California 04/2008

In April, 2008, Wade Baker and I planned to met up to explore some of the Lord's creation in California. Wade attended a conference in San Francisco on behalf of his employer,Verizon. While Wade was attending the conference, his better half, Emiley, and daughter, Linnea (the apple of her Daddy's eye is pictured here), were visiting her family in the Los Angeles area.

Our plans were for me to fly in to San Francisco, pick up Wade when he finished his work there, tour about the state, and end up in Los Angeles so Wade could fly home with his girls.

Since we were planning on doing some off roading in Death Valley National Park, I wanted to rent a Jeep Wrangler. I wasn't able to reserve a one-way rental of a Wrangler from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but I was able to reserve a Wrangler in Los Angeles, so I flew into Los Angeles and planned to drive up to San Francisco to pick up Wade. Upon my arrival at Hertz at LAX, I had that sinking feeling when I didn't see my name up on the Gold Customer board. Upon inquiry, I was advised that Hertz had just removed all Wranglers from their fleet. Hertz did a great job in trying to find a Wrangler at another rental company, but was not successful.




Here is the vehicle that I reserved, with the special portable brewing accessory that made Black Butte Porter.

What they proposed was a Hummer H3, with all the bells and whistles, for the same price as the Wrangler. I asked if they would comp the fuel (California gas ranged between $4 and $5 a gallon), and when the manager said OK, we had a deal, and I was off on my expedition.