I hate the key situation. I hate not having keys. It’s not until I travel that I realize how compulsively necessary it is for me to be able to reach for and clutch and stash and dig out my big jangly set of keys. I especially hate that one of the first things I have to do when I leave to go on a trip is bury my keys deep in my bag and pretend they don’t exist for however many days I’m gone. I hate reaching in to find them when I’m almost home and worrying that they’ve suddenly ceased to exist. I hate that when I travel my reassuring handful of keychain is traded for a plastic hotel key card. A card! How the fuck am I supposed to trust a card? It’s barely three dimensional. I put it in my purse and I can practically feel the universe threaten to suck it through any one of its slot-shaped wormholes back into total oblivion.
I do not like that most hotels seem to have Pepsi and not Coke machine. Diet Pepsi in a plastic bottle for $1.50 or more is three kinds of wrong, and it tastes like chemicals and exile.
I wish there was only one kind of alarm clock. Or only one kind for all the hotels in the world. The one this morning had TWO alarm settings and to the best of my ability to decipher the configurations of buttons and light-up dots I thought I’d set them both, but only one went off. I had a wake-up call and I got up anyway, but still, doubt lingers like a fart. Also, how does the “sleep” button work and who are these people who use it? Also, why is the default alarm setting always on radio mode, and why is it always tuned in at the most ragged edge of an AM frequency, at full volume, spraying big blurts of static and unintelligible newstalk? I keep waking up to what sounds like air traffic controllers attacked by bees.
I like those little folding stands that you use to hold up your luggage. I never used to understand the point of using them, but now in every hotel room I find the stand and open it and haul my suitcase up on it and I feel like a very savvy traveler for some reason.
I think I am seriously dyslexic or otherwise cognitively impaired when it comes to reading those signs in hotel hallways, i.e., “Rooms 301-319 –>” The numbers! The arrows! The greater than/less than propostions! Two out of three times I always start out walking in the wrong direction.
I like that I am writing this entry from the Limoliner going from Boston to New York. I checked, and I’m pretty sure that I’m only the 416th person to write a damn blog entry from the Limoliner. Really, it’s the pimpingist bus ever. It doesn’t have that toilet chemical smell that Amtrak trains totally have, either.
I have new pictures up on the Flickr page. Most of them are of Boston, with a couple of cameraphone pics of the day I spent in Nashua. Note to New Hampshire residents: I’m sorry that the only photos of your state are of a hotel and a gift shop, but I’m afraid that’s all I got to see in the very short time I was there. Only a few precious moments there, really.
We just passed a sign for Squantz Pond State Park. Where is that? Are we almost there?
