alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

September 9, 2007

Traveller’s Paradise. Not.

by AltHippo @ 10:17 am. Filed under Uncategorized

I’m back from my journey to an undisclosed location. Yes, I know that bloggers these days are fond of talking about their vacations, or conferences, or private meet-ups with the appetizer and white wine crowd as their journey to an undisclosed location. This wasn’t that.

This was an actual classified meeting at an undisclosed location. Far away from my home, and no where I could get to by public transportation. Picture me in the middle of nowhere. In a tiny car caught in between wind gusts from 12-wheel trucks on either side, and another one behind me in downhill stretches, pushing me to go faster and faster or he would smash into my rear bumper. My shoulders and back tensed for a stretch of hours, I would shout out “God, please get me out of this alive,” while the 12-wheeler in back of me would get ever closer to my rear bumper.

A malevolent traffic engineer designed one section of this roadway so that those trying to avoid the big rigs by staying to the right would find themselves suddenly in the passing lane, with several lanes, all full of the same stampede of truckers, merging on the right. I changed lanes to the right as quickly as possible, never knowing when these great bulls would appear in my side view mirror, blaring their horn, forcing me back to the running lane.

Hours later I turned into an alley where sat the decrepit concrete shell I had booked myself into on advice of one of my colleagues.

For the most part I travel well. Not fancy, never something you’d call ostentatious, but respectful. The kind of inn that recognizes that we all have a basic human dignity. This was a “motel” right out of Dante, where it was assumed that you had abandoned all hope, otherwise why would you be entering?

One of my colleagues had booked himself into this, for lack of a better word, “motel” on the argument that: a room’s a room. Likewise, I opined, a dump’s a dump. I pointed out that a gang of spiders had ripped off the wall paper in my room, using as a table for a round of Texas hold’em. It was a joint somewhere between Jarmusch’s “Mystery Train” and the abandoned building they used for “Midnight Cowboy.” It wasn’t so much “Heartbreak Hotel” as “Heart Attack Hotel.”

When I opened the door, some insect, I don’t know what kind, was toying with the car freshener that hung on the door handle. I thought to myself that I would never under any circumstances kill myself, but if I ever did, it would be in a place like this.

The colleague of mine who’d picked this place out pointed out in his defense that they had a free continental breakfast. I showed him the sign in the “lobby” (which also turned out to be the “breakfast area” and the “entertainment area”), that said that the continental breakfast was actually a choice of Frosted Flakes with or without non-dairy creamer. That was the continental breakfast.

If half the fun is getting there, the other half is leaving.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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