We were closing in on Phoenix, Arizona, when it happened. The little red engine light popped on demanding maintenance. The fact that it happened is not all that surprising, considering we had driven the car all the way from Greensboro, North Carolina, and it had Florida plates, which means it could have been driven from Florida to North Carolina before we had it.

We called the car rental company, and the lady on the phone made an interesting suggestion: just go and get the oil changed. What? Oh yeah, we are just going to take our rental car down to the local mechanic we know and have it serviced. And then after we could wax the car with my toothbrush.

So anyway, we returned the Corolla we had been driving to the airport in Phoenix, at which point we picked up a Malibu. We drove around for a while, going on a wild goose chase for the University of Phoenix Stadium, which is awesome by the way, when it happened. That unholy light blinked on again, unleashing a rain of profanities throughout the car. It was decided that we were going back to the airport.

Mr. Van Loon and I can’t really be certain about what went down between Austin and the car rental lady, but he said that he dropped an F-bomb and demanded a larger car with the fewest miles on the lot. We had stayed outside to avoid creating something of a scene. Regardless of what really did transpire during those few nervous minutes, we ended up with a Sebring with about 20,000 miles. We figured we had better just drive around the parking garage for a while so we would be close when the Engine maintenance light beeped on again.

Fortunately, it did not, and we were able to enjoy a dinner at the hotel Denny’s and the 4th of July fireworks. While it was a nice show, it couldn’t have been as impressive as the display that Austin put on earlier that afternoon on the poor, unsuspecting National employee, who probably was just doing her job to feed her 7 kids and 4 cats without a husband.

Needless to say, Day 6 was “all about the rental cars”.