Patience

It’s been a little more than a month on the road, staying in hotels. We’ve been in eight hotels, counting two where we spent only one night and left because they were terrible. We’re learning a lot about #hotellife. Mostly, we’re learning to be patient.

With limited space in hotel rooms, and short enough stays to not unpack completely, every task is an exercise in patience.

It begins when we get into a new hotel room, unpacking the SUV of all the stuff we’ve brought. It generally takes two trips with a hotel luggage cart, if one’s available. At least we’ve figured out how to leave a couple bags in the car (another post coming soon, The Pantry).

Next we need to decide where to place everything. It’s nice if the hotel has a luggage rack for one of our suitcases. Mostly we leave the luggage on the floor, lift it up on the bed to retrieve items, then zip shut and put it back on the floor.

Somewhat organized, next I need to set up my “office,” which is my laptop on a desk or table. I set up wifi with a Travel WiFi Router for security and convenience. It allows me to connect to hotel wifi and set my personal wifi to my home network name. Then, everything just connects instead of having to reconnect everything to the hotel wifi. I may do a whole post on this, as it’s game-changing.

If the TV has an HDMI port, I can hook up the Fire TV Stick for streaming. Usually it doesn’t. We set up our air filter, get Chip’s “area” set up, and get out our power cords for charging phones and tablets. Most hotels have very limited power plugs, too, making us have to be creative in where we do anything that requires power.

I brought a portable kettle for a special powdered drink I drink each morning that requires hot water. At home, everything was right there to make it. In hotels, I need to take out the powders, the cup, the kettle, the mixer, and use about one square foot of space to do it all. I like a blueberry muffin and yogurt in the morning, Sharon likes a bagel, which requires going down to the lobby to grab them when the hotel has them, going to Dunkin if the hotel doesn’t. It would be very easy to get frustrated.

Sharing one bathroom and sink for both of us, when we are used to two baths and double sinks, requires patience with each other. Likewise having only one room for us both to live in, watch TV in, work in. We’re working out processes to minimize annoying each other.

Everything takes longer and must be done methodically. Each day rustling through luggage for clothes. Taking Chip out for a walk in whatever new scenario we’re in, often with almost no grass at the hotel, so we drive to a park. Some hotels have laundries, but it’s simpler to find a local laundromat, which takes time, and patience. Spill something on clothes and there’s no “just throw it in the washer.” When we need more washcloths and towels, we need to trade in the dirties with housekeeping.

We mostly eat at restaurants as we get our sea legs for #hotellife. Eventually we plan to grab sandwich or quick food stuff at a grocery for lunches, which takes time, especially when we don’t know the best grocery stores or even the layout of the stores when we shop. Until then, each meal is a search for a decently-priced local restaurant where we can experience some local culture.

Need a haircut? Search to find a place. Chip getting groomed? Search for a groomer. Grocery? Search. Search search search. Then we use Google Maps to get to where we’re going, which is accurate and helpful about 90% of the time. We’re learning Waze. Patience.

With every meal out, and trying to get out to do local recreation and sites, there is a lot of driving. Each town has some ridiculously long traffic lights. We’ve come to doubt the competence of civil engineers. But they are helping teach us patience.

When it’s time to leave a location, we must do all the above in reverse. Packing the suitcases and the SUV requires quite a bit of patience, as we’ve determined exact placement to fit everything. The only way to do it is slowly and methodically.

We are appreciating the flow, the mindfulness, the kind of dance, of performing menial tasks in limited space throughout the day.

We laugh when it seems like our patience is being tested to silly levels, like hitting five red lights in a row, or a hotel not having a luggage cart with a second floor room and no elevator. And when we sense frustration in each other, we say, “patience.”

Thanks again for following our adventures!