your money?). That is always about half of the expense.

    There is no way to not muss your hair, in my experience. Motorcycle helmet hair is even worse than convertible hair.

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    1. We had to pay for food and we had to pay for a couple of our activities and we had to pay the resort fees at the hotel, although that the actual room was covered. And valet we had to pay file for the rental car. So it wasn’t a free trip but it considering how much it cost to spend a week in Hawaii. It was more or less free. I did have to pay taxes on the award credits initially because those are considered income but you pay those when you are awarded the credits so I won’t see a bill for those.

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  7. Since I have straight, fine hair–albeit a decreasing amount every year–I’d either wear a baseball cap pulled tight or glop on some Brylcream and crank that Mustang up to max RPMs.

    Chris in Owatonna (who has never been to Hawaii)

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  10. Well, being the anxious person I am, I would be very uneasy riding in a convertible. Does a convertible have airbags? Should I wear a helmet? What about flying insects or birds? How can I listen to the radio with all the wind noise?

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    3. Yes, to airbags. I have never once had a bird or an insect affect my driving or riding in a convertible. And the radio wasn’t a problem. YA spent considerable time connecting her phone to the radio system of the car so that she could choose her own music.

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    1. Locked in trunk or put the top up and left locked in car or better yet don’t have a whole lot of stuff in the car that you don’t have to worry about.

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  12. I have been the passenger in a convertible on a couple of occasions, but I’ve never driven one myself. I’ve also been the passenger on assorted motorbikes, and that, to me, was a lot more fun. Probably more dangerous, too, but I understand their appeal.

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  13. I was going to comment that I had never ridden in a convertible but then I remembered that one time I was driven sown Sunset Boulevard in a silver Mercedes convertible by a photographer I had hired for a photo shoot.
    I don’t like the wind in my face and don’t drive with the windows open. I rode once on the back of a motorcycle and, for me, the pleasure, such as it was, didn’t compensate for the terror.

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    1. My roommate in Switzerland, Annette, had a Vespa motor scooter. We rode all over Switzerland together on that thing. In the mountains, especially, I’d get a bit nervous when Annette would gesture wildly with one arm to draw my attention to something she didn’t want me to miss. Though I was only eighteen at the time, I realized that careening off a steep, narrow mountain road would mean instant death. Somehow we both survived to treasure the memories.

      A couple of years later, though, she was in a serious accident in Copenhagen on that Vespa. Broke her jaw, among other injuries. I remember the broken jaw because her mouth was wired shut for several weeks and she lost a lot of weight.

      I received an email from Annette’s sister-in-law, while Hans and I were on a road trip a few years ago, that she had passed away from COPD. The memories of Annette still make me smile.

      My first fiancé had a really nice BMW motorbike. He was a careful and responsible driver (do you drive a motorbike?), and I never worried riding with him. There were some later boyfriends who had motorbikes, too, but I considered them too risky to ride with.

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      1. A life-long friend of mine was killed last summer riding his motor scooter along highway 35 in Wisconsin near Red Wing. Some old guy in a big buick pulled out right in front of him as he was cruising down the highway. He died at the scene. Being careful isn’t always enough. I think motorcycle riders disrespect physics.

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        1. I only rode on the back of a motorcycle once, after my freshman year in college. Then, after my sophomore year, I worked as a typist and receptionist for one of the attorneys in my dad’s office, the one who specialized in personal injury cases. One of the things that every personal injury case has is an incredibly detailed write up of the injuries sustained. There were two motorcycle injuries that summer for which I had to type up the grizzly details , and that has kept me off of a motorcycle ever since.

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        2. My late friend, Mike, had one of his legs almost severed in a motorcycle accident a couple of years before I met him. It happened on a small country road in Maple Grove where he lived at the time, quite literally 1/4 quarter of a mile from his own driveway. He was in his mid-thirties at the time, and had ridden motorbikes pretty much since his teens. That accident, caused by one moment’s inattentiveness, scarred him for life, and cured him of ever wanting to get on a motorbike again.

          Husband, too, rode a motorbike in his early twenties. He quit after a close call, and still tries to talk every young person he meets out of risking their lives on them. I’m well aware that no amount of being careful is enough to save you from severe injury. When see some of the kamikaze riders your sometimes encounter on the freeway, I have to wonder what they use for brains.

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        3. A few years ago I was prevented from driving down Robert Street when it was closed off completely by the Walgreens drugstore. As I turned to avoid the closure I saw a worker hosing off the street. Later I stopped at the Walgreens, after the emergency workers had left, and outside the store an employee was sitting on the curb smoking, obviously shaken. She had witnessed a man on a motorcycle hit by a driver. She said he was wearing a helmet, but after the spill a car wheel went over his face. His daughter was riding with him. She survived; he didn’t.

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  14. We just sold what I assume was our last convertible; last of at least 7 over the 59 years since we started dating. I love riding in and driving a convertible, and have used several techniques to keep my head covered, including a straw hat that tied under my chin, a long scarf wrapped and tied behind my head, and an amazing, adjustable straw number that I got at a street fair last winter in Safety Harbor FL. According to the guy I bought it from, he has a patent on the knot that adjusts the fit of the hat (guaranteed to not blow of in winds up to 45 mph).

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  16. I have been in convertibles and on motorcycles. When I had the Beetle, I learned I could drive with the sunroof all the way open as my hair would get sucked straight up out of the opening, so mostly just popped up the back end of it, which minimized the damage. Long, curly hair and all that wind is not a good combination – at least not if I don’t want to wind up with so many tangles the only option is to shave it all. Tempting on hot August days, but I’m not sure I could pull off the look. So I braid it tightly. And when I have been on motorcycles, I always wear a helmet. Have contemplated getting an electric scooter (the electric equivalent of a Vespa) – those generally have a top speed of 25-30mph, so would be only side streets on those, which might be a little easier on the hair, though still puts me in the way of people behind the wheel of larger vehicles not paying attention. Alas.

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  17. Back circa 1970, I would ride on the back of our neighbor George’s motorcycle, no helmet or anything (we were unconscious then…) through the hills of San Francisco’s marina district. Luckily the worst thing that happened was getting a burn on my inside ankle/shin from the hot… maybe an exhaust pipe. Had long hair then, so just have been tied back in a ponytail or something.

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  19. I grew up with my brothers Kawasaki, 100 motorcycle, a small little thing. Perfect for getting cows and follow their trails. Then he got a 175 that was just a little bit too big and too fast for that but we still did it. He went on to 650s and my brother-in-law had a big Yamaha like that; rode with both of them a few times, but I never did any street riding myself.
    I can get the wind in my hair on the 4 wheeler. Don’t wear a helmet like I should. On our driveway we can get to 25 or 30 mph. Sometimes I wear seat belts on the tractors or gator. Because we never expect it to happen to us.

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  20. when traveling in a convertible, I wear my backwards, newspaper, mint cap, Paula, Samuel L Jackson, wear it backwards and keep my hair from blowing forward into my face. It doesn’t always work that way but my first car after the VW bus back in the 70s what is a 1970 fiat 124 Spyder two seater convertible and it was very cool black interior linen newspaper, cap backwards to keep my hair in place which was longer in the wash day is actually about the same length as it is today probably but my beard also about the same length as it is today and the aerodynamics on the Fiat made my beard come forward and up and almost black out my vision. I wasn’t smart enough to put a rubber band on it and keep it down but that’s my technique.

    I was in Hawaii only ones but I’m on my way I to rent a convertible. It was a Volkswagen bug
    it was glorious and today I have a Volkswagen convertible fuck that my daughter drives and I’m waiting to inherit when she’s done with it. I will try and get onto the trail earlier in the day so I’m not putting an addendum to the days posts and I can contribute and interact with all the bare-bones. I love the posts. Thanks Renee ben and sherrilee for keeping this old guy smiling

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    1. I’ve always wondered if the reason I love convertible so much is that my mom had a VW bug convertible when I was in high school and after I got my license, that was the car that I drove almost exclusively.

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  22. Well, as a drunk pilot with an imaginary monkey, I can tell you that the only thing keeping my hair from getting mussed on a trip to Hawaii is a good old fashioned coconut hat! Of course, if I had a convertible, I’m sure the wind would do a fine job of tousling my locks too. But really, who cares about a little hair dishevelment when you’re cruising through paradise with the sun on your face and the open road ahead? That’s the beauty of a convertible – it’s all about the journey, not the destination. And if you happen to have a monkey riding shotgun, all the better! Aloha and cheers to rental car adventures in Hawaii!

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