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Perhaps some great journalism has emerged from motel rooms, but if so, it won't come from me. There's nothing like travel, even the mere 100 miles from Salida to Colorado Springs, to convince me of the virtues of home.
For one thing, I know how to get in and out of my own house. In days of yore, when motels issued real metal keys to their patrons, I could get in and out of the room easily. But I've yet to master these magnetic-stripe swipe cards. Logic says that there are four ways one might fit into the door mechanism, and one of those four ways has to work.
But I'm not in the mood for logic puzzles (Have I tried face-out arrows-up yet?) when it's cold and dark and windy. Also, this motel sits in a neighborhood some distance from Focus on the Family, Colorado for Family Values and other well-known wholesome parts of the Springs.
How downscale is this neighborhood? There's a place to sell your blood plasma across the street and the 24-hour restaurant on the corner won't take anything bigger than a twenty after 8 p.m. Many nearby commercial buildings have bars on their windows and prominent stickers announcing their protection by various alarm companies. There's not even a view of Pike's Peak.
This is the interesting part of the Springs that you don't see in the tourist brochures. But the people on the street, many of them trundling along with all their worldly possessions, have all been friendly. And none of them has tried to explain how I could enter the Kingdom of God if only I repented of sins like voting for Democrats.
The room is comfortable enough, but it has the same flaws as many other motel rooms. For instance, has anyone ever figured out how to make one of those little black combination radio-alarm-clock devices work? I gave up trying years ago. If I need to be up at a certain time, my travel gear includes an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock. I trust it and know how to set it.
But I can't bring my own plumbing, and the pipes here have some quirks. Most sink faucets open counter-clockwise and close clockwise. Maybe these are from the Southern Hemisphere, for they operate in reverse. I'll get used to them just in time to go home and get so frustrated at a normal faucet that I'll twist the handle so hard that it will break and spout water all over the house.
I hate to think what this bodes for the shower, where there's a fair prospect of getting scalded or frozen when I turn the wrong knob the wrong way.
To be fair, the heating-cooling unit is easy to operate and it works. Same with the TV, and the wireless high-speed Internet seems faster than the DSL connection at home. On the other hand, the room's coffee-maker looked so daunting that I got my morning fix at a convenience store where the sign proclaims that the safe is on a time-lock and the clerk cannot open it.
The next time I get a motel room, I'm going to ask if there's an instruction manual. Perhaps more seasoned travelers know how all this stuff works, but I feel as though I'm in an alien land and in need of guidance.
How did I end up here? Colorado College hosted a
three-day State of the Rockies
conference, and it
sounded interesting.
I really hate driving in the Springs, though. There might be a logic to the street names, but so far it has escaped me. So I'm constantly lost, which means I'm impeding traffic, and people have been shot for less here. The college website listed motels within walking distance of the campus, and I picked one, hoping to park the car for the duration.
As it turns out, the campus is within pedestrian range, if you're a marathon runner. For the rest of us, a walk from motel to campus would involve a narrow sidewalk on a busy viaduct across I-25 and the railroad yards, and then at least a dozen long blocks. A decent stroll in good weather, perhaps, but the April wind here is of a velocity and a duration to rival Boulder or even Laramie.
So what is the State of the Rockies?
Dry and
polluted, I heard, yet still growing four times faster than
the rest of America. This probably says something about the
deficiencies in American education, but I'm still trying to
find the switch for the light over the table where I'm
writing this.
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