Wanderings of a St. Louisian: June 2015

The car trembled again as I looked to the trees. "It's not the wind, that's shaking our car." I said to Alison and Julia. "And you're sure I'm not somehow causing it?" Alison asked looking around our rental car. "No, it's not you. We should pull over." I replied as Alison pulled into a pharmacy parking lot. Then we heard it, the terrible tick, it was coming from our engine and I knew I had to call someone. I got out of the car, trying to locate exactly what and where the sound was. I pulled my phone out and dialed in Dad's number. No answer. I called Mom's. No answer. Thankfully though, we live in an apartment building filled with other students; and I was able to call our downstairs superhero, Matthew, who got me connected with Dad.

Dad: Hello? What's going on?
Me: Hey Dad.... It's Nancy. Um, it looks like we put unleaded in our diesel car... We just filled up about 15 minutes ago, we thought our car took unleaded, so we filled it up and kept driving. But our car keeps shaking and now we hear this terrible ticking from the front of our car.... Are we going to die?
Dad: Well, that's not good. No, you aren't going to die, but you do need to get the diesel out of the gas tank. (Here he went into the reasons why our car was shaking and making the terrible ticking.) You should call Hertz and figure out what they want you to do. You might be able to siphon the gas out of the tank, but I'm not sure. It might also be good to try and get to the nearest service station if you can.
Me: Okay, I'll see if we can find one and call Hertz. Talk to you in a minute.

So here we are, on the outskirts of Marseilles, France, with our broken rental car on a hot Saturday afternoon. I found the Hertz emergency number and called them next. I then proceeded to talk with the Hertz employee for 5 minutes explaining our situation; but when He asked for specific information about our rental agreement, I hung up. Being a Rice, I wanted to make sure that we had exhausted all cheaper options, before going through Hertz. Then, I received a text from Dad saying that we should find the nearest service station and see if they had a bucket and a hose, so we could try to siphon the gas out of our car.

Before we headed to the gas station, Alison, Julia and I decided to walk to our hotel which was supposedly just down the street. We walked right to where the GPS said it would be, but all we could find were closed shops. 10 minutes later, we decided that we needed to head to service station.
"You have arrived at your destination." The GPS, now called George, cheerfully told us. There we were standing in front of a closed gate, we look through the bars, but it didn't look anything like a gas station. Shaking my head, I walked back to the parking lot of the next building where there were two people working on some construction machinery.
I approached them, trying to calm the butterflies. "Um, bonjour. J'ai une question un peu bizarre." I stuttered, hoping that the workers would be understanding. I continued to explain our predicament: How we needed a bucket and hose, as well as asking where the nearest service station was. Worker #1 turned to Worker #2 who was up on the large machine, relaying my situation and asking where the nearest open gas station was. Worker #2 was unsure which gas stations were open, because as worker #1 told me later, if it's a hot day in France most business will close and go to the beach. Great. The nearest open station was too far to walk. After some dispute, worker #1 said that she could take one person in her car to the nearest gas station. I turned to Alison and Julia and relayed all that had happened. We decided that I should go with Worker #1 because I was the only who was actually taking French classes and I knew the most French. Alison and Julia, in the mean time, would try to find our hotel and meet me at the car after checking in at the hotel. I said goodbye to Alison and Julia and got into the car.

After about 5 minutes of driving, we passed a service station, as we passed Worker #1 told me, they're at the beach. We continued to pass 2 more gas station that were closed before we reached the one gas station that was opened on Saturday. We went into service store and with the help with Worker #1, I bought 5 liters of diesel. But when I explained again that I needed a hose and large bucket so that I could siphon the gas out, the service station worker laughed at me. "You can't siphon gas out of a rental car, especially a new one. Now, they have protections so people don't steal your gas." I sighed, looking around but there wasn't a hose or bucket even for sale.

Once I was back with Alison and Julia, I explained all that had happened, but I still had hope of finding the materials we needed to siphon out the gas. I even went to a florist and asked if they had a large bucket that I could buy off them, but I don't think they trusted me and wouldn't sell me one. Finally, we had to face it, we would have to go through Hertz. We had tried to find a cheaper option, but we had exhausted our other option.

I called Hertz and told them all that happened in a mixture of French and English, because when you push "2" for a representative who speaks English, you really get someone with a thick French accent whose English is really just French. They told me that they would send a tow truck to get our car. Afterwards, a taxi would come get us to take us to the nearest open Hertz office to get our new car. Worker #1 had shown me where our hotel was, so while we waited for the tow truck, Alison went to check in to our hotel which was a 15 minute walk away. The tow truck came and took our car away, unfortunately by that time all the Hertz office were closed except the one at the airport, so we took a 70 euro taxi ride to pick up our new rental car. Finally, after 5 hours of stress, we were able to go to our hotel, after getting lost several times through rush hour Marseilles.

The view from our bnb on Friday night.

I am glad to report that was the only low light of this past weekend. Alison, Julia and I were on a weekend road trip through the south of France when this happened, but everything worked out. We had that morning seen the beautiful, just blooming lavender fields and driven along beautiful mountain roads. The lavender was a beautiful blue/purple and smelled amazing. We were early enough in the summer that there weren't any other people there, it was just us and the lavender! The next day, we went to Cassis, a cute little town on the the Mediterranean Sea, and relaxed on the beach. It was a wonderful weekend, even with our little hiccup. Alison and Julia, you are both beautiful, wonderful, and great travel buddies. Alison, thanks for having good taste in music and giving us jams to enjoy on our drive. Julia, thanks for putting up with my crazy slap-happy jokes and cracking up too!