Mission trip: van expectations

Today was the day to pick up our rental van for the mission trip. St. Paul, (who is my partner in crime and co-leader for the trip) and I had a plan. I would drive down to his house at 9:00, pick him up, we'd go and get the van, and he'd drive home in it and I'd go on my merry way.

We were a little worried when we got close to the the car rental office, and didn't see a 12-passenger van in the parking lot, but not to worry, when we pulled into the lot we saw it behind the office, getting vacuumed. As the rental agent was getting ready to print out the forms for us to sign, she stopped and said "uh oh - we have an age problem." Uh oh? St. Paul and I are both well over 25, so what could the problem be? It turned out that the van had an age problem -- at 26,000 miles they weren't allowed to rent it to us. There was no way -- they simply couldn't do it!

"We're so sorry," we were told -- "we will call around to other Budget locations and get you another van. Why don't you go home and we'll call you when we get it. "

So we came back to my house, and I called every car rental place I could find. There were no 12-passenger vans available anywhere!

St. Paul and I decided that if Budget couldn't find us another 12 passenger, we'd just rent two mini-vans. We called Budget back, and no they hadn't found us another 12-passenger, so we went back up to the rental office to rent two mini-vans. Speed Raver dropped us off, as we would have to drive the two mini-vans back.

St. Paul asked the rental agent if she could give us the two mini-vans for the price of the 12-passenger. She said she couldn't do, and suddenly revealed that there was indeed another 12-passenger around (hallelujah!) -- but it was in King of Prussia. Someone could bring it to our rental office and it would arrive in about an hour We decided that we would give them an hour and a half. I walked over the the gym to work out, and St. Paul hitched a ride back to his house from one of the rental agents. Half-way home, she got a cell phone call - the mini van she was driving him home in was needed for a rental -- the folks who were renting it were waiting back in the office. So he had to walk the rest of the way home.

After the appointed 90 minutes, we reconvened at the rental office ( I was fresh from the gym, and rather badly needing a shower). The agent informed us that the 12-passenger van had not even left King of Prussia yet!

So we got in St. Paul's car, drove up to King of Prussia, and finally got the van!
It hadn't even been cleaned from the last rental, the windscreen was covered in bugs and we found the following inside: An umbrella, a completely unused Mad-Libs book, a dime, a large brown feather, which St. Paul identified as a turkey feather, a brown paper lunch bag and plenty of loose Cheerios and Kix. The time? 2:00 pm. Only took us five hours to get that van. But we got it.

So hopefully that was the hard part of the trip!

I'll be back with all the news on July 1.