A toilet-frozen solid required our airline to bring us another plane so we could leave for Seattle, Washington, this evening. Better late than never, we thought, and in shorts and a light shirt arrived at the Seattle/Tacoma airport shortly before midnight. Cold air welcomed us, leaving no doubt that we had left the warm comfort zone of the desert.

At the Dollar Rental Car desk, we are given the electronic door opener/fob for a car but no key. Oh, that IS the key, I’m informed. “You have been upgraded to a Prius. Do you know how to drive one?” Oh, come on, I’ve been driving for, think, count out on fingers, um, like about almost 30 years. “Well, let me show you a few things…” Fine. You place the door/fob thing in this hole in the dash and then push the Start button. Everything lights up, but the engine doesn’t start – oh yeah it’s a hybrid – it doesn’t need to. To put the car in gear, there is a shifter on the dashboard; push left and up for reverse and left and down for drive, gotcha.

What he should have warned me about was the engine/battery usage animation on the small screen in the middle of the dashboard. I’d like to know how many accidents have been had by people spending too much time watching the engine engage and the little tires turning round and round instead of the road. South of the airport, we check in to our motel to get six hours of sleep.

Note: I, too, wonder why there were no photos from this day, not even bad ones.