i've cracked it

Since the summer seems to already be clicking right along, and our Stowe trip is earlier this year, I finally got on the ball and started sorting out a hotel for our mid-drive stop at the end of the month. The halfway point, from here to Dummerston, is near Port Jervis, NY – sitting romantically amidst the tri-state backwoods. Of course, for those that are willing to trust their luck to the I-95 corridor on a holiday weekend I say this – nuts. We always go the back route that takes us a bit west, and then north through Harrisburg, PA, before finally swinging back east and eventually up to Hartford, CT and onto Vermont. I call it the trip along all the I-Eighty numbered roads. I think (per the computer map guy – he knows who he is…) the trip is an hour longer by mileage but with little worry about horrid traffic. I’m in.

Last trip up we stayed at this little-piece-of-Americana place on the border that I thought was perfectly acceptable. X thought not, as relayed to me this morning via the “blah” face and voice, so I was off once again to attempt an overnight bivouac. Also, with one extra 14-year-old on the trip we probably need two rooms so my mission was that much harder. I’ve sorted out a Microtel with uniformly good reviews for the journey up – two rooms, hopefully adjoining – at a good rate: consider it settled. What’s most interesting about reading reviews about hotels, and something that is par for the course – are the crazed reviews that oftentimes proclaim “the filthiest” or “absolutely worst” hotel “I’ve ever encountered”. I have my own divining rod when reading multiple reviews so I’ve a good feeling for whether or not the writer is a crazed whackjob, or not. For instance, a review that downgrades a motel because the guest was snowed-in doesn’t carry much weight with me. It’s like the blast at the USPS delivery system when reviewing a product you bought at Amazon and then giving the actual product one star. Sorry, I’ve wandered. This review caught my eye for a motel that I decided to pass on after reading some not-so-glistening reviews.

This hotel threw away my special shoe horn to my $150.00 dress shoes that [were] purchased 2 weeks ago. They also discarded the special hat filler to use for flying [so] as to not to crush my new hat purchased 4 weeks ago when cleaning the room. They did say they were sorry, but did not take any discount or reimbursement for these items. I would suggest they use a little more care for personal items.

Personal items? Who is this guy, Hercules Poirot? Did they also misplace your Dapper Dan moustache wax? This guy (or gal?) clearly has some issues with maintaining a timeline on purchased items – and clearly they did some shopping at the Olde Englande Shoppe at some point during their last whaling vacation off the Cape. To be fair, if that’s possible at this point, I can understand some type of shoe horn that is extra special – long handle? Solid ivory? Made from the skull of a walrus – but it can’t actually be for a specific pair of shoes, right? They all go on the same way. I think the “…to my $150.00 dress shoes” is suppose to be the ringer here. The shoe horn is just a shoe horn and, new shoes or not, may well have been special. I don’t know what to make of the hat filler. Does anyone travel these days with filler for their derby? “Hold on, let me take of fmy hat, put the filler in, then store it neatly in this hat box I’ve also been toting around. Wait, not done yet, I need to store my cane and monocle, also…”

I know that cleaners at hotels and motels can be a bit nonchalant with your stuff but I might give them a pass on throwing out a little plastic shoe horn (there’s no way they threw out your granddad’s brass-and-cherry wood, 17th century shoehorn), and a pile of butcher paper taped into a ball that you claim as hat filler.

Mental.