Day Eleven: Austin, TX to Las Cruces, NM

Man, we had a DAY today! We let ourselves sleep in a bit as we’d stayed up hella late last night hanging out with our host (another ScoreHero dude), then hit a Jiffy Lube before getting rolling. See, the car had been bitching a bout needings its oil changed, and we couldn’t get a hold of any of the local Budget offices because of the stupid holiday weekend.
Well, all was fine and good until we were cruising along I-10 in the late afternoon and starting to think we should buy gas. A guy passed us and made weird “OMG YOU ARE BLOWING UP!” gestures. We were kind of confused – there were no weird lights, smells, etc. going on. So, we decided to stop at the next rest area – where we found the guy who’d passed us! He told us that our car had been billowing smoke from the undercarriage. We popped the hood and discovered there was oil EVERYWHERE. A quick check of our oil level revealed that while there was clearly enough oil that the car’s lights and sensors hadn’t gone off, there wasn’t enough oil to actually, you know, show on the dipstick or anything. Oy.

So we called Jiffy Lube and asked if they’d noticed anything weird, and they said no but that they would totally come get us. We were like, um, we’re a couple hundred miles away now, but thanks. Then we called Budget’s roadside assistance line. The guy in the Texas office was very helpful and agreed that if we had no oil on the dipstick it was not a good idea to keep driving. He hooked us up with the closest office – which was about 100 miles away. They tried to tell me that it was the job of the office we rented from originally to get us a replacement car. I had to explain that the Budget office we rented from is at San Jose International Airport in CALIFORNIA, and that it was kind of impractical to insist that they get us a car.
So the local office sent a towtruck and a new car to us. It took about three hours for them to get to us, but they did show up. Yay. So now we have a new car. It’s the same make/model as the old (a Chevy Cobalt) but is a different color (white) and a nicer level of trim.
One bonus feature: the new car had a full tank of gas. So we lost four hours of drive time, but we got a free tank of gas out of it, so that’s something.
And now, it’s 1:40am local time so I am going the hell to bed. Photos tomorrow, with any luck.