National Lampoons Western Vacation

I decided at the last minute to take Marazzano and my mom on a road trip at the last minute (before school starts the day after labor day). Mo had made it known earlier this summer that he wanted to road trip and my mom had told me in the last year (or two or three) some of her bucket list destinations. So I said to myself "Hey. I can kill two birds with one stone". Afterall, Mo will be 13 next August and if he's anything like I was as a teenager, he will be sullen and moody and only want to hang out with his friends until he's about 25. So now is the time. There have been some setbacks so I can see that the devil is not through with me yet. I must be next in line for some kind of huge financial or spiritual breakthrough cause this has been going on for months.  Me and Gigi (mom) went to pick up Mo in Chicago. I grappled with renting a car (cause the total miles for this trip was supposed to be 3748 miles) and at Shunte's urging, I did. But since I waited until 12 am to make a reservation to pick up the car at 12:30 am from the airport (the only place still renting cars at this ungodly hour), I decided that it would be better to make my last destination (utah) first and my first destination (south dakota) last. All I had to do was print another Trip Tik from AAA.com. That was all. Simple right? Well.... Shuntes building has a computer room and a printer and no one was in there using it so it should have been cut and dry but the computer was stuck in some kind of loop. It kept "configuring" and then it would shut down and then it would restart and then it would configure again and then it would shut down again and then it would restart again and well you get the picture. I called Mo and asked him to come take a look. He unplugged and replugged and it just went back to the loop. So I left him and went back to see how he was doing in an hour. By then, he got the computer to come out of the loop. Cool. Then I just have to redo my trip tik and then print it. Not. Now the printer sitting next to the computer isn't showing up as one of the options for printing. I tried to add the printer and I tried to install the printer but that printer's model number just was not showing up in the dropdown menu. Shunte and Mo tried but they couldn't fix it either. Shunte said she had to go back to her office for some paperwork for court the next morning. I think we must've already spent an hour and a half trying to get the computer up and then trying to get it to print so I was already frustrated. So I went back to the office with her and redid my trip tik on her front room computer. Did all that and guess what? It wouldn't print. The printers name was not in the drop down. I was having a bad case of deja vu. By now it's after 11pm. Shunte then mentions that she just got the printer and maybe it's not hooked up yet and that I should use the rear computer room. So I redo my trip tik (again) and this time it prints. Now time to book the car.  I had already priced the difference between a neighborhood rental place and the airport. Airport taxes are high so I thought a local neighborhood would be better but a neighborhood rental actually has a higher weekly rate by about $80 so it was $80 cheaper to rent at the airport even with taxes. I am satisfied with checking two or three sites to make sure I have a comparable price but Shunte doesn't like to take my word for it. She had to recheck everything I already did to satisfy herself and then she did Hotwire and Priceline. Priceline agreed to a midsize rental for $12 a day before taxes. So it was gonna be $208 for about 9 days including taxes. By now it's midnight. This was the same day I had finished driving from the Spa City so I was tired and cranky by then. So at midnight, we go to the airport to pick up the car. We're riding along la di da and suddenly all the lights on the dash and headlights go out and the car comes to ta stop in the middle of the street. Fortunately, it was not much traffic at this time. Shunte says The cable thingy on the battery is not tight and it gets loose after we hit so many potholes. So I have to unlatch the hood while she lifts and then hold the hood open while she bangs down with one of those small plastic antibacterial bottles from bath and body works. The car starts up again. I am beginning to feel like maybe God is trying to send me a message. First it takes 3 hours to print something that should've taken 10 minutes and now this. Well, that's not all. I go inside to the rental counter with my Priceline.com reservation that I made 30 minutes ago and the desk clerk (who we'll call Jacinda) informs me I can't use my debit card for a rental unless I have a return flight or boat ticket when renting from an airport for Alamo and Enterprise. I have never in life heard of such a thing. I have about 2 grand on the debit card and that should've done it for whatever authorization or holds they needed. Well of course I have no return ticket since I didn't fly. You have to prepay when using priceline.com and so the car had already been paid for and it was nonrefundable. I had read all the small print and remembered seeing something about having a return flight number but they didn't require it when I made the reservation and it made it sound like some kind of fancy option instead of a mandatory requirement. The same soft wording was on a sign at the rental desk. It's like they don't want to hurt your feelings or something. The sign and website NEED to say. You CANNOT use a debit card unless you are flying or cruising. Jacinda is sympathetic and she tries to enter everything without it but it won't take so she used a flight number on some papers she had from earlier that day. Shhh. Don't tell anyone. I thank God and go out to get my car. The shuttle driver tells us we can take any car that is parked in our size category. Wasn't much choice for me cause there was only 1 car for me to choose from. We go home and get back about 1am. The next morning, Shunte loses her phone and we delay our departure to help her look for it. Since she had helped up take everything out of my car and put it in the rental, we thought maybe she had sat it down in the rental and we didn't want to be gone for 9 days with it in our car.  She went back to court to see if she had left it there and we finally left around 11:30 am. The first 2 days were pretty uneventful. It is a 20 hour drive to Utah and so I did 12 one day and 8 the next. Plus about 3 hours in stops for my mom who had to pee 45 minutes after we left Chicago. And yes I snapped because she could have went at Shuntes before we left like me and Mo had done. I then made the declaration that when I stop, EVERYONE will get out to use the bathroom and if you don't have to go, then "go anyway". Oh and did I mention that the air conditioning did not work. Just blowing hot ass air in hot ass Utah. While in Utah, we went to see the Arches National Park in Moab (which was beautiful and worth the trip) and Canyonland which is also in Moab (less impressive though me and mom did climb a 1/2 mile uphill trail to an overlook which was an achievement in itself). On my way to Arches though, there was a light flashing "VSC OFF" and the malfunction indicator light was on. It was only 7:30 in the morning so my day was not getting off to a good start. I had to look these up in the car manual. The VSC thing has something to do with skidding. I wasn't worried about skidding in the summertime and the book said that if you can't turn off the flashing light (cause there is a button on the dash to do so), then there is a malfunction. I kept mashing the thingy on the dash and eventually both lights went off only to return later in the day. I was a little nervous about it cause we kept passing signs on the highway that say NO SERVICES. No food. No gas. No cell. No lights. No moon. No nothing. If you get caught out there, you. will. be. fucked...! We checked into the "Knight Inn" . After previously paying $100 the night before for the Comfort Inn, things needed to be averaged out. It was a decent inn. The carpets were ugly but newer and clean. It would do for $50. Well, when we walked in the door, there was one of the plastic plungers under the dresser. The kind of plunger that looks like an accordian. Looking back, I guess that should have been a clue. Mom went to the bathroom before she went to bed. I got up at 12:30 to go and there was something in there already. I just thought she had forgotten to flush. So I flushed. And it flooded. Water splashed on the floor.  The plunger didn't work. I think it had a hole in it so it wasn't suctioning properly. I went to the front desk to ask for another room. The young girl who rented me the room wasn't there anymore and the new clerk told me the young girl had forgotten that she wasn't supposed to rent that room. So the new clerk apologizes and gives me a key to a different room. I go there and stick in the key. The light turns green but someone from inside shouts "Move on!" so I take that key back and she gives me another key. Apparently the youngster doesn't record the rooms that she rents either. I think she needs some addtl training. The 3rd time is the charm and I have a fresh toilet. Both Mom and Mo are sleep so I work to move all of our stuff without waking them. There are 7 rooms between the old room and new room and it's 1am. By the time I'm done, my heartrate is up like I just did a 20 minute workout and I'm up for a bit. Anyhow, left the next morning heading out for Craters of the Moon, Idaho and there are some lonnnnng roads with no cars as long as the eye can see so after 2 hours we finally hit a booming metropolis that has a kmart. I make a beeline for these "services" and let my mom out so she can get a case of water and pop. I was sitting there for about 20 minutes wondering what is taking her so long (and I found out it was because she took the time to read through and buy a birthday card) and guess what? The car cuts off. WTF!!! We're right in the middle of Buttfuck, Utah in a busted ass rental car. These things are not supposed to happen. I rented a car cause I didn't want to chance that my own reliable car would have issues. Sigh. I was thoroughly disgusted. I was done and cooked and fried. I called the Roadside assistance and got the ball rolling and we continued on to East Buttfuck, Idaho for our next park. We are so fortunate that our car stopped at this place because it was a town and we had a cell phone signal. We didn't have a signal (all 3 of us) for most of the trip because most of the time we were in the middle of nowhere. Some of the roads we were on were so quiet, that any movement at all broke the sound barrier.  Pray for me cause I don't know if the devil is through with me yet.