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In addition to ragging on companies that don’t give me what I want, I decided to relay the experience I had with a company that was nothing but pleasurable to deal with. Enter Thrifty Rentals. I recently took a trip to Virginia Beach VA for a family gathering, I rented a car from Thrifty to make the trip. Reserving the car was easy and quick on their website I received a confirmation number immediately and a phone call the next day confirmed the confirmation. The real impressive part comes on the return trip, I had just driven through the “Storm of the Century” in Washington D.C. which I managed to make it through just before they shut down the freeway system due to flooding and a mudslide.

I was finally clear of the storm and really making good time when I came up on the end of the Pennsylvania Turn Pike, I started dropping speed to prepare for the tollbooth when out of nowhere a rather large coyote, est. weight 70 pounds jumped the median and landed right in front of my car. There was nowhere to go, radiator met coyote and they both met their demise.

I managed to keep the car traveling in the right direction and off the median, I believe I was airborne for a brief second as “Wiley” which I later named him rolled under the car and was spit out the back end of the car. Since I was so close to the end of the turnpike I payed my toll and pulled over to inspect the damage, I found a small leak coming from under the radiator so I exited the turnpike and ended up in Cranberry Township PA pop. 23,625 ZIP code 16066! I pulled into the Wxl Mxrt parking lot to get a better look at it and maybe fix it with a bottle of stop leak.

When it was quite clear that would not work I made my first phone call to the roadside service at about 5:30 AM after 20 to 25 minutes they finally figured out where I wasand a new car on the way. Now all I could do now is wait, since I had just slept for three hours and had a large cup of coffee less than an hour before the accident sleep was not happening, so I grabbed my book and started waiting.

An hour went by and a car came pulling up I thought it was my replacement but it was the good cop again, off duty this time and no “bad” cop prick that was with him earlier! He told me that he found Wiley and he needed more information from me. He said there wasn’t much left of “Wiley” and he scooped him up for a proper burial. I asked him to extend my condolences to his family and he was on his way.

Now it was back to waiting, it was less than two hours later when I spotted a tow truck and a small Humvee pull into the parking lot, there goes my gas mileage, I was hoping for another Dodge Magnum but I wasn’t being to picky at that point and time. After helping me transfer all my luggage to the new truck and I was back on the road by 9:15 AM thinking to myself-self it’s a damn good thing you got the insurance!

The rest of the drive was uneventful and I made it home in really good time despite the “Storm of the Century” and running over “Wiley”

The follow up service even included a phone call from corporate headquarters-which I did not return-to inquire about  ,my health and the accident and the response from the local office, I emailed them this story.

During our annual trip to The Chequamegon Fat Tire Forty I had the pleasure to try out a new ride. Shortly after we arrived our friend Jerry stopped buy the townhouse with a Surly Karate Monkey that was to be given to Kirk to give to Ron. I told Jerry that I would be more than happy to hold the bike until Kirk got here, I’m just going to see if my pedals fit on check the seat height real quick, once we determined that my pedals fit and the seat height was right for me we sat down for a beer and a quick update on the trails in the area. Jerry is a very active person in CAMBA The Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association, and he recommended the Ojibwe Trail for our night ride he also recommended The Fish Hatchery/Mosquito Brook Trail for our ride on Saturday and since we always go to the Rock Lake Trail on Sunday our weekend plans were set. Jerry informed us that there was new singletrack on all four of the systems that makes them even better, he also informed me that I was the fiduciary something or other owner of the bike until I hand it over to Kirk. We bid him farewell and started getting ready for our night ride.

As always happens with our night ride something goes wrong, everything was fine until I realized that I left my lights at home, Chad was nice enough to let me use his helmet light so we can all go riding and the problem was solved so we thought. Chad’s handlebar light immediately stopped working once the sun went down, now we were down to three lights, two on Adrians bike and one on my helmet. We tried many different combinations of riding to maximize what little light we had we found that Chad leading with me in the middle and Adrian with all the light power bringing up the rear. Now we were riding new trails with me on a new bike and not knowing whats coming up around the next turn sure makes for an interesting ride. We rode for a while until we realized that we were not on the trail that we wanted, we must have missed a turn due to our lack of visibility, after consulting the trail map we figured out where we were. It turns out that we wandered on to a different trail and we were further out than we really should be, we figured out how to get back home and set off. We managed to make it back to a fire road that would take us back to the townhouse, just in time, both of Adrian’s lights ran out of battery once we hit the fire road. Now we were down to just my helmet light, which is amazing in itself because it’s usually me who runs out of lights first, my battery actually lasted the entire 2 hour and 20 minute ride, for a total of 22 miles.

After sleeping off Fri. night and a huge breakfast we were ready to do it again. This time we had one more along for the ride, Dolan our friend from Fairbank IA came for the fun and not for the race. After watching the start we headed over to the Fish Hatchery Trailhead for our afternoon ride, we took the Fish Hatchery Trail up to the Mosquito Brook and back down. The ride turned out to be very similar to the ride the night before, only without the light issue’s, the trail was 90 percent single track with very quick rolling hills threaded through the narrowest of openings, this seemed like the perfect terrain for the monkey, the 29 inch wheels cleared rocks and roots like they weren’t even there, the climbing was awesome there was never a problem with being in the wrong gear, the downhills were also pretty smooth thanks to the titanium fork and the Thud Buster seatpost. We made back to the car after logging another 29 miles, that’s like 129 in Johnny P. miles, we had lunch at Coops Pizza Parlour and called it an afternoon, knowing what the night had in store for us I decided I needed a nap. The nap went well ’till I was woken up with the oldest gag in the book, the shaving cream and feather trick, I informed them that it was very amateurish and promised to retaliate later. We went to Famous Dave’s for dinner and then out for drinks and called it a night, the usual Saturday night routine.

Sunday morning came and for some reason we were not all full of energy, It was time to pack up and head to Rock Lake. Since the kitchen was already cleaned up we decided to go into town for breakfast. Good thing it was raining because breakfast took forever, after driving to Rock Lake the sun came out and it was another perfect day for a ride. I had returned the Karate Monkey to Kirk and it was back on it’s way to Decoah to be returned to Ron, so I busted out the RTS and set off on the trail. Having ridden the trail system the last five years I knew what we were in for. Jerry informed us that the Hildebrand Loop was a new loop open for riding and it was really sweet, if it’s anything like the rest of the trail I’m sure it will be wicked. The Rock Lake Trail is already the coolest trail in the state if not the country-I don’t know how they could make it any better. We made it down to the Hildebrand Loop and were greeted by a caution sign and several warning signs that said something about extreme trails and we should be careful. We figured this would be a great place for a break to collect our thought’s before we headed in. After our thought’s were all collected we headed into the trail. We soon realized why the sign’s were there-for other people not us! The new section was very fast there were at least three spots of downhill double track that had us in high gear and pedaling out of it, there was other obstacles such as Adrian on his single speed cutting me off because he was getting passed at a very high speed while he was just sitting there spinning his gear. The second time he did it I almost took both of us out but I managed to save it, that’s enough to piss some people off but I kind of enjoyed it. After logging another 18 miles our weekend was pretty much over, now it was time to sit for six hours for the ride home, just what you need after riding almost 70 miles on some of the worlds best singletrack!