I hit the road about six days ago due to pressing family matters and needed a place to stay for a good price so I headed to Hotwire.com for a Hot Rate deal.
The website offers a list of anonymous hotels near your destination and doesn’t reveal the name until you’ve booked. The trade-off for the missing info is a great price.
Like Hotwire, I won’t disclose the name of the hotel I picked but it was in South Tacoma, Washington. Not the best neighborhood, I thought, but why not give it a chance for forty-nine dollars a night?
I booked it for seven days. We left after one. Here are eleven reasons why:
- While waiting in the lobby, the conversation turns to a recent car prowling – by one of the hotel employees.
- Your son, who stayed in the car, turned down three drug deals by the time you get back with the key.
- You have to pay your deposit in cash and don’t plan on picking it up before seven a.m. (wink wink).
- The hotel is located next to a freeway.
- Someone from across said freeway launches leftover fireworks mortars directly over the hotel: really big ones.
- Someone has taken the parking spot in front of your door leaving you with the space at the dark end of the lot.
- There are signs of a past forced entry into your room.
- You hear rap music at three in the morning and open the door to discover the source is the person who took your parking space.
- You wake up at eight to the same rap music – and a dog barking – right outside your door. The mortars are still coming.
- You meet your hotel neighbor who is the source of the barking (her dogs that is) – all three of them. She tells you how she inherited one from a guy who died in the room next to yours and explains how that is somehow connected to the car prowling story you heard in the lobby the night before.
- Sure enough; there is a car on cinder blocks in the parking lot.
Stories From Off The Grid. 