The Most Shocking Thing I’ve Ever Found In A Rental Car

No, it wasn't a dead body but still....

My best Capital One voice: What’s in your wallet?

Who cares! It’s what’s in your glove compartment that could determine whether or not you spend a night in prison at a border crossing.

TRUE STORY!

I swear, these things only happen to me because I write.

In 2018, I took a brief five-day jaunt to visit a friend in Toronto. During my stay, we mostly got around on foot and by public transportation…except for that one day we decided to check out Niagara Falls.

That day, we rented a car.

When we picked up the rental, we could tell it hadn’t been cleaned since the last customer. The company explained that the outside was dirty because of messy winter conditions—a typical Canadian January.

However, getting into the car, it was clear it hadn’t been cleaned inside either, because we found an empty camera bag in the back seat. Obviously, the previous renters left it there.

Regardless, we loaded our bags into the tiny Nissan Micra and hit the road to Niagara Falls.

I recall asking my friend if she thought the car stank like weed. She didn’t smell it, maybe because she smokes weed and I don’t. It became a dead issue for the moment, and onward we went.

We made a few stops on our journey, and each time we got out and got back into the car, I asked her the same thing.

“Don’t you think this car smells like weed?”

Clearly, the renters before us must have hot-boxed in the car or something.

28 hours later, we came back from Niagara Falls and returned the vehicle to the rental location.

As we did a once-over inside the car and gathered our belongings, my friend said, “I know we didn’t put anything in here, but just in case……”

Then she opened the glove compartment.

Our eyes bulged at the discovery we’d just made. An extra large Ziplock bag full of….you guessed it…WEED.

It was abundantly clear why I’d been smelling it for the last 28 hours. 😆

So, here’s the scary part.

Before we had settled on Niagara Falls, there was a brief moment when we had actually considered crossing the border and spending a night in Detroit instead. We knew there were some amazing jazz bars in Detroit and thought it might be a worthwhile road trip.

The only reason we decided against Detroit is that it seemed a little too far for just one overnight.

The longer she and I considered our last-minute decision and everything that could have gone wrong with a huge bag of weed in the vehicle, the more we realized that the universe was 100% on our side that day.

Let’s pretend for a minute that we HAD tried crossing the US border and got randomly selected for a search. I watch Border Patrol on TV. I know exactly how this all goes down. They separate you, interrogate the crap out of you, and perform Chinese water torture until one breaks down and confesses to a crime they didn’t commit.

Next thing you know, you’re doing life without parole in Brokedown Palace? 😐

Or…let’s just say we were pulled over in our own country for any reason with a pound of weed in the car! The possibilities for disaster were endless, and each possibility sounded worse than the one before it.

PLEASE! Do the once-over when you rent a car. Although this sounds hilarious (yes, I’ve laughed over it a lot), it could have turned out really badly had we made other travel decisions.

In the end, the rental company offered a huge apology and half our money back to try and smooth things over.

Ultimately, they were responsible because they hadn’t cleaned the vehicle before renting it to us, but try explaining that to the US Border Patrol or any law enforcement officer for that matter.

I’m a seasoned traveller and have rented many vehicles. Until that day, I had never skipped doing the once-over, probably because I’m more complacent in my own country. Everything is pretty slack in Canada, comparatively speaking. 😁

The irony is that I’ve rented cars in Jamaica a hundred times, and not once did I find even a morsel of weed in the vehicle.

Good old Canada, eh?

Have you ever had a travel moment that made you stop and think, “Holy shite, that could’ve gone very wrong, very quickly!”?

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Speaking of things in wallets when you travel….