G. K. Wuori

Kemmons Wilson of Memphis built the first Holiday Inn in 1952.

I picked up a brochure one time at a Holiday Inn that laid that particular fact on me. Travelers often collect that kind of information. I remember, too, how their slogan used to be “No Surprises” (or something like that). That was true. They were all alike, differing only in their lobby or dining areas.

That wasn’t a bad thing. Over the course of traveling on business for some twenty-five years I began to realize that I didn’t need to end my day with some grand tourist experience, nor did I want to “dine” in a fine restaurant. I was on business, and I wanted a clean, predictable room, and a restaurant that would offer me supper and not a fine dining experience. We tend to romanticize the “road warrior” these days, cool folks with Blackberry’s and laptops choosing maximum comfort from the pillow menu and the minibar.

I guessed I missed out on that, particularly the time in northern New Jersey when an unexpected overnight found me checking in to The Hunter’s Lodge with thirty dollars in my pocket and no credit cards. Luckily, the room was only twenty-five, and I was able to eat and leave a tip for a bit under my remaining five dollars. So much for entertainment once my evening’s obligations were done, although, as I recall, the thin walls of my room provided all the entertainment I needed thanks to the couple next door – clearly they were not hunters.

My room, too, had its own amusements, from the linoleum floor to the bed with its tubular steel headboard and footboard (think old-fashioned hospital bed), neither of which were quite as funny as the television (black-and-white) bolted to a bracket near the ceiling with the remote on a chain bolted into the night table.

That room was not quite as bad as the one I checked into in Mankato, Minnesota one time where the room deodorizer was so strong my eyes began to water and my normally non-allergenic self began to sneeze like crazy. “I’m sorry,” I told the clerk at the desk. “This is not going to work.”

Naturally, I was sorry.

Not all of life on the road is linoleum and Pine Sol, however. One Sunday afternoon I plucked a brand new employee right out of her college graduation for a week of business and training on Long Island, New York. What was normally a three-hour trip took closer to six due to construction on Interstate 80 so we didn’t arrive at the Long Island Marriott until well after eleven. Checking in, the just-made room reservation for my new employee was fine, but my reservation, made weeks before, was nowhere to be found. I didn’t curse or swear. I grumbled, moaned, felt the fatigue of a long day surging up into incoherence, and almost missed that helpful clerk telling me that she was going to put me up in the NHL Hockey Commissioner’s suite – no extra charge.

The suite was marvelous. It was glorious: living room, dining room, two bathrooms, a view of New York City in the distance that was awesome and a bed in the bedroom big enough for impromptu hockey scrimmages.

We checked out at about eight o’clock the next morning. So much for the posh life. Work, you know.

I’m pretty good about being a responsible traveler, at least in the sense of almost always reading the airline emergency exit brochures and looking at the little exit diagrams on the doors of hotel rooms. Which I had done the time I was staying at a Holiday Inn in downtown Boston.

I’d been on a weird and hectic travel schedule and woke up in my room toward noon one Sunday morning. I hadn’t been sleeping long and wasn’t sure why I’d woken up. Maybe it was the ringing in my ears that seemed to follow me even as I went into the bathroom and continued as I wondered if I should turn on the TV or try to get back to sleep, continued still as I wondered if it might be a migraine coming on. Finally, it occurred to me that the ringing wasn’t me, it was them – the hotel.

The ringing was coming from the hallway and I finally realized it was the fire alarm. Never one to pick up on reality when fantasy will do, I decided it must have been someone playing with the fire alarm, not an unknown occurrence in a big hotel. Then I wandered over to my window to see what kind of day the city was going to give me. An exciting one – no doubt about that. Immediately down from my window was the largest hook-and-ladder truck I’d ever seen, the ladder rising slowly in my direction. All around it, too, was a swarm of additional fire trucks and emergency vehicles.

Naturally, dignity is your first thought. Casting around the room I pulled out some clothes that seemed the right blend of cool-casual, then opened the door to the hallway. In case of fire, do not use elevator. I knew that and headed for the stairs. I was not alone as a group of us descended, terribly self-conscious and feeling a little foolish, at least until we started smelling smoke, then started seeing smoke, then finally broke through to the ground floor and the outside and found out there was a real fire in one room. It’s okay, folks. Everything’s under control. You can go back to your rooms now.

Like various bouts of the flu or the occasional (small) winning lottery ticket, the road warrior collects these things. It’s a fun collection but, alas, there isn’t time right now to detail the two days of darkness I spent at the Island Inn on Long Island as hotel guests and nearby neighbors endured a hurricane, and of my seven month stay in a midwestern motel I can only say I believe I now know where a great deal of internet porn gets made.

G. K. Wuori © 2009
Photoillustration by the author