So, Steady As She Goes.

Amidst an impressive collection of empty plastic beverage bottles in the backseat of an impounded* Budget Rental truck, is what appears to be the chronicles of two intrepid explorers. Although the writing is at times illegible, the ink stained with potato-chip grease and spilled energy drinks, it has been accurately determined to be an account of great adventure and serious trial, sustained only by the undying love of its two, titular characters, Sara and George, modern-day Lewis and Clark, if they had Subway restaurants and were traveling on interstates with a pet rabbit.

*Impounded, seriously. Short of being covered in napalm and having its ashes sprinkled into the oatmeal of the criminally insane, it seems a fitting end for one of Budget's trucks.

Excerpts:

Thursday, June 30th:
Sara: And, so we depart, with boundless enthusiasms unsullied by hardship and bitterness far afield. Thanks to our friends' limitless physical prowess in helping us load our 24' Budget Rental truck these past two days, we leave Saint Paul for our two-day long journey, stopping to slumber later this evening.
George: Agreed. This truck smells like a bathroom at a Jiffy-Lube.
Sara: I'm glad we loaded the mattress last, so when we get to Portland, we can unload it right away and have a place to sleep*

*Spooky, ominous foreshadowing of impending doom.

George: Here's the plan: we drive all night, struggling to play our iPods through the truck's blown-out speakers, and struggling to hit 30mph up small hills, until we arrive at Billings, ND, early morning.
Sara: That's a wonderful idea, but only if we can stop at a Walmart at 2am and buy soy hotdogs, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of ketchup for dinner to keep our energy up!
George: On one condition, my love...that we eat our cold soy dinner while sitting on the trailer hitch.

Friday, July 1st
Our two weary explorers appear, from the stilted, clipped dialogue and high energy-drink consumption recorded, to not have slept well in Billings. For while they arrived, George accidentally parked in the lot of a casino, adjacent their hotel. Hotel records indicate the manager, very apologetically phoned their hotel room at 8am, sending George out to relocate the truck, and wondering (vocally), who in their right-mind goes to a casino at 8am on a weekday. The two manage to return to sleep for another few hours, before resuming travel.

George: Well, that certainly was {words that mean the opposite of awesome}, wasn't it?
Sara:
George: Oh, well, sleep well. We're coming to the foot-hills of the mountains!

Still Friday, July 1st
Setting: Sara behind the wheel, sun-shining, cell-phone service spotty, when suddenly...

The truck started to lurch, like the trailer was off-balance, or the road was uneven. The rocking was commented upon, earlier in the day, but disregarded as figments of their sleep-deprivation, as though sheer denial would keep mechanical problems at bay. George took a turn behind the wheel, but the lurching worsened, until everything went dead as the fuel pump quit. For five hours, Sara and George stayed with the truck on the shoulder of I-90W, as trucks, and freight-trains roared past them in the summer heat.

Many complaints about Budget's so-called 'Emergency Roadside-Service' are recorded here, and could fill pages. To save time, here's a summary: 'Fucking Budget Rental Motherfuckers!'* Sara's cellphone only got random moments of faint service, so our stranded and stressed travelers, having to wait on average forty-five minutes to reach Budget's customer service, kept getting disconnected. Both had to swallow their pride and use the bathroom behind some scrub-brush overlooking the road.

Sara and George unloaded her car from the trailer, and drove forward to Bozeman, where they ate dinner, and then tried to reach *FBRMF's customer service line from inside a K-Mart on a courtesy phone. After finally reaching someone after another half-hour wait, they returned to await a tow-truck, whose driver seemed to know even less than the people he was sent to assist.

Sara: So, what should we do?
Guy Who Looks Like Kevin James: I'm supposed to tow you both into Bozeman, and you're supposed to find a hotel for the night.
Sara: It's the fourth of July weekend, how do we know what places have vacancies?
Kevin James: I don't know. They just told me to take you guys to the nicest hotel in town.
George: Are they paying for it?
Kevin James: They said they would reimburse you for it.
George: How does that work?
Kevin James: I don't know.
George: Did they say if they would send another truck or repair this one?
James: I don't know.

Yes, Still Friday, July 1st:
Sara and George follow the ruined truck, containing their worldly possessions, including sensitive plant-life and boxes of temperature-sensitive goods that have likely all shifted violently during the tow into downtown. Sara and George scramble between hotels, finding no vacancies, and growing increasingly desperate, before learning of a room available at a place called the Mountain View.* It was to be their home for four nights, over which they hiked a mountain-pass, watched endless Twilight Zone marathons on cable, and George lost his check-card. Every day, no word from FBRMF. No courtesy call, no offers to help with food, or lodging. No apologies. Just a tepid cup of zip.

*Not false-advertising, had view of mountain. And a mini-fridge. That was nice.

Saturday, July 2nd-Tuesday, July 5th:
Records indicate much sleep, hot-tub visits, and even spectacular fireworks over Bozeman were indulged. Isa, the rabbit, appears to have handled the stress better than her handlers, but her commentary isn't included here. On Tuesday, another Budget Truck arrived, along with three-moving helpers, who managed to transfer the contents in a staggeringly-fast hour and a half. Sara and George determined to drive straight into Portland.*

*Which, indeed, they did, although it was quite possibly the most harrowing drive the two had ever made. They witnessed a mountainside on fire with thick, orange flames, a hillside covered in hundreds of blinking, red lights, passed glowing oil-refineries and massive dams along the Columbia River Gorge, all growing stranger the earlier into Thursday morning it became. With the sun just about to rise, and the headlights on FBRMF truck #2 horrifyingly starting to strobe and dim, they reached their destination, the quiet suburb of Sherwood, roughly twenty-miles outside of downtown Portland.

As the pictures in the slide-show here attest, all is well with Sara and George, who have resumed lives of normalcy, along with Isa the Rabbit, and still have no idea where the Budget Truck is being kept, and are more than happy to patiently await word from the company that turned an ostensibly two-day affair into a test of character that neither of them asked for, but one that fortified their relationship as they learned to trust, rely upon and look to each other for support. The next chapters are unwritten, but are bound to be fantastic.
The final entry reads:

Sara: I love you, George.
George: I love you, too, Sara.