Hey ya’ll! Today I want to talk about the wackest vacation I’ve been on. It also happened this past week. Let’s dive in shall we?
It all started late June when my boyfriend, Cain, discovered a website called TrustedHouseSitters . How this website works is you pay for a membership and this membership allows you to apply to listings and stay for free anywhere around the world as long as you pet or house sit. Cain found this website while researching how to travel on a budget.
From the very beginning, I was wary. Yes we would be able to stay somewhere for free, but we would also have the responsibility of taking care of someones pet. So when Cain told me he had actually landed a pet sitting in Santa Cruz (nearly 6 hours away from where we live), I panicked. I instantly had a gut feeling to not go. I love traveling and discovering new places but for some reason, I wanted to stay home.
I told Cain how I felt and he reassured me everything would be alright. This was going to be an experience that was going to be new and exciting. Neither of us had ever been to Santa Cruz, a Northern California beach town known for its kitschy boardwalk. Still though, I had mixed feelings and was not keen on going. I pushed my anxiety and fears about the trip away and soon the day came for us to leave and drive all the way to Santa Cruz.
Early last Saturday, we packed Cain’s Nissan Sentra and went on our way. Everything was going well, I was actually pretty excited and was seeing the trip in a new light. However, two hours in near Bakersfield, Cain’s car suddenly stopped. Thankfully, we were near an exit and made it to a gas station. The situation did not look good though, the car was leaking oil and after waiting for a tow truck for nearly an hour, we took the car to a local Pep Boys where our fear were confirmed; the engine had imploded.
I suggested we go back home and for Cain to contact the person we were pet sitting for to tell them we were not going to be able to make it and to find someone else. Cain does not give up easily though and wanted to continue the journey to Santa Cruz. We left the car at Pep Boys and ended up at the Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield to rent a car at Enterprise. Because we are under 25, we had to put down a credit card to rent a car. I put mine down and off we went.
We were still a few hours away when Cain asked if I would like to drive. At this point, Cain had been driving for hours and I wanted to give him a break so I said yes. Half an hour after I took over the wheel, I got pulled over for speeding. I have never been pulled over by the police, I didn’t even know I was speeding. He proceeded to give me a fat ticket.
If ya’ll have gotten a ticket, you know these things ain’t cheap. I am unemployed and have been for the last year and a half so I lost it at this point. I sobbed for hours. It wasn’t just about me getting a ticket, it had been an accumulation of the entire day. I had a bad feeling about this trip and my fears had been confirmed. Both Cain and I were pretty distressed about everything.
By the grace of God, we finally made it to Santa Cruz and met Woofie, the dog we came to pet sit. We dropped off the car we rented on Sunday. Keep in mind, Enterprise had allowed us to schedule the drop off at Five PM. When we got there, it was closed. We parked the car in the lot and put the keys in a drop box that said “after hours drop off”. We left thinking that would be that and we’d have it off our hands since it was VERY expensive to keep it for more than one day.
For the rest of the week, I was on edge. With no car, we were basically stranded in one small area that included the house we were staying at, the boardwalk, and downtown. All other plans we had were thrown out due to transportation. That’s when I noticed Enterprise was repeatedly charging my credit card hundreds of dollars even though we had returned the car.
For a few days, we had to call Enterprise on and off about why they were charging me. As I said earlier, I am unemployed and I have not used my credit cards since I lost my job. I was scared they were going to go over my credit limit and mess up my already non existent credit. Calls and calls later, they said they would charge us what we owed from the rental and that be that. They never really gave us an explanation about the extra charges; they just dropped them.
The end of the week came and we had to rent another car to get home. This time we did NOT go to Enterprise and we safely made it home after a tense car ride home that lasted nearly eight hours.
After this past week being so full of ups and downs, I am so grateful to be home safe and sound. This trip put a lot of things in perspective for me. An important thing is listening to your intuition. I wanted so hard to be excited for the trip and have a good time but I felt a weight on me every time I thought about it before we had even left. This trip also taught me, in a lack of better words, to get my shit together. Financially, I’m a mess, and I am even a bigger mess now that I have to pay a ticket that’s worth hundreds of dollars. Instead of seeing it that way though, I am seeing as a fresh start to be better with my finances. If this had not happened, I would continue to spend frivolously, something I couldn’t afford before and definitely can’t now. It also strengthened Cain’s and I relationship. If we could handle that mess, we could handle another and nothings ever as bad as it seems right?
There was definitely fun moments we had that I will talk about in a future post and Woofie was a sweet dog that was easy to take care of. However, it is unfortunate they are overshadowed by the fact that we came home with a load of debt and no car. Years from now, I would like to look back and laugh at our vacation from hell.
