There are times in life that you have to be prepared for the unexpected where things don't go according to plan. Charla and I have a plan and roadmap for this blog which is to document our journey from where we are today to retirement and setting up a maple syrup operation in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The true story below shows what can happen when you least expect it and you don't have a backup plan.
At the height of my technology consulting career, I found myself in three to four different cities in a given week. The routine would be to leave on Monday morning, go to the office, then fly to the first city in the evening, usually arriving late because of flight delays, then having whatever I could get for dinner and some sleep. I would be up early the next morning and have breakfast with members of my local team and head out to meet with clients. After lunch with a client, I would head back to the airport and do it all over again. Toward the end of the week, I would wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea where I was including the city, state, and the bathroom.
It happened on one trip, where I arrived at the Minneapolis / Saint Paul airport about midnight and I remember asking the taxi driver if he could stop at a burger place for a moment so I could get something for dinner. I had been at this specific hotel multiple times before and knew they didn't serve any food after midnight so I grabbed it to go and arrived at the hotel. It was winter time and I was questioning my choice of clothes as I walked from the taxi to the hotel. I could see the Mall of America in the distance wondering when I would be able to visit this location again to spend some time there. The entrance to the hotel was under some sort of repair and the vestibule door was stuck open allowing very cold air to come into the lobby whenever someone walked in. I felt bad for the front desk agents. They had their coats, hats, and scarfs on.
I checked in and found my way to my room which was on the first floor and thankfully not far from the lobby, one of the few perks of being an elite level member of this brand hotel. I ate some of my dinner knowing if I ate any more I wouldn't sleep well and I needed to be up in about five hours.
Some of you might know what happens, as part of your normal sleep cycle, if you wake up at certain times there is a heavy brain fog and it isn't a good time to be doing much of anything. The portion of the dinner I didn't eat had raw onions. The kind that when left out really stink up a room. Evidently, it was the onion smell that woke me up as I found myself grabbing the tray and opening the door to put the tray in the hallway. As I stepped into the hallway, the contents of the tray slipped to the end furthest away from me. Instinctively, I grabbed it with my other hand so it wouldn't dump.
As I'm writing this part, I feel my face getting red all over again. When I moved my hand to catch the tray, the hotel room door shut behind me. I'm now in the hallway in my underwear shocked at what just happened. Fortunately, I listened to my mother growing up to wear clean underwear with no holes in them in case of an accident. Well, this was an accident.
The words to describe how I was feeling would be mortified, panic, and above all embarrassment. I walked up far enough to peak into the main lobby area. As I'm walking up to one of two female agents on duty, she says in a startled, but commanding voice, "Sir,you need to put some clothes on right now." At that moment the door to the outside opened, and I was greeted by a cold breeze, an airline pilot and what would appear to be a flight attendant. I calmly told the agent that I had locked myself out of my room and could I please have a key. She asked what room. I told her. She then said, "Sir, I will need a form of identification." I held my arms out and looked down, then back at her trying to understand where she thought I would have identification on my person.
One of the desk agents said she would walk with me back to my room with a key and let me get some ID and she would give me the key. That particular walk was very, very long, and very awkward. I did provide an ID. I didn't need a key because I had two of them in the room which, thank goodness, I was now in.
I didn't sleep the rest of the night. Fortunately, at checkout in the morning there had been a shift change and I was greated with a smiling voice asking, "How was your stay, sir?"
From that day forward. I never open the door unless I'm leaving the room and I'm fully clothed. And I learned to sleep with the smell of onions.
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