a tale of a fucked up vacation
So some family is in town, and we planned a long trip that included: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon west rim, (back to Los Angeles), Yosemite and eventually San Francisco. We only went to the first two and even then it was cut really short.
So we drove from LA to Vegas, stopping at the In-N-Out in Barstow to eat lunch. Once we were in Vegas (and the sweltering heat), we did the usual. Walked around, checked out the casinos, you get the idea. Anyway, the next day we had the brilliant idea to drive to the west rim of the Grand Canyon, the location of the recently opened Skywalk.
Bad. Idea.
There's only one road to the parking lot for the area where you are supposed to stop and then take a bus to the Skywalk. It's 15 miles of unpaved hell called the Diamond Bar Road. Only once you reach the parking lot will you be able to go to the gift shop or go use the restroom, otherwise you had to drive around 75 miles south (from the parking lot) to Kingman, Arizona.
So we've got 8 people crammed into a Sienna minivan bouncing up and down driving 30mph on the unpaved Diamond Bar Road when the SUV behind us waves and honks at us to stop. We've got a flat tire. Not that we could notice, cause we were literally bumping up and down endlessly since we turned from the paved Pierce Ferry Road to this hell and had to take it all the way to the 5 miles of paved road that led to the parking lot. So we got the spare tire out and changed tires. Went our merry way. Somewhere along the rest of the road another tire started leaking air. Sigh.
We made it to the parking lot, where we proceeded to call the car rental company to see if they could do anything for us. Hell no. I was the only person fluent in English in our group, so I got on the phone with a lovely representative from our car rental company, Sakura Rent-a-car, and proceeded to explain our little dilemma. He told me to go to the nearest tire place to replace the tires. I told him that we were at the west rim of the Grand Canyon, and if he thinks this is the middle of Los Angeles, he was grossly mistaken. He insisted I had to find a tire shop, or the nearest gas station. Eventually I got across the point that the only sort of place even remotely close to a car shop within a reasonable distance from here was a place to fix the tour vehicles and to fill up the gas tank. Not a gas station. Just a place to fill up the gas tank, and to fix the big pickups and buses. Even that was 4 miles away from the parking lot, and it was the gas used for the maintenance people. Which we have to buy ($3.10/gallon, not bad!), because we were running close to empty because we were crawling on the way to the parking lot because of the leaking tire and the spare tire on the bouncy unpaved road.
The fucktard insisted we go to the "gas station" and get the tires replaced. Now, I thought I had made myself clear. Apparently not. Here's what the "gas station" he so vehemently insisted we go to to replace the tires looked like:
Okay, so please tell me where I said this was a gas station.
So I spent the next few minutes arguing my ass off because he was being ridiculously unhelpful to the point of ...well, anger. He kept thinking we were in Los Angeles. I told him very clearly we were in Arizona, in the middle of a desert, and there was NO chance in hell we were going to find a place to change tires while on the spare tire and the leaking tire. So this woman who works there, Kathy, took over. She made it clear that they would do what they can there to fix the tires to get us on our way back to Las Vegas, in which case she'll leave him to deal with an extremely irate customer, or that if we were unable to get the car back into good enough shape, that she'll leave him to deal with an extremely irate customer plus 5 other adults and 2 unhappy kids that just got their vacation ruined by some city-dwelling dimwit who can't understand the idea of being in an area that has no service for cellphone calls. Then she hung up on him mid-sentence. You go girl!
We followed the maintenance people back to their area a few miles away, which included the gas tank. They inspected the tires, patched one up, but the other one had a sidewall leak that they did not want to be responsible for if they attempted a fix. So we, we being me and my cousin, had to drive to Kingman, Arizona, to find a new tire while leaving behind everyone else. But first, we filled up at the "gas station".
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from:+grand+canyon+west+to:+3320+stockton+hill+road,+kingman+arizona - 82 miles. At 10-50mph. Averaging probably 20-30, only because on the unpaved road we were going 10, and on the freeway, going 50.
First we went to the Toyota dealership. It was 6:30pm and the service folks had left an hour earlier. So we hightailed it to Walmart, which was going to close (well, the tire place anyway, not the store) in 15 minutes. There we found a replacement tire and had to wait an hour for installation.
In the end, Kathy drove the rest of the family to the Walmart where we were waiting for the tire to be replaced. I don't think I can be thankful enough to her. The tire folks at the Walmart in Kingman weren't the greatest, but we harassed them enough, and I'm thankful they're open so late compared to everyone else. Lastly, major thanks to the first car that made us pull over because of the first tire, and the subsequent cars that stopped around us offering help, and to the bus driver who told us to watch out for snakes.
We arrived back at our hotel in Vegas after midnight, and had a meal with ramen and watermelon.
In the end, everyone was so frazzled and exhausted, we cut short the rest of the trip, and are planning to spend the rest of the week in and around Los Angeles instead. We barely drove 900 miles or so in total, but it was a tiring and frustrating 900 miles. It would be an additional 900 miles to finish the trip, which is 900 miles nobody wants to drive.
You couldn't pay me a million bucks to drive back there. So I missed out on the Skywalk, and my ridiculously acrophobic mom couldn't be forced to go on the Skywalk even though she was there, but someone had to go get that tire.
So that's the story.
Photos from my iPhone: http://flickr.com/photos/chix0r/sets/72157600933874473/
So we drove from LA to Vegas, stopping at the In-N-Out in Barstow to eat lunch. Once we were in Vegas (and the sweltering heat), we did the usual. Walked around, checked out the casinos, you get the idea. Anyway, the next day we had the brilliant idea to drive to the west rim of the Grand Canyon, the location of the recently opened Skywalk.
Bad. Idea.
There's only one road to the parking lot for the area where you are supposed to stop and then take a bus to the Skywalk. It's 15 miles of unpaved hell called the Diamond Bar Road. Only once you reach the parking lot will you be able to go to the gift shop or go use the restroom, otherwise you had to drive around 75 miles south (from the parking lot) to Kingman, Arizona.
So we've got 8 people crammed into a Sienna minivan bouncing up and down driving 30mph on the unpaved Diamond Bar Road when the SUV behind us waves and honks at us to stop. We've got a flat tire. Not that we could notice, cause we were literally bumping up and down endlessly since we turned from the paved Pierce Ferry Road to this hell and had to take it all the way to the 5 miles of paved road that led to the parking lot. So we got the spare tire out and changed tires. Went our merry way. Somewhere along the rest of the road another tire started leaking air. Sigh.
We made it to the parking lot, where we proceeded to call the car rental company to see if they could do anything for us. Hell no. I was the only person fluent in English in our group, so I got on the phone with a lovely representative from our car rental company, Sakura Rent-a-car, and proceeded to explain our little dilemma. He told me to go to the nearest tire place to replace the tires. I told him that we were at the west rim of the Grand Canyon, and if he thinks this is the middle of Los Angeles, he was grossly mistaken. He insisted I had to find a tire shop, or the nearest gas station. Eventually I got across the point that the only sort of place even remotely close to a car shop within a reasonable distance from here was a place to fix the tour vehicles and to fill up the gas tank. Not a gas station. Just a place to fill up the gas tank, and to fix the big pickups and buses. Even that was 4 miles away from the parking lot, and it was the gas used for the maintenance people. Which we have to buy ($3.10/gallon, not bad!), because we were running close to empty because we were crawling on the way to the parking lot because of the leaking tire and the spare tire on the bouncy unpaved road.
The fucktard insisted we go to the "gas station" and get the tires replaced. Now, I thought I had made myself clear. Apparently not. Here's what the "gas station" he so vehemently insisted we go to to replace the tires looked like:
Okay, so please tell me where I said this was a gas station.
So I spent the next few minutes arguing my ass off because he was being ridiculously unhelpful to the point of ...well, anger. He kept thinking we were in Los Angeles. I told him very clearly we were in Arizona, in the middle of a desert, and there was NO chance in hell we were going to find a place to change tires while on the spare tire and the leaking tire. So this woman who works there, Kathy, took over. She made it clear that they would do what they can there to fix the tires to get us on our way back to Las Vegas, in which case she'll leave him to deal with an extremely irate customer, or that if we were unable to get the car back into good enough shape, that she'll leave him to deal with an extremely irate customer plus 5 other adults and 2 unhappy kids that just got their vacation ruined by some city-dwelling dimwit who can't understand the idea of being in an area that has no service for cellphone calls. Then she hung up on him mid-sentence. You go girl!
We followed the maintenance people back to their area a few miles away, which included the gas tank. They inspected the tires, patched one up, but the other one had a sidewall leak that they did not want to be responsible for if they attempted a fix. So we, we being me and my cousin, had to drive to Kingman, Arizona, to find a new tire while leaving behind everyone else. But first, we filled up at the "gas station".
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from:+grand+canyon+west+to:+3320+stockton+hill+road,+kingman+arizona - 82 miles. At 10-50mph. Averaging probably 20-30, only because on the unpaved road we were going 10, and on the freeway, going 50.
First we went to the Toyota dealership. It was 6:30pm and the service folks had left an hour earlier. So we hightailed it to Walmart, which was going to close (well, the tire place anyway, not the store) in 15 minutes. There we found a replacement tire and had to wait an hour for installation.
In the end, Kathy drove the rest of the family to the Walmart where we were waiting for the tire to be replaced. I don't think I can be thankful enough to her. The tire folks at the Walmart in Kingman weren't the greatest, but we harassed them enough, and I'm thankful they're open so late compared to everyone else. Lastly, major thanks to the first car that made us pull over because of the first tire, and the subsequent cars that stopped around us offering help, and to the bus driver who told us to watch out for snakes.
We arrived back at our hotel in Vegas after midnight, and had a meal with ramen and watermelon.
In the end, everyone was so frazzled and exhausted, we cut short the rest of the trip, and are planning to spend the rest of the week in and around Los Angeles instead. We barely drove 900 miles or so in total, but it was a tiring and frustrating 900 miles. It would be an additional 900 miles to finish the trip, which is 900 miles nobody wants to drive.
You couldn't pay me a million bucks to drive back there. So I missed out on the Skywalk, and my ridiculously acrophobic mom couldn't be forced to go on the Skywalk even though she was there, but someone had to go get that tire.
So that's the story.
Photos from my iPhone: http://flickr.com/photos/chix0r/sets/72157600933874473/