We just got home from Scottsbluff with our rental “car” after waiting for nine days to get one (getting rentals around here is tough enough but the eclipse really put the press on our few car rental places).

The insurance company said they would only pay for the smallest car their contracted company has available, and to pick us up at home to get it.

That turned out to be a 2017 Ford Expedition.

Holy crap you could put three of my cars in that thing, and it probably cost twice as much as my house. No self-respecting cowboy, rancher, or farmer would be caught dead driving that Rhinestone Cowboy-mobile around here.

There is more bling inside that vehicle than a jewellery shop. Pennsylvania plates to make me stand out here as if I was lost. GPS in the car that has maps that do not show our roads (so when we’re travelling along off the few paved roads, the map looks like we’re driving across blank space - I don’t know how to shut off the GPS so it will be an annoyance until I get my Smart car back).

After the rental agency got it all set up for us and the paperwork signed, he flipped on Sirius XM, tuned to some right wing propaganda channel. I told him “oh hell no, I’m not listening to some wingnut for sixty miles home; show me how to change this or turn it off.” The clerk laughed at “wingnut” and showed me how to put on the radio or select other channels on Sirius (that seems to be too much of a pain, why have a thousand satellite channels if you can only listen to one at a time).

Got back to the county seat and did business we’ve put off for ten days (picked up new glasses for my wife, went to the store, &c). A sheriff’s deputy chatted when we came out of the optician shop; he’d been looking over this beast parked on the street and asked why I would drive such a thing. (Parked at a restaurant it was bigger than a crew cab extended bed truck we parked next to.)

We probably won’t drive it much (mileage somewhere south of 17 mpg), but we don’t get out much anyway. I don’t ever recall spending sixty dollars on gas since I lived in Spain.