Tennessee is a very, very, very long state. Fortunately, my brother introduced me to Stitcher, and Kristen and I are happily listening to Levar Burton reading short stories, Peter Sagal running his newscast comedy game and now an interview about the Donner party. We may learn how to make bone marrow jelly. This is not high on my list of things I need to know, but sometimes you’ll take in anything to pass the time… because Tennessee is a very, very, very long state.
We played at my old friend Whitney’s house last night, joined by one of my old open mic regulars, Josh Gray. It was a pleasure to listen to him play again, and we had a great time playing, but I was horribly aware of sort of blowing my voice by the end of the night. I think I’ve been overusing it, and my allergies were kicking up, and I didn’t drink enough over the course of the night – add to that that we were playing without mics and I’d really kicked my throat in the butt.
Anywho – we got up this morning with a LONG drive ahead of us and the sense of being THWARTED that we’d gotten from Wednesday’s drive to Memphis slowly reasserted itself. Ordering breakfast was SLOW. Finding a seat was SLOW. Waiting for the food was SLOW and not nearly as worth-the-wait as it would’ve been if it’d been the envisioned 15-minute stop. Red blossomed on the highways ahead of us and we flirted with detours – but as we crossed the Virginia state line, things had evened out and we looked to be at our hotel (!) EARLY for a nice leisurely… relaxing….
We rolled in to the hotel to the disconcerting flashing of police lights, and at the other end of the lot there was a cop car and another K9 unit. Perhaps that’s why the office was unmanned, or maybe it helped explain why dialing the “if you need help at the lobby” number successfully rang… the lobby. After a bit of a wait, the … what do you call a person behind the desk at the hotel? It’s not fancy enough for him to be a concierge… he didn’t keep the door… the attendant? But he wasn’t in attendance. In any case – when he finally came back he declared “I apologize for the wait, I was taking care of the problem!” The now-attendant attendant saw our reservation, confirmed we’d paid… and then COULDN’T see our reservation and COULDN’T confirm we’d paid. Something… changed? There were phone calls made, rapid exchanges… what sounded like was a hotel problem suddenly become OUR problem and he insisted we had to contact the booking company and hash it out with them. In the meantime quite a line had formed and when, after a 20 minute hold with hotels.com THEY finally tried to call the hotel to confirm everything, the attendant was “too busy” to answer the phone.
It took close to an hour and a half. We got a $50 voucher which unfortunately we can’t spend TOMORROW which is really unfortunate cause I don’t know that we want to risk hotels.com again… after finally checking in and schlepping all of our gear up to the second floor room where we’d been “upgraded” to a king-sized bed (in quotes because since we’d sat through close to a dozen other check-ins I know this is a $3 difference in price!) we decided to walk across the street to the Mexican restaurant to eat and probably drink… it was fairly decently reviewed, was really close AND the breadth of food options in Roanoke, VA decreases DRAMATICALLY if you’re still trying to check into your hotel room till 9pm.
Whatever. We’re here now. I’d sort of assumed that what with the kinda chintziness of the restaurant and the mediocrity of the food they would be correspondingly light-handed with the tequila in the margaritas – but on this I was wrong and I’m glad to be prone, typing to you dear reader, rather than trying to engage in any kind of precision task.
We’ll see what tomorrow brings! Two more days till home.
