TIHL #18 How to Identify a Car That Belongs to You or Your Kin
Last week my immediate family and 16 other assorted relatives had the pleasure of reuniting in the mountains of Colorado. The mountains were absolutely gorgeous, I had never really seen anything quite like them! (I think that someday I would really like to take a ski vacation, although I do not intend to at any time actually don a pair of skis and go careening down a mountain. However, there is definitely something very appealing about the idea of sipping hot chocolate in a mountain chalet as the snow falls gently outside the window...) I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the outdoors and the town, although climbing the stairs in our condo qualified as a hike in my book, at least at that altitude. Who could have imagined what a little thing like 9700 feet can do to one's lung capacity?
There were indeed some different vacationing styles apparent among the relatives, as many of them seemed to prefer agendas such as running up mountainsides barefoot, renting bikes at the top, racing down the mountainside off-road, then hopping into whitewater rafts and speeding down waterfalls until ending up in New Mexico, at which time they would probably rent bikes again and leg it uphill back to our hotel. I'm pretty confident that I would not live to tell the tale of such an adventure. Call me unadventurous. You would be too, if you were as uncoordinated as I am. Anyway, we did settle at some compromises that seemed to appeal to all, such as hiking up mountains with shoes on and then taking a beautiful ten mile bike ride from Breckenridge to Frisco. To satisfy everyone's thirst for adventure, we did break the law a couple of times, mostly by opening up our own attractions which were closed on account of it still being "mud season." However, we found that it was not that difficult to crawl under giant maze walls or provide our own golf clubs for closed mini-golf courses, so we took advantage of the very uncrowded (ok, "closed") facilities. We also did a little shopping, played lots of pool and pinball, and of course, spent hours trying to take a decent family photo. I think that a good time was had by all.
My sister and I needed to come back to our fair state of MN a couple of days earlier than everyone else, so we rode back to the Denver airport with my aunt and uncle who had decided to leave on the same flight. It appeared that driving 80 miles per hour down a 10% grade did not phase nor concern my uncle, so my sister and I spent two white-knuckled hours praying that our car would not be the next rollover that we passed. About 30 miles after my uncle had proclaimed that we had 28 miles until our gas tank was empty, we finally stopped at a gas a station. Relieved, I got out of the car and went into the gas station to grab a pop and a snack. I bought the aforementioned items, and with some trepidation went out and opened the door to my uncle's huge rental SUV. "EX-CUSSEE ME!" came a somewhat unfriendly voice from the front seat. Well, it turns out that the car I had gotten into was not, in fact, my uncle's rental SUV, but another car that looked quite honestly nothing like it. It was not the same brand. It was not even the same color. The only thing they had in common was that they were both fairly sizable. The embarrassment of getting into the wrong car was only compounded by the fact that my aunt, uncle, and sister had all been watching the incident unfold from their car, and had done nothing about it. They spent the rest of the way to Denver spontaneously bursting into laughter and making wisecracks about my general stupidity. Nothing like a little family bonding over that one proverbial ditzy relative, right? I guess I should study the "Know Your Rental Cars" maunal a little more thoroughly before our next family reunion...
There were indeed some different vacationing styles apparent among the relatives, as many of them seemed to prefer agendas such as running up mountainsides barefoot, renting bikes at the top, racing down the mountainside off-road, then hopping into whitewater rafts and speeding down waterfalls until ending up in New Mexico, at which time they would probably rent bikes again and leg it uphill back to our hotel. I'm pretty confident that I would not live to tell the tale of such an adventure. Call me unadventurous. You would be too, if you were as uncoordinated as I am. Anyway, we did settle at some compromises that seemed to appeal to all, such as hiking up mountains with shoes on and then taking a beautiful ten mile bike ride from Breckenridge to Frisco. To satisfy everyone's thirst for adventure, we did break the law a couple of times, mostly by opening up our own attractions which were closed on account of it still being "mud season." However, we found that it was not that difficult to crawl under giant maze walls or provide our own golf clubs for closed mini-golf courses, so we took advantage of the very uncrowded (ok, "closed") facilities. We also did a little shopping, played lots of pool and pinball, and of course, spent hours trying to take a decent family photo. I think that a good time was had by all.
My sister and I needed to come back to our fair state of MN a couple of days earlier than everyone else, so we rode back to the Denver airport with my aunt and uncle who had decided to leave on the same flight. It appeared that driving 80 miles per hour down a 10% grade did not phase nor concern my uncle, so my sister and I spent two white-knuckled hours praying that our car would not be the next rollover that we passed. About 30 miles after my uncle had proclaimed that we had 28 miles until our gas tank was empty, we finally stopped at a gas a station. Relieved, I got out of the car and went into the gas station to grab a pop and a snack. I bought the aforementioned items, and with some trepidation went out and opened the door to my uncle's huge rental SUV. "EX-CUSSEE ME!" came a somewhat unfriendly voice from the front seat. Well, it turns out that the car I had gotten into was not, in fact, my uncle's rental SUV, but another car that looked quite honestly nothing like it. It was not the same brand. It was not even the same color. The only thing they had in common was that they were both fairly sizable. The embarrassment of getting into the wrong car was only compounded by the fact that my aunt, uncle, and sister had all been watching the incident unfold from their car, and had done nothing about it. They spent the rest of the way to Denver spontaneously bursting into laughter and making wisecracks about my general stupidity. Nothing like a little family bonding over that one proverbial ditzy relative, right? I guess I should study the "Know Your Rental Cars" maunal a little more thoroughly before our next family reunion...
posted by Erinn @ 6:51 PM
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