Off the road, lost a friend.

I've been off the road since 31 October. It was too much. Too many nights in hotels, too many miles in the truck, and too much political BS with the customer. Just now, two months later, I finally feel decompressed. I feel again like I have control over my life. I feel again like I have a family that loves me as much as I love them. It is delightful.

Alas, something awful has taken place. A man who I had the privilege and pleasure to know for 10+ years has passed away. No one knows what happened. He was at work on Monday and in a coma by Thursday. I wrote something earlier I was going to post on Facebook, but I didn't feel it was appropriate, out of respect for a family that has always been very silent about emotion. However, this is my blog, and I can paste it here.

We are born with the inevitability of death. When we are children, it is not something about which we think. When we are teenagers and young adults, it is something towards which we feel invincible. At some point, each of us grasps the concept of said inevitability. By no means does it make it easier, or less sad, or less frightening. We just know that the day will come when we will take our last breath, consciousness will cease, and we will return our physical bodies to the universe from whence we came. There is a perverse beauty in humanity that we know this time will come, but our hearts break when those we love succumb to the inevitable, particularly when the death happens too soon. Particularly when the person who has succumb is kind, gentle, and a friend to every person he meets. We all die, but dammit, why can't the good ones stick around a little longer?

Empty suitcase

Well, you guys, I'm off the road. My suitcase is empty. I have been in the same area code for the last week. I left my job on Halloween. The road got to be too much. My daughter told my mother that she didn't want her daddy gone all the time. My wife told me she was tired of not being with me. My boss left the company; my new boss told me he needed me to do 2-3 overnights a week in Danville. I was doing 1-2. I was eating terrible restaurant food, staying in mid-range hotels, and missing out on my family's life. So I'm done.

I have spent more consecutive nights at home in the last week than I have in the last year. It feels good. My daughter comes to me when she gets home from preschool, she stands in front of me and we talk about her day. Every day.

It takes a certain type of person to do the job I was doing. Either they don't have families or they don't care about the families they have. It makes me sad, the conversations I've had with my counterparts around the country about how they expect their wives to tend to the family responsibilities. That's not how I roll. I've been home the past week, working my ass off, preparing our house for sale. I do dishes, I clean, I meet service companies, and best of all, I get to watch my wife and my daughter walk through the door every evening.

It was never fair for me to ask my wife to do all of this, but I didn't have the guts to quit. I have learned from the last year of my working life, more than any other time, that a good salary doesn't bring happiness.

So I'm home. I wake up every morning in my own bed, next to my wife. I greet my daughter in her pajamas. I don't tear up in a company truck at rest stops because I can't be home. My daughter is four years old. She needs me, and so does her mother. I have never been so happy to end a part of my life. No amount of money can make up for the time I've lost.

I will miss the people and things I saw on the road, but not nearly as much as I missed the warmth and comfort of my home.

Where is it??

I have removed the previous post. I want this to be a place for ludicrous tales of lodging. An escape from the politico of Facebook et al. So it's gone. Now that's out of the way, I have something to tell all of you.

I lost the shampoo. It is not in the handy rack by the sink, because I took a shower last night. It's not in the shower, where I usually leave it. It is not in either garbage can in the room, nor is it on the dresser, nor in the beds, nor in my suitcase.

I lost the shampoo. In a hotel room. A place where there are only so many places shampoo could be. It's gone. Not a trace.

I can hear my wife now. "You know, if you would LET THE MAIDS CLEAN YOUR ROOM this wouldn't happen because they would put a new one in the rack!" Yes, but they would also rob me of personal electronic devices and socks. Perhaps they defied my "Do Not Disturb" sign while I was working today, and in their anger at my refusal to pander to the worldwide maid robbery ring, they took the shampoo. At least they left my socks.

Danville!!

I make funny jokes about the time I spend on the road, but I hate this. I'm away from my wife and my daughter. I have to sleep in beds with rolls of the dice determining if I get bed bugs. I sleep at hotels on the last exit off I-74 before you hit Indiana. This town is an absolute shithole. Danville is where dreams go to die. Danville is where people from Creve Coeur are all like, "Yeah, but at least we're not living there." I have a 250 mile round trip commute. And it's not like it's exciting. It's corn, plains, white people who don't vote in their best interest, and construction. I get to drive, four days a week, between a city that is honestly attempting to better itself, to a city that gives zero fucks about even appearing to care. It wears me down. So I put up this defense of comedy, I talk to the guys at our store here in town and make fun of the people in this horrible, decrepit piece of our country, but I still have to drive through it, eat at the restaurants, and inhale all of the broken dreams that Danville has to offer.

This is what this blog is going to be. Sometimes fun, sometimes depressing. Welcome to my life.

Night One of the Blog

Night One of My Hotel Blog.

I arrived around 3 PM today. Room was ready, everything was copacetic. A typical mid-range hotel room. Large bed, cheap flat panel television, push button lamps. But let's talk about where that typical room stops. I'm used to a small, plain table for a desk with a lamp that has two outlets for electronic devices. No such luck here. The only outlets in the room are monopolized by a lamp and an alarm clock on the bed side and the refrigerator and another lamp on the work desk side. So already, I'm being asked to make sacrifices. Do I unplug the alarm clock to plug in the CPAP? Of course I do. Because, as I stated in my previous entry, hotel alarm clocks are not to be trusted and are better off without power. So now the CPAP has an outlet to call home. Now I must tackle the the work desk side. I refuse to unplug the refrigerator, because, let's be real here, no one likes room temperature soda except my wife. My personal laptop will provide all the light I need at the desk. Problem solved.

This is where things get tricky. I still have a work laptop and both cell phones to worry about. My Chromebook doesn't have enough USB ports to charge everything. But never mind all of that, because by the time I start worrying about it, I have a man attempting to enter my room with a key card.

This is not the first time during my jaunts in hotels that someone has attempted to use their key card in the wrong room, and due to my experience, I am not alarmed. However, when the man using the key card gains entry into my room, I become alarmed nonetheless.

Chris works for Total Petroleum Services. He has been on the road all day and was given this errant key card by Mary, a delightful woman who works the desk at this mid-range hotel. She is a short woman, rather portly, and has comically short arms. She reminds me of a lazy Tyrannosaurus Rex with dwarfism and an unfortunate bloating issue.

When Chris enters my room to both of our embarrassments, I tell him, "Hey man, no big deal, let's go down to the desk and sort this out." Chris and I take the poorly maintained elevator to the lobby and approach Mary. Mary, being as sweet and wonderful as she is, apologizes to both of profusely and does her damnedest to sort out the confusion. She determines that Chris was given my room in error (NO SHIT) and gives him the proper room, 201. We all have a good laugh about it and go on our merry way. But that is not where this tale ends, my friends. Because Mary, as sweet and kind as she may be, is not the sharpest pencil in the box. Mary has reprogrammed not only Chris' card, but also mine, to be admitted into room 201. I have taken up residence in room 206 since I fucking got here hours ago.

I return to my room and see the dreaded red light when I scan my key card. Thankfully, I have patience approaching infinite and kindness unmatched by Mother Teresa. I return to the lobby, inform Mary of her mistake, get my key card reprogrammed, and take the poorly maintained elevator back to my room, where I get to share my woes with you wonderful people.

Also, this hotel doesn't have laundry service, so I have to wear a dirty shirt tomorrow.

Welcome to the Fold

Many of my friends have told me I should start a blog documenting my myriad nights in hotels ranging in price from $50 to $89 a night before tax. So start a blog I shall. For my first entry, I will detail my survival kit. The things I will not leave home without. Some are obvious to non-travelers, some are not. But I feel it's important that anyone starting a life driving several thousand miles a month and staying in said mid-range hotels at least once a week should know to have. So here it is. The Basic Survival Guide.

• One pair underwear, one undershirt, one pair pants, one shirt, one pair dress socks, one pair casual socks per day. Let's be honest. Most of us don't wear pants only once and wash them, but it's important to err on the side of decency.
• All the normal toiletry stuff. I won't bore you. Anti-perspirant, toothbrush, toothpaste, blah, blah.
• One pair dress shoes. 
• One belt, always to match the aforementioned dress shoes. We are road warriors, we are not barbarians.
• One stack of disposable plastic cups. This is the first item that may not seem obvious to most, but it will go miles in making your hotel stay more comfortable. Hotel room cups suck. They are tiny. They are either individually wrapped, small, plastic pieces of crap, or small glasses that may or may not be clean.
• One work laptop
• One personal laptop
• One work phone
• One personal phone
• One power cord for each of these stupid damn electronics you have to carry.
• Headphones. Mid-range hotels have thin walls and no one wants to listen to their neighbor binge watching Stranger Things.
• Cold medicine. Even if you're not sick, the NSAID in Dayquil is fantastic for the headache that you will invariably get from listening all night to the door slamming assholes or the family sharing one room for their ungrateful, stomping children to use the pool.
• Your CPAP machine. (That's for us fat kids who snore and shit.)
• Your own alarm. Never trust a hotel alarm clock. It's like asking Hitler to remind you when Passover starts.
• The following apps: Yelp, Google Maps, Pokemon GO, Sky Guide, Monster, Realtor, Uber, The Weather Channel, Expedia, Choice Hotels, Best Western, Hilton Honors, Club Carlson, stayconnect, the entire Microsoft Office suite, Docusign, TurboScan, SamCard, OpenTable, and Starbucks.

These are the basics. The things you need to survive. Don't believe me? Spend 80 nights in hotels in the first 8-1/2 months of the year and tell me I'm wrong.