Hotel Rant & Rambles

Before this whole big trip I never stayed in so many hotels back-to-back and now I can only imagine now what the life of a real rock star must be like. The only difference is they're probably staying ONLY at 4 or 5 star digs while I happily bounce between Comfort Inns and Best Westerns across the country. With this new short term living arrangement comes some likes and dislikes as well as some rather strange fears. For starters I have this weird feeling while I'm sleeping some Mafia type hit men are going to kick down the door of my hotel room and start spraying several rounds of bullets until they've murdered everyone in sight (which only happens to be me - an innocent victim). They will have realized they had the wrong room and without trying to hide the evidence, will move on until they find the right man to finish off. Where this bizarre fear comes from is beyond me. Perhaps too many Hollywood big screen type movies with hotel scenes?

Anyhow, with each room in each state I inspect the comforter for bedbugs (not really, but it seems like something a travel blogger might do) and I read the state hotel safety instructions placed on the back of the door just in case the Mafia does decide to bust in one night. At least I would have known what the state of Maryland or Pennsylvania suggested to prevent them from doing such. When all is said and done with my first two duties I might flip on the TV, but here is where my rant comes into play. HBO and Showtime are cool channels to have, but what on ever happened to channels as basic as UPN? At first at thought this was only the issue for one unnamed hotel, but I'm discovering UPN can be hard to come by. The question is why? And it's not that I watch a ton of UPN programming, but every now and again I like to tuck myself in to a nice reality TV episode of ANTP (America's Next Top Model). It's probably something I shouldn't be complaining about, but when there is little night life to discover in some of these small towns UPN becomes my next best friend.

In short, I'll be making sure to inspect the TV situation at each and every hotel I stay at just to make sure even if nothing I want to watch is on because it's just something to do. If I'm bored I'll report the findings, but if not maybe I'll have another set of rants and rambles to share.

(Photo taken from a hotel room in Philly near the airport.)

Filed under: Stories, North America, United States