Seed of Christine?

I didn't like the Nissan Pathfinder the moment I saw it, but National Car Rental was all out of minivans and large SUVs. I shouldn't blame the vehicle, actually. The happenings I'm about to describe were mother nature's fault.

I don't recommend a Pathfinder for a family of seven. I couldn't even fit my stroller in the trunk, let alone our six pieces of luggage, five backpacks, baby backpack, laptop, and cooler. After an uncomfortable, but thankfully brief, ride to Walmart, we purchased some bungee cords and put most of the stuff on top. It would then go on to rain several times during our vacation.

We took up every inch of the vehicle. There was no room to climb in the back to buckle kids in or settle Leapster disputes. I told everyone to pretend we were on safari. The vehicle had no shocks, apparently, so this was easy to pretend.

If someone rolled a window down while all the others were rolled up, a hideous noise similar to a flat tire's thumping (magnified 10 times) would enter the vehicle. Many times I thought for sure we had a flat (which is a fun thing to get in the middle of nowhere).

We were in the Rocky Mountains, so it was fitting that a rock flew up and dinged our windshield. There were already two dings in it prior to our renting it, so we weren't that concerned. Then the ding turned into a bigger ding, and then a inch-long crack in a matter of minutes. Every minute it grew another inch. We were in Grand Lake, Colorado, just south or Rocky Mountain National Park. We pulled over as soon as we got cell phone reception and called the rental company.

The agent told us to return the car to Denver and trade it in for another one. While I would love to get rid of this sardine can, Denver was two hours away, and we had been driving all day. We had five hungry, tired kids in the back who were ready to scarf down pizza and jump in the hotel pool. We were going to be driving through Denver in four days, so we decided to trade it in then. That was settled, but we still needed to file a claim with our insurance company. We found out we would be basically paying out of pocket because the damage didn't meet our deductible. OK, at this point the windshield can still be repaired, we thought, so it wouldn't be that much.

We started driving again, and the crack started growing again. As soon as we entered the park, the wind picked up and blew branches from a beetle-addled dying pine tree onto our window. Great- probably helped the crack along. We then entered a hail storm. Fabulous. What else? An elk want to charge the windshield with his antlers?

After all that drama, we had about a ten-inch crack in the windshield. It would have to be replaced for sure, now. Ah well, at least no one ended up in the hospital on this vacation (I think this was our first vacation in which no one "toured" the local hospital). Better the car instead of one of us with a ten-inch crack in the head (that may or may not have been threatened to the pinching heathens in the backseat).