July 16th, 2010
Ahhhh…
Right now I’m laid up in my niece’s bed while she and the boys play video games. This is awesome.
We left the house around 4 p.m. on Tuesday and got to Mobile, Alabama at around 11 p.m. It turned out the Howard Johnson in Mobile, AL was NOT what I’d expected. It is now called the Emerald Palms and was a rattrap. I didn’t see any rats there but they may have been cleverly concealed in the filthy carpet.
After I checked in, a couple followed me out the lobby to my car and the guy was saying something. My instinct was to tell him to get away from me but I was afraid he’d follow us to our room and kill us. Or something. So I deciphered his mumblings and told him that I would rather not take the cash he wanted to give me and go buy him a cigar. I have no idea why he was looking for someone to complete this task because he was clearly old enough to buy tobacco.
As we were getting our stuff out of the car, LB was being an ass dawdling because it was pissing off BB. BB said something to him about hurrying up and he visibly slowed while getting his things. I told him it would be nice if he’d hurry up before BB and I were stabbed to death in front of him by Cigar Man and he got the hell out of the car before I took another breath.
This was the first hotel that I’ve ever stayed in that I felt the need to move large furniture against the hotel door. If I hadn’t been so tired, had a lick of sense and it hadn’t been so late – I’d have taken the boys elsewhere for the few hours sleep we were going to get. And of course, the free full breakfast was not so. It was a couple of plastic bins of cereal that was being guarded by a surly hotel worker as she wiped down the counter. We went to Burger King for breakfast instead.
The boys and I decided that we’re going to hit New Orleans next year as our halfway point on our way to Oklahoma and we will be sure to stay somewhere pleasant.
