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May 16, 2008
Traveler's Tales
I've been doing a lot of traveling lately which generally leads to all kinds of strange incidents. I thought I'd share some of my most recent travel stories for this post.
1) Plumbing
You would think that plumbing in a modern hotels would be a fairly straight forward affair. Not necessarily so. I once stayed in a hotel near JFK where the mechanism to divert the flow of water to the shower head and away from the spout was not your typical pull up or push in plunger, but instead a twist on the end of the spout going into the tub. I sat in there for a good 5 minutes before giving up. I was half way through washing my hair by kneeling in the tub when I finally figured it out. This most recent trip I spent about 3 minutes cursing the cold water gushing into the tub as I had the temperature control lever swung to full "hot" in the "up" position (the off position was straight down). Finally, once again giving up on getting any hot water, I decided to turn it off and call downstairs to see if the hot water was working or not, when I noticed the water began to get hot as I moved the lever into the "cold" position. Sigh. One more example of messed up plumbing.
2) Rental Cars
Cars are not standardized. In some ways this is a good thing, in other ways it is not. Some cars, like the PT cruiser, for example, should never be allowed to become rental cars. They are just too weird. I once was given a PT cruiser in Dallas TX and I almost killed myself because it did not have anti-lock breaks. To add embarrassment to the harrowing experience of skidding across an intersection in the middle of the night, I had to open the door to get a parking lot entry ticket because I could not figure out how to roll the windows down in a car with no map lights.
Radios are another way in which I wish cars were more similar. Most rental cars now come with satellite radio -- this is a great feature, if you know how to us it and take the time to set it up before you get into traffic. I assume that most people unfamiliar with satellite radio follow my lead and stay away from it -- this is the only way I can account for the lack of deaths associated with rental cars.
The most recent rental car I had gave me significant trouble with the radio. First it changed the radio light setting when I turned on my lights (it was a dim/rainy day, but not dark). This meant that I could not see the radio settings (I did not know at that time, what I had done to dim the radio). Then the radio couldn't find any radio stations. I'd push the seek button only for it to find nothing. Eventually by flipping every lever in the car I managed to turn the lights off and see the radio dial again to discover that the seek function would cause the radio to go around the dial continuously never finding anything until I pushed the seek button again. I guessed at this point that the lovely dodge I was in must have its antenna pushed in. So once I arrived at my hotel, I intended to pull the antenna out. But while I was stowing my GPS in the center console, I found out that in reality the problem was that the antenna was hiding in the center console. I screwed it back in place, and the radio worked fine from then on.
Posted by kfeigh at May 16, 2008 10:01 AM
Comments
The apartment I lived in with Ron for 2 summers here in Houston had that same shower "twist the end of the spout" thing. When I moved in, it took me 10 minutes to figure it out. Ron arrived early the next morning while I was still asleep, and when I got up, he was sitting on the couch looking dirty and sheepish. "How the hell do you switch from bath to shower??" he said.
Posted by: Sarah at May 16, 2008 12:36 PM
I'm glad I'm not the only one. When we were skiing in Colorado a few years ago, the ghetto apartment/motel where we were staying had the twisty spout. Clad in only a towel, I had to venture into mixed company in the living room and get someone (Becca) to show me how to do it. And, knowing her, you can imagine how she did not make fun of me at all. ;)
Posted by: Cari at May 23, 2008 03:06 PM