We plan well: apply for the ESTA (visa) in plenty of time; register with Safe Travel and,  in case of detention by ICE, ask friends to call the NZ Embassy if they don’t hear from us within 48 hours of our scheduled arrival; we scour our electronics free of any potentially scurrilous satire pertaining to the administration (see, I’m still being careful); and book a medium-sized car with GPS to pick up on arrival. Simple. Efficient. Logical. The kind of plan that gives you false confidence. We cruise through Immigration and Customs and front up at Budget rentals, reservation in hand, ready to be guided across the Lone Star state by the miracle of satellite navigation.  But ever the innovator, Budget’s interpretation of GPS is a loosely duct-taped tablet, suspiciously resembling something a 12 year old uses to play Minecraft. No mount. No charger. Just vibes.

Yeah, nah. “You can upgrade to a Ford Explorer at another $30 a day. Though I can go as low as $25, and I’ll deduct the $17 a day you already paid” – for the GPS we haven’t got.  So gracious. “This one definitely has GPS,” she assures us with the confident tone of someone who’s never once checked. More money? Sure. Anything for functional navigation.  Down we go to meet our majestic Explorer. We open the door, breathe in the rental car air freshener, and prepare to plug in our coordinates. But wait. The GPS turns out to be…a backing camera, useful only if we want to flee Houston in reverse.  A helpful car jockey joins the fray, prodding buttons, consults an  oracle, and concedes defeat. Back upstairs we go, weary travelers seeking truth and actual maps.

The Budget representative enters a new phase of customer service: gaslighting. “But the computer says it has GPS,” as if repetition might conjure satellites from the sky. After several rounds of this Kafkaesque loop we reach the magical moment where hope and corporate policy collide. They offer us a minivan. We decline. Finally, broken by the unrelenting force of our presence, they give in, and with all the charm of a glass of flat champagne, she hands us the keys to ….a GM Suburban Denali. Three rows of seats. Enough horsepower to flatten traffic. Enough room to transport a small militia. A different but also helpful car jockey shows us how to put it in gear – it’s not obvious – and we drive off, GPS-less but victorious, guiding ourselves the old-fashioned way – using an iPhone and apple car-play. Some journeys are measured in miles. Ours? In passive-aggressive standoffs and one gloriously oversized SUV. Welcome to Texas