So, TINS, I was NOT FDASL. Rather, youngest brother and I were driving a rental truck full of my mother’s earthly possessions back to The Un-Named Maternal State. She had died, and we were consolidating her possessions so as to end paying rental on a storage locker, once we had each kept a few items as keep sakes.
In any event, we had departed early in the afternoon, and therefore were NOT going to make the trip in one go. Gotta admit, the allure of driving through the night, well, had faded with the years. Neither of us were thirty, anymore.
As it started to get to about midnight, Youngest Brother had searched for, found, and reserved a room at a hotel something on the order of 1/3 of our way There. This hotel was described as “near the airport of (fairly large city)”. Now, I have flown a time or several, and have some expectation, expectation that I feel is not unreasonable, that there would be, ya know, SIGNS, announcing the presence of something as large as, oh, gosh, I don’t know, AN AIRPORT. Signs, no less, on the adjacent interstate highway.
Notwithstanding my expectations, I managed to drive a considerable distance past (fairly large city), and began to wonder out loud where the freaking airport, and, with it, our hotel, might be. Youngest Brother did a bit of internet searching, as well as phone map application searching, before he announced that I had managed to drive past it.
Score, ME!
So, we reversed course, and drove back, finally observing a sign announcing the airport, set way, way, way back off the side of the highway, obscured by shrubbery. We only saw it, because, unlighted, another vehicle’s headlights momentarily illuminated it.
I guess that these folks believe that if you do not know how to get tyhere, already, you don’t belong there in the first place!
Once we arrived, Youngest Brother entered, and registered us, obtaining a pair of key cards. We trundled our crap up the elevator, and found the room. This hotel used proximity key cards, and (I supposed) placing the key adjacent to the door locking mechanism would trigger the door to unlock, and we would stumble into sleepy time bliss.
Or not. The lock blinked a persistent red, and there was no whirring as of, say, unlocking, to be heard.
Youngest brother returned to the desk, there to explain the problem to the clerk and elicit a replacement, functioning, key card. He returned to report the following.
He told the clerk that the cards did not function at our lock.
The clerk asked him, deadpan, “Did the light turn green?”
Brother’s answer: “Nope!” (while thinking, ‘Of course it turned green, you idiot. The door popped open, and right now my brother and I are sitting on the sofa, eating our dinner!’)
I suggested an alternative answer. “Yeah, it turned green. And I looked all around, and never did see the butler who is supposed to open the door, turn down my sheets, and unpack my luggage! What sort of low rent establishment are you running here, anyhow?”
We did, in fact, receive a new set of keys, which worked.
Musings of A Stretcher Ape 