the rental car

Renting a car is a good thing.  Good because it gives you a real opportunity to realize that the deep, heartfelt love you have for your own vehicle is truly justified.

I can say, with absolute certainty - I will never buy a Chevy Aveo.  I can almost say, even if you offered me one for free and all I had to pay were the taxes that I would reply, "No thank you."

Carl loved it.

OK, Carl is 6.  And a car freak.  And would have loved the idea of anything new we got to ride in.  And, of course, it was only a few days and we knew that and it was fine.  But, holy cow...  that thing couldn't get out of it's own way to save your life.  And, the a/c didn't work very well at all.  Yes, I know it was 120 heat index all that week, but it still was that hot when I picked up my dear Odyssey and all this week we have been loving the cold a/c.  The Aveo had sucky a/c.

Anyway....   when we picked it up the guy said, "Don't smoke in it or bring animals in it so we don't have to clean it when you drop it off."  OK, so you would think he meant "so we don't have to deep clean it..."  but, after we drove home, I realized he meant "we won't clean it at all".  The steering wheel was funky and the smell was definitely old smoke and just general blech.  The windows were filthy.

But, thanks to us....   they were not going to have to clean it when we dropped it off.  The license plate was correct!  YUK!!

I placed a cool whip container of baking soda on the floor to absorb some of the odor and then put this Yankee Candle on the dashboard when I was not driving. (I didn't want to put an actual air freshener in it because I was afraid they'd accuse me of making it smell funny based on the intensity of whatever I put in it.)

With this heat, you put the candle up there and within an hour, a good 1" of the wax melted!  We managed to get the grossness mostly out.

Happy riders...  I'll explain the animals later.