Hell Hotel, Part II

That Sound You Hear? » Don't Ask Me How I Know by Bobby Pinson
Days Until My 21st Birthday » 53
Big News » An American medical company shipped about 5,000 samples of an extremely deadly flu virus to labs all around the U.S. and 18 other countries. The World Health Organization called it "unwise." Gee, you think?

Now, today's story...

Continuing last night's story about the road trip hotel fiasco...

We get back from dinner at Friday's with clearer heads and actually find the hotel is worse than we thought. Yeah, by this time it's roughly 8 P.M. We had checked into the first room around 4 that afternoon.

We packed up the Explorer and went back to the front desk to tell them we're not staying and we'd like a refund. Turns out we got the stupidest front desk clerk ever to live. She says that she will have to charge us for the night because it was past the 30-minute grace period. There's a 30-minute grace period?! We're not staying the night! I want my money back!

Okay, but more important than the money to us at this point was getting some rest. It was getting late and we just wanted to sit down, relax and, I don't know, maybe sleep. So we left — $50 poorer. But we had every intention of writing to Days Inn and getting our refund.

We hit the road, homeless and tired. We remembered seeing a couple of nicer places up at the exit where we'd had dinner earlier. So, failing any better ideas, headed that way. Right there was an EconoLodge. We weren't holding out much hope but figured it couldn't be much worse than we'd just experienced.

We walked through the door with a plan. Under no circumstances were we booking a room without first inspecting it ourselves. And we weren't going to listen to anybody's nonsense. No, we'd learned.

I don't think we could've found a nicer or more understanding person behind the front desk that night. He handed us a key and said we could have a look. It was perfect. Absolutely. It smelled wonderful and... wait for it... there were towels! Really.

We checked in, by the way, at $45 a night, so how about that. We unloaded the car and sat down to play Skip-Bo when we realized we hadn't brought the cooler in. And it wasn't in the car. Yes, you know what that means. We left it at that godforsaken Days Inn.

So off we went for Round 2 with the desk clerk from Hell Hotel. But to make a long, annoying story short, we got a key and got the cooler out of the room — and we never had to go back to that damn place ever again. I should also point out that we spent a good part of the night at the EconoLodge writing down everything they did to screw us over. It was a good night.

See? Some stories do have happy endings. But here's your ironic twist. For breakfast the next morning, we drove down the street to a clean, stand-alone Waffle House. You can't make this stuff up. It was one of the best meals of our trip.

And if you're just that curious, no we never did get our fifty bucks back. For that alone I recommend that if you're planning a trip, avoid Days Inn at all costs. Literally. And figuratively.

Apocalypse Tonight: The new series Revelations premieres on NBC tonight. Rest assured it's nothing close to what my fiction blog is about. Not even a little bit. Very different. Still, I'll be watching it tonight and will report back tomorrow. It should be interesting.