Jul 08
26
No Room at the Inn
Posted by Stephen26
Tags: drive, hotel, no room, sleep, tired
Today’s meetings went well. I got out of bed this morning feeling surprisingly refreshed after last night’s marathon drive. The hotel’s buffet breakfast was fantastic, definitely meeting my expectations for such an upscale resort. My breakfast meeting was energetic, fast-paced, high-energy. Good thing I’d had a couple of cups of coffee to get me jump-started. The board meeting, the day’s main event, was also intense, packed, rapid. Things hardly slowed during lunch. The traditional pause in official activity in favour of informal socializing went overboard, as people were unusually enthusiastic about the topics on the agenda. The afternoon went by quickly.
We finished around four. I said my goodbyes and carried my stuff out to the car to start the long drive home. I planned to break the drive and find a place to overnight at about the half-way point. It was foolishness to try and do it all in one go, especially in light of the late night last night and today’s full schedule.
At about 9pm I felt like I’d had enough driving. I figured I’d look for a motel in about an hour. By then it would be time to stop for gas anyway. I’d fuel up, get something to eat, check in to a motel and get a good night’s rest. I’d drive the rest of the way tomorrow.
When I stopped at 10:30, the motel (surprisingly large for this little town out in the middle of nowhere) was full. Booked solid. They’d phoned around and there were no rooms available anywhere within an hour’s radius. Hmmm. An unexpected setback, but no problem. It wasn’t that late. I’d carry on.
I stopped again an hour later down the highway and got exactly the same answer: booked solid, no rooms. And the motel was a bustling hive of activity. It was close to midnight and it felt full. They had also phoned around, and once again the nearest available rooms were an hour away. Sigh. Nothing for it but to keep driving.
Well past midnight I wondered if I should stop and try to find a room. It seemed a little silly to pay for a motel when I was so close to home (relatively speaking). But for the past hour I’d been weaving all over the highway, grateful for the fact that there was almost no traffic at all at this hour of the night. So in the interests of safety I went looking for a place to stay. This time there were rooms available. Hooray! But the motel was full, and all they had left were their most expensive suites, at exorbitant prices. What was going on? What was special about this weekend that every man and his dog was out on vacation? Fishing competition, apparently. I don’t know if that explained 400km of full motels, but that was the local excuse.
This close to home it seemed unreasonable to pay so much for a room, so ever so reluctantly I drove back onto the highway. I briefly thought about stopping and sleeping in the car, but it was an ultra-budget rental tin can, the most uncomfortable vehicle I’d driven in years. The pain in my back refused to even consider the possibility of spending any more time in those seats than was absolutely necessary, so I drove on.
I had an audio book to keep me company on the drive, and I figured I got the Reader’s Digest condensed version. I could tell you the overall plot and sequence of main events, but the details were a blank. In the book characters were by turns upset or happy, acting out of duty or nobility or ulterior motives. Things went well for them, or went badly. I didn’t much notice or care. The book droned on. I drove.
I got home without mishap and tumbled into bed at 3am, leaving Debbie with instructions not to wake me up in the morning. I was home. I was safe. I was in bed. I could sleep. Good night.
I thought it was ironic, having had such a huge room the night before, that tonight I could find no room at all. And the boys’ bedtime story for tomorrow night is Jesus’ birth, when Joseph and Mary couldn’t find a place to stay. I can sympathize.
