Considering renting a car for your roadtrip? 3 lessons from a cross-country trek

This is my noble steed.

I rented him thinking I’d only be on a 30 day journey. But I put 17,000 miles on him the summer of 2020 traveling for 3 months across the US.

Prometheus at the Palisades in the Cimarron River Canyon in New Mexico.

I heard it once said that you should name your mechanical objects. Without a name, they don’t have a soul. It is up to us to give them a spirit.

And for a car I’d be living in to avoid COVID, this was important.

I asked my brother to help me name my noble steed. I threw out options: Athena? Pegasus? Andromeda?

The answer came like a lightning bolt: the bringer of fire to man — the sympathetic guardian of consciousness. The Titan who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we wouldn’t have to wander the world alone in the cold and darkness.

What I would need most on the trip — his name meaning forethought:

Prometheus.

What does it cost to rent an SUV for a month?

Astronomical. But for transportation and a home? It was about equal to what I was paying in expenses living in Somerville, Massachusetts: $1400, or about $46 a day.