Buck Naked's Excellent Desert Adventure (Guest Post)

When last we left Buck Naked, he and his pals were leaving one of Pahrump’s finest establishments (a brothel).  See here for the details of that.  Buck picks up the story…..

During our trip to Pahrump we did, in fact, experience fireworks, but not the kind Ms. Chang referred to (note: Alysia Chang left a comment that perhaps Buck and his pals only went to Pahrump to buy fireworks, which are illegal in Vegas but available in Pahrump). After sharing laughs and drinks at the sports bar at the brothel, we walked out grinning ear to ear.

The bragging started almost immediately as we pulled out of the parking lot; mostly about services rendered versus $ spent. We all shared our individual experiences, while laughing our asses off.

Once again, we saw several more jack rabbits while making our way to the main highway back to Vegas. It was way past midnight, and as our young driver turned onto the highway headed east, he abused the gas pedal.  We had a tourney to play in about 6 hours.

I do not want to divulge our speed, but we were hauling ass.  After we passed the mountain areas, we came to a long stretch of straight, flat terrain.  We were cruising along nicely, when suddenly out of nowhere, a coyote appeared right in front of our vehicle.   Our young driver slammed on the breaks, but we t-boned the beast.

We were all buckled in and no one was injured, but the coyote was not so lucky.  I really feel that he committed suicide, because he was running full speed across the road, and seemed to freeze right in from of us, only to be bulldozed into oblivion.  We pulled over after the sudden impact, but it was so dark out in the desert we couldn’t see a thing.

As we re-entered the highway, we could hear a definite scraping noise coming from underneath our vehicle. We all thought the worst, that we were dragging a coyote corpse down the road.  After a few miles we saw a light up ahead and pulled into a closed service station that had a well lit gas pump area.

We all jumped out and looked underneath the car, only to find nothing.  We then opened the hood , thinking he may have somehow become lodged in the motor area; nothing again.   So after we made a close inspection walking around the vehicle, we discovered the spoiler under the front bumper had been knocked loose, and was dragging under the front of the car.

We attempted to remove it, with no luck, and limped back to our hotel.  We always valet park, but were too embarrassed by the scraping noise, so we self parked, still laughing on our way to our rooms.

The next morning our young driver went down to the parking garage and kicked the spoiler free, and left it underneath the car.  We didn’t use the vehicle again until we left for the airport 2 days later. I was a bit worried the rental car personnel would discover the part was missing.  I instructed the guys to be silent and let me do the talking when we returned the car.

We filled the gas tank on the way to rental car building and pulled into the return area.  The attendants were checking in other cars as we were getting our luggage out.  We calmly waited and when he came up to our vehicle, he made a quick walk around, checked the gas gauge and mileage, and asked if we had any problems.

I told him we had just filled up, had no problems and everything was fine with the vehicle. As he was checking us out with his hand held machine to print our receipt, an alarm went off.   He looked surprised and made another pass around the vehicle, this time, with a co-worker.  He asked me again if everything was ok, and i assured him that was the case.  When he hit the button to print our receipt, the alarm went off a second time, but the receipt printed out; his co-worker grinned at him, as he looked confused.

I snatched the receipt and off we went without further incident. We laughed again on the shuttle back to the airport, happy with our moment of good luck.  I was still wondering what kind of sensor that machine had to detect something was wrong with the vehicle.  You really wouldn’t have missed the spoiler if you didn’t know it was supposed to be there.  Maybe the machine had a sensor that detected we had slammed on the breaks. I still do not know how it apparently "knew" something was wrong.

After a few days home, i walked out to check my mail, and discovered a letter from the rental car company. I thought " ok here we go,” only to find the official looking letter was a "thank you" note for my recent rental and a survey to fill out regarding my rental experience..  

Naturally, from 1 to 10, i gave them all "10’s" and a glowing review.  LOL.

So now, our group is eagerly awaiting our next trip to Vegas, the adult Disneyland.

Thanks for an incredible story, Buck.  Wonder if they’ll ever figure out there’s a problem with that rental car?