That Chicago Road Trip, Part 2
Henrietta, NY
POST 10: JULY 20, 2020
Zack and I left Niagara Falls around midnight, and I realized how exhausted I was. As I drove east on I-90, Zack started calling every “lodging” that came up on Google Maps, but they were all full.
Back at home, my husband was worried. A few minutes after he, too, started making calls, Gabe reported triumphantly that he'd found a room in Henrietta, New York, just south of Rochester. Relieved, I followed the directions off the highway, made the last turn, and pulled into a truck stop with a bar and dancing that was still going full blast at 2:00 AM.
“Maybe the room will be okay,” I thought, as one of the men running the establishment led me and Zack to the end of a second-floor walkway. My son's face looked as horrified as I felt when he pushed open the door and we took in the threadbare carpet covered with cigarette burns and other indeterminate stains; overwhelming odors of cigarette smoke and sewage; and a desk that crumpled when we moved it in front of the door after realizing the door didn’t lock.
“Mom, we can’t stay here,” Zack said, darting a glance toward the bathroom, where the light was flickering and the toilet, he’d told me with a grimace, hadn’t been flushed.
“We can’t not stay here—I’m too tired to drive,” I said, wishing desperately that I wasn't. “I’ll call and see if they have another room.”
The bar party apparently had spilled over into the lobby. I explained loudly that our room was disgusting, things were broken, and the door didn’t lock.
“What do you want me to do about it?” a man hollered into the phone.
“Give us a new room,” I said. “I know how much you charged my husband for this pit and it’s highway robbery.”
“That’s the only room,” he said. “Go somewhere else if you don’t like it.” He hung up.
Great, I thought, now this drunken goon is pissed and he’s going to do heaven knows what to us or the car.
“Let’s push the dresser in front of the door too,” I told Zack. Fortunately, it didn't break.
Then we looked distastefully at our beds. “Yank off your bedspread, lay all of your clean clothes on top of the sheets, and try to avoid touching the sheets," I said. "You won’t need them anyway.” (Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that the AC didn't work.)
A few minutes later, I heard footsteps outside our door and men talking loudly. The footsteps stopped, and the voices went silent. I picked up my iPhone, dialed “911” and prepared to hit the “send” button. After a few agonizing seconds, the voices resumed and the footsteps retreated. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and turned to see that Zack was, blessedly, sound asleep.
I guess sheer exhaustion allowed me to fall asleep just before sunrise. At 8:30, I woke up, leapt out of my bed, and shook Zack awake. The two of us were on the road by 8:40. I considered stopping by the lobby and complaining, but I just wanted to get the hell out of there. We drove straight to a laundromat in Rochester to wash every piece of clothing we’d taken into that disgusting room.
“Mom, we should’ve just pulled the car over on the side of the road and slept,” Zack said as our sleep-deprived eyes watched the dryers churning. We had a Honda Pilot at the time, so it would’ve been feasible.
“I don’t think you can just do that,” I replied.
“Well, anything would’ve been better than where we stayed,” he said.
He had a point.
I promised myself that I would never again drive through a tourist area on a weekend night in the summer without reserving a room in advance. At a clean hotel. With a locking door.