elephant smuggling interior decorators

Another training session sent me out of town this past week, and with this trip, my total airplane experience in the past six months has eclipsed my total airplane experience during the first 34 years of my life.

I’ve actually been enjoying my time spent speeding through the sky…my only real complaint being that I can’t open the window, which would enable me to spit down upon all the cars and rooftops that we pass over.

I don’t even mind living the hotel room life. For someone that has never traveled to any far away destinations, places like Indiana and Minnesota seem exotic. And, when I try hard enough to ignore the cigarette burns in the carpeting and carefully rearrange the sheets so that the suspicious stains are nowhere near my head, I can almost image that I’m in a four star resort.

My first night this week started out exactly like this. Shoes were placed over the holes in the carpet. The sheets were precisely positioned so that nothing but clean, white linen was situated next to my head. And the drapes were drawn so that the neon glow announcing ‘Vacancy – Free HBO!’ would not burn through my eyelids and leave gaping holes in my retinas.

I was living the good life, right up until 4:30 the next morning. This was the moment that a loud, thunderous ‘bang’ sounded from the room directly above mine.

Jolted from the beach where Sarah Michelle Gellar and I were about to enjoy a glass of Chardonnay before skinny dipping in the ocean, I rolled over and closed my eyes…hoping to be transported back into the dream from which I had been yanked.

These hopes were dashed, however, when a succession of scraping noises erupted from above, followed closely by a series of bumps and footfalls cascading back and forth, from bathroom to bed and back again.

Was this person an elephant smuggler, transporting them across state lines to sell on the black market? Or perhaps this was an interior decorating student doing some late night cramming before the final exam? Curious as I was, I simply wanted sleep.

Unfortunately, neither sleep nor the answer was to come. 4:30 melted into 5:30, and 5:30 into 6:30 with the bangs, scrapes, and footsteps continuing at a constant rate.

Finally, at 6:45, the noise stopped as suddenly as it began…just in time for the alarm clock to announce the start of a new day.

After a quick shower, I wearily approached the front desk. Bleary eyed, I rang the little bell on the counter and was greeted by a well-rested looking morning attendant.

“Can I help you, sir?” she perkily asked.

“Please,” I begged, “can you give me a different room. I’m here for the remainder of the week, and the guy above me made so much noise that I couldn’t get any sleep.”

“Certainly,” she told me. “You know, we’ve had complaints about him from some of our other guests too. I’ll just put you in a room down at the end of the hall.”

In my weakened and fatigued mental state, I didn’t even wonder why, if other complaints were lodged, they continued to let this guy continue operating heavy equipment machinery in his second floor room. I was just glad to be out from under him.

Shortly afterward, with a large coffee in hand, I arrived at the training session minutes before the 8:00 start time. And as our presenter introduced herself, I could feel my eyelids drooping ever so slightly, until finally, amidst the lulling talk of projected sales revenue and key demographic targets, they shut completely.

At last, I had found peace.