Failing in the clutch
A tiny travel horror story, part 1
I am cursed when it comes to rental cars, I swear. And now I have a triptych of tiny travel horror stories to reinforce this idea.
First, there’s the infamous and very long story of our ill-fated side trip to Naples several years ago, when I wrecked the Beast not once, but twice. I will let you take some time to read that (or listen to it) if you haven’t already.
More recently? Two, count ‘em two, moments of automobile misfortune. Two tiny travel horror stories. I’ve broken them up into two parts. Below is part one.
So we’re in the south of France. The only way to navigate this region is by car, so we’d reserved one to pick up when we landed in Marseilles.
All was going according to plan. They gave us some brand I’d never heard of. No matter, the thing was brand new with only 219km on it.
It was a manual. No matter, I learned how to drive on a stick.
It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t large either. No ma—well, some matter. See, we have a lot of stuff. Too much stuff. Way too much, actually, from our seven weeks in Europe. But I bet I can make everything fit.
As always, when it was time to seal the deal, they wanted to upcharge me like crazy with the extra insurance. But I learned from my previous debacle: ALWAYS. GET. THE EXTRA. INSURANCE.
So I got the extra insurance.
(Did I mention that you should always get the extra insurance? Always get the extra insurance.)
We went to retrieve our not-small but not-large vehicle. It was…pretty small. But thanks to my Tetris-like Dad-genius, I managed to cram all our stuff in there. It’s just that we had to put a backpack under CJ’s feet, another backpack on the floor in the middle of the two back seats, and then put the guitar (Rosa!) between the kids such that the neck of the case stuck out into the cockpit, and then laid my giant REI backpack on top of that.
Easy! No problem! Haha! We’ll just go ahead and do a road trip like this!
I quietly prepare my heart to make this something funny we talk about later and hope the family doesn’t revolt. But we got all our butts and all our crap crammed into this smallish vehicle, and off we went.
Look. I’ve driven more than my fair share of manual transmission vehicles. My first car was a stick. I know what I’m doing. But I’ve always had a little trouble getting the feel for a clutch right away. Especially on smaller cars with a tiny l’il clutch. And so, I thought nothing of it when I had to tangle with the clutch on this particular car. I’m just getting used to it, I reasoned. (Also, my knees were cramped up on the steering column because of CJ and the backpacks behind me, so I was working with wonky foot angles.)
Even though the clutch seemed to be acting a little funny, I thought I had it pretty well sussed out by the time we hit the highway. But then two things happened at once: We hit a traffic jam that forced us to nearly a total stop, and the clutch stopped acting the way clutches are supposed to act.
I could barely shift at all. RPMs raged way too much to get from first to second. And then the smell…not a good smell. Burnt-something-rubber-ish. The kids complained about the smell. Then smoke started pouring out from under the hood.
A very helpful person in the car next to us, also at nearly a dead stop because of the traffic jam, caught our eye and pointed to the smoking hood, as if I hadn’t noticed it yet. The kids complained about the smell some more.
There are a few substances you don’t want to see emanating from your car, and smoke is definitely on that list. But we were stuck in traffic. Fortunately, I managed to rev it into a low gear, nose my way into the right lane, and then poke my way into a parking lot.
I was baffled. In my stressed-out state, I was willing to accept the possibility that I was just sucking very badly at shifting gears and needed to take a moment to collect myself and my left foot.
The kids complained about the smell some more. We sat there a moment, safe from the traffic but unsure what was happening with the car. I attempted to put it in reverse to test out the clutch. Instead, the car drifted forward. Mm. Not a good sign. The smoke from the hood was now only a smolder, but it remained smoldering, like the end of a joke.
I popped the hood, as you do. But all I could see was a twisting thread of smoke twirling up from the depths of the engine compartment. While the kids complained about the smell some more, I slid back into the driver’s seat and stepped on the clutch. It gave way with no resistance and didn’t pop back up.
I surmised that the clutch cable was the source of the smoke. So much so that it was likely no longer a cable at all, but had been transformed entirely into particulate matter that wafted into the French sky.
We were stuck.
While the kids tumbled out of the car to stretch their legs in the dusty parking lot, taking a beat to toss a complaint over their shoulders about the smell , I tried to figure out a next step.
First, we realized that we didn’t have a way to actually make calls, because we’d been using our U.S. numbers on WhatsApp with an eSIM instead of getting European SIM cards with European phone numbers. But I finally figured out that I could switch to my actual U.S. SIM, and for some reason I was able to make calls with that. It took me way too long to discover this.
I tried to call Avis’ emergency/breakdown line but couldn’t get through after remaining on hold for 15, 20, 25, 30 minutes. I tried calling the Avis office we rented from, but nobody picked up.
Any story in which you’re stuck is made significantly worse if you throw a time crunch into the mix, and that’s exactly where we found ourselves. The Avis office was closing in an hour, and we were losing daylight fast. If we couldn’t get their help…what exactly were we supposed to do?
My next thought was to get a taxi back to Avis, leaving the car here and getting a new rental and making all this their problem. (Allllllllways get the extra insurance!)
I wanted to try a couple of other things first, but that went nowhere fast, but we managed to flag down a taxi, despite being off the beaten path. And somehow—SOMEHOW—we fit ourselves and all of our crap into this man’s taxi.
I believe this to be a small miracle, because, if you recall, we barrrrreeeeely fit ourselves and stuff into our rental car. We bade the car-turned-paperweight a not-so-fond farewell.
Back at Avis, we got things settled. This time, we randomly had a British worker helping us, which was nice, because in my agitated and exhausted state, my French was worse than usual. And she got us an automatic, which was nice. And she got us an electric, which was nice. And it’s the biggest thing available in their fleet, which was super nice. A Hyundai Kona EV. It’s not big big, but it’s big enough. Just big enough, to fit all our stuff a little better than in the other car.
By now, it was late. After dark. Around 10:30pm or so. We were going to be super late getting to our Airbnb. (Sorry!) And…we realized we hadn’t eaten. The drive in the dark was a little tricky, and tummies were upset, and emotions were flooding some people, and we were struggling to find a bathroom. We spotted a Burger King off the highway that was still open, and I tried to exit to it, but we couldn’t figure out how. (At least one key road was closed.) Ugh, ugh, ugh. While we were turning ourselves around and around trying to find a way to the Burger King, it closed.
We soldiered on. Eventually we spotted a big gas station that was open. HEAVEN! We peed. We got drinks. We got snacks. We got what was going to pass for dinner—some premade sandwiches, basically—but the calories and respite made the gang happier and relieved, and we made it to our Airbnb.
It was a neat place—a little farm up in the hills. We arrived around midnight. (Sorry!) The nice young couple that lives adjacent to it got us set up, we finished eating, we showered off CJ (who had been rolling around in the dirt while we were stranded in the parking lot), and we all collapsed in cozy jammies and air conditioning for the night.
A tiny horror story with a remarkably redemptive ending.
One Very Important Detail that plagues me: What happened to that clutch?
It is entirely possible—likely, even—that the issue was user error. I mean, it was basically a brand new car. It hadn’t existed long enough to suffer wear and tear. All I can think is that either the original driver did something horrible to it over the course of those first 219km, or it had some factory defect.
Or, I did something incredibly stupid. But imagination fails me. Did I accidentally turn the parking brake on? Maybe, but for the brief amount of time it could possibly have been engaged, it shouldn’t have caused that much damage.
It’s kind of keeping me up at night.
Welp. The Kona EV we ended up with was a better vehicle for us anyway. Of course…this replacement vehicle would not allow us to leave the continent unscathed, either...
Stay tuned for part two: David (pronounced da-VEED) and the EV