Saturday, June 18, 2005
Motels, Motels, Motels
For those who have been reading these rambling updates for over a year now, I'm here to report that things have drastically changed for The Wilders. With The Chief in long term dry dock and with the addition of a nifty 4x6 foot bright red trailer tagging behind the Brown Clown (our Ford Econoline conversion van), we are able to move about the country at 70+ miles per hour carrying everything we need except our beds. It's cramped and smelly and we start to go out of our gourds after about 8 hours, but it's efficient and fast and, most of all, a quite reliable way to get from one end of the country to the other. Yes folks, we have become a band of motel dwellers. We drive all day and when we get to where we are going, we pull almost everything of importance to us out of the van and trailer and lug it into our motel rooms for the night. Hopefully the nonsmoking rooms don't stink of smoke (or worse, Febreez- what the hell are they trying to cover up anyway?) Hopefully the motel has a continental breakfast in the morning that, at least, offers some fresh fruit. Hopefully the water pressure is decent and you don't get scalded if the person in the room next to you flushes the toilet. Hopefully the beds are clean and the pillows aren't so big and fluffy that you wake up in the morning with a sore neck. And hopefully, the toilet paper is softer than 60 grit sandpaper. These are the things that you think about while you are waiting to check in. Out of pure monetary motivation, we are partial to the Motel 6 chain, but, on occasion, we will stay at the mom and pop type places too if that's what we can afford. For example, last week we stayed at a funky place in Missouri Valley, Iowa called the Rath Inn. We arrived after midnight and checked into the only room they had, a smoking suite with 4 beds! It was a curious, smelly, but ultimately comfortable place to spend about 8 hours. Please understand folks that this is a really weird way to live- moving from one room to another loading and unloading our stuff throughout the country. But sometimes it's comfortable and you never have to stand in line to take a shower.
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I've been doing the motel thing on average about 40-50 nights per year for the last 12 years or so. We need to have a motel horror story session next time I see you. It would be good to get slightly inebriated first as an aid to narrational embellishment. My worst case was probably about 2 AM, eastern Kentucky, many hours of driveing with everything full, then a room with a bare concrete floor, indescribable furnishings, and a "shower" that consised of an open 1/2" pipe with a stream of water coming out of it.
ReplyDeleteThen there are the drive-in motels. You give them $10, park, and sleep in the car.
The best Wilders story I can think of is the one that happened in Nashville, Tennessee about two years ago. We checked into a Microtel on the outskirts of the city and left to attend a bluegrass awards show downtown. The next morning Ike and Nate were both bothered by the fact that there was a pair of soiled "tidy whities" on the floor of their bathroom. Of course, they silently blamed each other for the transgression until one of them actually said something about it. It was only then that they realized that he underwear in question didn't belong to either of them. Someone had apparantly entered their room while we were away, showered and left a skid marked pair of underwear behind on the floor as a calling card. Ike used a plastic bag to pick it up and went to the front desk to complain. The manager on duty at the Microtel apologized and thanked Ike for bringing it to his attention. We still laugh about that incident to this day...
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