Life On The Road
aka “Home, Sweet Home”
I’m sure I’m not the only one whose work took them to various hotels; here are two representatives of places I’ve called “home”. On the left, a room in Washington, PA where I stayed for a month or so while supervising a test of coal mine equipment; that on the right my home for 2½ years (!!!) at an extended stay place on the DC beltway.
Wasn’t sure how long the DC job would last and had trouble finding a place with a reasonable lease AND parking for a full size pickup. That job paid well but I never plan on being anywhere near DC ever again.
I’ve seen both, in my silly yoot. Now I’m old, and will never see them again.
I require a certain level of stability. That means, mostly, the absence of other people. Other people are the most unstable thing on the planet.
Work sent to the PI for two weeks back in early 2000s. Got put up in the Shangri la Makati. Five star hotel which was absolutely wonderful. I was workig as product line manager at a sister company and they liked what I was doing and asked me to stay two more weeks. Then two more weeks until I ended up in the Philippines for most of two years. I eventually got moved to a furnished apartment then later, a large house with eight bathrooms, a pool out back and a company car. Met a wonderful Filipina and we have been married 22 years.
I am nearing the end of my career and the new company owners wanted me on the road selling. Q2 and Q3 of this year was about 40% travel. I really like the new owners with them actuallly asking what I think the sales group should do. I told them and they said “Good! Go do it!”.
Our two kids are young adults, going to school and working. Dad isn’t required to be around like when they were younger. I take my wife along on some of the business trips, San Diego & Dallas por ejemplo.
I get to see a good cross section of weirdos at the airports. Met some really good people too. Talked with Gene Simmons for a bit in Dallas.
Happy Thursday. Go out there and make something good happen.
Wow, Snakepit! You must love your work. And what a blessing that the new owners are of like-minds.
My husband was a pilot, first commercial and then corporate when Eastern Air Lines went out of business. His nicest employer was Malaysian and always put his employees on par with himself – same hotels, restaurants, etc. The only problem was that my husband would be away three months at a time.
My former company put us up at the Shangri-La when we were in Shanghai. Five-stars too, and it was an incredible hotel.
Of course, I always assumed that the Chi-coms had the rooms wired for both video and audio, so there was that, which was nice.
When I needed to go out of town right before I retired, I stipulated to my boss either my wife goes too, or I wasn’t going. It was a good time out of town, but with the Covid shutdown in progress, the food available wasn’t always the best.
Oh, man. The life of a traveller in a hotel. Can I ever tell stories…..
One of the oddest nights in a hotel I ever spent was somewhere in southwest Florida….Ft. Meyers, Sarasota, maybe. It was what I always thought of as a Holiday-Inn-On-A-Highway. There was nothing immediately nearby on the hotel side of the road, but crossing the road to get to a couple of restaurants on the other side meant taking your life in your hands.
Anyhoo, on the weekend in question, they were having an Elvis impersonator convention. There had to have been about 30 of them. Old Elvis, Young Elvis, Fat Elvis, Elvis in a parachute….pretty much any version of Elvis was there. They even had a Pink Cadillac.
I thought that the choice to live your life as an Elvis impersonator was strange enough, but what really caught my eye were the women. The wimmens….tons of them, and again, young-to-old….came from all over to watch their favorite Elvis gyrate his hips. Why do people do this? I could never answer that.
Fort MYers – no e in the middle.
Lived there 40 years, graduated Fort Myers High.
Would that dangerous highway be 41?
If so, that motel was most likely in North Fort Myers.
Ghostsniper, any chance you knew Frank Heaton while in Fort Meyers?
You mean this guy?
No, I didn’t know him.
Negative. Frank is now 81.
Yeah, I did the living out of a suitcase thing for nigh on to 50 years and still do it part time. When I first started out in industry, the crook I went to work for said there were three phases to living on the road and if I was smart, I’d start out where I was gonna end up eventually and save myself a lot of trouble. The three phases were:
I found that he wasn’t very far wrong with his advice but that picking and choosing your clientele very carefully for honesty and integrity and using the same yardstick on your employer made the ordeal tolerable.
JAJAJJAAAA!!!