And we’re back.
Not only have we returned, but my health seems to have as well. We spent most of the last two weeks visiting family out west.
Naturally, getting there and back meant flying eventually but our journey really began with an hour’s drive to a hotel near the airport where we spent the night before our departure since we’d been booked on a 6:10 am flight.
It was not a luxury stay; no fancy soaps, no beautiful linens, no flowers, no chocolates on the pillows. This place was all about the basics, two queen beds, a shower and cable. And germs.
My brain recognizes entering a hotel room as a signal to start sending out messages not to touch anything. Because these messages get issued with the strength of life and death imperatives, and because the whole purpose of hotel rooms is to ACTUALLY TOUCH THINGS, I never relax. I spend the night wondering who slept in this bed before me and how many people, exactly, have been murdered in this room. By the end of the night, I am always convinced the number is in excess of a million.
To cap off the joy of a sleepless night at Chez Filth, I awoke to find the car had a nearly flat tire.
While the Mrs. and the Chud waited for the taxi coming to pick us up since the hotel’s shuttle van was “broken,” I drove across the street to use the Speedway station’s air pump.
I dropped 75 cents into the machine and tried to fit the hose to our valve stem. Nothing doing. In fact, there was no hose tip, just a big plastic disc attached to the machine by yards of useless piping that I was left trying to screw onto a half-flat tire at 4:30 in the morning. I surrendered the effort went into the gas station.
A flat-faced kid met me at the counter. I explained the situation. He stared at me with a look of surprise. His mouth hung open. A woman, probably the manager, said, “Yea, somebody cut our hose,” in a matter-of-fact-tone that suggested I was stupid for not seeing something so obvious. I got my 75 cents back.
Back at the hotel, I parked our car in the lot where we were leaving it and began planning to return to an undriveable vehicle.
The cab came and we got to the airport where our two-year –old was treated to full “she might be a terrorist” treatment, including having the splint she was wearing to correct the injury to her arm she had sustained while playing in our room at Disease Inn dusted for traces of explosives.
At least the flights out and back were uneventful. I did notice the airline, in an apparent attempt to generate revenue in the face of an economic downturn, had begun charging for many goods and services that were previously assumed to be included in the price of your ticket. For example, landing gear. Who knew that flying in a plane actually equipped to land required an expensive upgrade?
Once back on the ground, we returned to the lobby of the hotel where we left the car to wait for the AAA man to come change our now entirely deflated tire. We got fortunate that he was friendly and professional, two qualities that, to say the least, are not always characteristic of AAA road service providers.
An hour and a half later, we finally pulled into our driveway. Home looked good. The Mrs. carried in our sleeping Chud to put her down in her own little crib as we too headed for our old familiar room for the first time in, well, way too long.
