It's a long drive to Alice

 

But I had good reason to drive to Alice.  That’s where the Jeep is.

 

The Jeep went dark on that pre-dawn birding trip two weeks ago.  (We were listening for Common Poorwills.)  When we finally got towed for repairs, it was to a Jeep Dealer in Alice.  That’s where the Jeep has been for the last two weeks; at the Jeep Dealer in the South Texas town of Alice, 75 miles from Port Aransas.  The good news in all of this was that our intermittent starting problem had turned into a permanent starting problem which could be diagnosed, and that’s how we ended up in the red rental car.

 

We made the drive yesterday.  It was good to get back to the Jeep, although things were still a little complicated.  The rental car was going to cost us $90 a day, but the Jeep dealer volunteered to put it on his bill at his rate of $35 a day.  That didn’t seem like much until the dealer had to backorder a part and we ended up in the rental car for two weeks.  Glad we weren’t at $90 a day!  Anyway, when I went back in the rental car to get the Jeep, I couldn’t, because the dealer didn’t know how much to charge me for the rental car until I turned that in first and got a ride back.  When I got back, he still didn’t know how much to charge me because he had submitted the paperwork to the warranty company for the Jeep repair but hadn’t heard back from them yet either.  We decided I could pay the whole thing and when the Warranty Company sent him a check, he could reimburse me.

 

We didn’t really want to drive to Alice on a work day, but it was good to be driving back home.  The only thing that would have made the drive back home better would have been if we were driving home in the Jeep.  When we went to pick up the Jeep, of course I tested it and it started.  After we transferred everything out of the rental car into the Jeep, returned the rental car, got a ride back to the dealer, paid the dealer, and got back in the Jeep to leave, it wouldn’t start.  We lost ground.  Now we’re back to an intermittent starting problem.

 

The dealer quickly got us back into the rental car and on our way.  We can look forward to one more trip to Alice in the near future.