‘Scoring an F150 from Thrifty’
Not to sound like a summer deadbeat or anything — though I am kind of a deadbeat, and not just in summer — I was going to skip yet another week of blog-posting. (I was AWOL last week, in case you didn’t notice.)
But then I realized that you Faithful Readers (Madeleine and Becca and Ruth, I’m talking to you) would wonder if I’d fallen off the face of the earth.
See, Dude Man and I are going on yet another of our Wacky Birdy Adventures, and we will be out of internet contact for three whole weeks. And gosh, if I didn’t write one of these things till the end of September, I might even lose Madeleine and Becca and Ruth!
![](https://i0.wp.com/lutheranliar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_1791.jpg?resize=510%2C689&ssl=1)
Showing off a leech bite on one of our birdy adventures (Borneo). Now I’ve done it; you’re all going to Borneo
So, what’s been keeping me away from my keyboard? Ta-da! Another wedding, that’s what. And boy oh boy do I love weddings. I have said it before, but I’ll say it again: What’s not to love about a wedding? There’s a big gathering of family and friends, toasts and food and more toasts, and everybody’s happy. The only other time I can think of when this kind of thing goes on — well, except for maybe the “happy” part — is a wake. (Though a wake can be happy; read about my Oldest Younger Brother’s genius idea, his Living Wake, right here.)
![](https://i0.wp.com/lutheranliar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2938.png?resize=510%2C680&ssl=1)
Scott and me living it up at his wake
But what’s that about a rented F150, you might be asking. (A couple of 70-Somethings don’t exactly seem like the F150 type.) Well, this wedding took place on the Biltmore Estate — Biltmore being the name of the extremely large (more than 250 rooms) and extremely luxurious (an indoor heated pool and a bowling alley) house situated on equally large (some 30,000 acres) and equally luxurious (designed by Frederick Law Olmstead) property near Asheville, North Carolina, that the Biltmores built more than a hundred hears ago.
We booked rooms in the Biltmore Inn, since no one can stay at the mansion itself. (A pity; there are 33 guest rooms.) In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I received several emails from the Inn, inviting me to book events — dining (nah), flowers in the room (also nah), tickets to the mansion (yes!) — in advance. But we were also advised to rent a car. They said the property was way too big and shuttles too infrequent to opt out. (We also discovered that GPS was completely unreliable, but I’ll get to that.)
So I scrounged around on the internet and found that the best car rental deal was through Thrifty. They have this thing called the “Wild Card.” Which is their cheapest option — even cheaper than those micro-compacts that look and feel like those clown cars they used to have in the circus. (Maybe they still do; I haven’t been to a circus in decades, thank god.) To get this cheaparino rate, you simply agree to take whatever car they might have available at the time. It’s a surprise — hence the “Wild Card” moniker.
![](https://i0.wp.com/lutheranliar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_5401.jpeg?resize=510%2C440&ssl=1)
Dude happily at the wheel of the F150. There was no way I was going to drive that thing. It made my Dad’s cars seem like Tonka Toys — see “Boats? Dad had yachts of them” for Dad-car stories
Well, I think they should just call it the Wild Car. Because what did we score? This brand-spankin’-new F150 truck, that’s what. It was shiny, it was blindingly white and fragrant with that lovely new-car smell. Wild, indeed. Also, it was huge. Not as huge as The Child’s F350 — which they used to haul their camper shell around the country during the late not-lamented Covid Lockdown — but way bigger than our Honda, that’s for sure.
We could have hauled the whole wedding party in that thing. Plus a cooler and some lawn chairs in the truck bed. (Which is something people did in my home town; we called it a “Clinton County Cadillac.”)
![](https://i0.wp.com/lutheranliar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2980.jpeg?resize=510%2C644&ssl=1)
The happy couple. The groom is Dude Man’s cousin’s youngest son. Yes, we’re digging deep, wedding-wise
Oh yes, the GPS Thing. It took us ages to find the Biltmore Inn. When we programmed the address into Apple Maps, we kept getting sent to the employee-only entrance. Turns out everyone gets sent by GPS to the employee entrance — except for the employees. (Or so a very nice employee told us when we finally checked in. I had to get out in town and ask directions, which an antique-store-proprietor helpfully scribbled on the back of an old receipt. He even drew us a map. I felt bad not buying anything, but not after all that downsizing.)
Speaking of downsizing, I don’t want to expand on this story further. If I get too longwinded I might alienate even Madeleine and Becca and Ruth. I will leave you with a few more nice photos of where the Biltmores once roamed. I’ll be back with stories at the end of September — unless we get stampeded by elephants.
Amagansett, New York. August 2023