Week 7: Weekend trip

I spent the weekend with Kelly and three of the kids at the State wrestling tournament (Jake, Cade and Grace). Jared placed 8th and the team won the state championship. The tournament is held on this side of the state, so it isn't very far from my college. It wouldn't have taken very long to get their except for Seattle traffic.

I have a ton of photos of Jared wrestling and nothing else since we were in the Tacoma Dome all day Friday and Saturday. Those photos are on my Facebook.

I have to tell you about our motel experience. It was horrific. I booked a room on Priceline. I have done that many times with no issues. I even booked my flight to Europe when I went to field school. I didn't expect there to be any issues this time either...

I chose two nights at an Econolodge in Tacoma. The listing said it was a suite with a king-sized and a queen-sized bed. It was moderately priced in comparison to the other listings-not as much as some, not the cheapest either. The reviews were a mix of good and what seemed like picky people complaining. They read like all the others, so I thought it would be fine. Since I booked online and got a "deal," I had to pay online too. Nothing new there.

We left the Tacoma Dome around 9pm on Friday and went to the motel. It looked like a typical motel that you find off of a freeway exit. Inside, there was a line at the registration desk. A security guard was standing next to the check in area. A woman with two small children was speaking to the desk clerk. She was telling them she found a bullet, drugs and bugs in her room. The bathroom was dirty and the door would not lock. The desk clerk listened and told her she would look into it if the woman would wait in the lobby area. The next person showed the desk clerk photos of "bloody hand prints" on the headboard of the bed in his room. (I saw the photos, I did look like bloody hand prints on a headboard. I have to take his word that the photos were from that motel.) The desk clerk offered to move him to another room.

I wasn't sure we should stay there at this point. When it was my turn to check in, I was handed a key and the security guard offered to show us to our room. When we got to the door to our room, it was already open with the little security bar thing placed in the door to keep it from closing. The door was bent around the lock like it had been pried open or kicked in. The security guard said "that's not good." We were not staying in that room. Even if the door weren't kicked in, the room only had one bed, so it was a no go. I went back to the registration desk and the clerk told me they didn't even have a room like the one that was listed on Priceline. What?! She gave me the key to another room. Again, the guard showed us to our room. That room had a bed and a couch that I was assured would pull out into a bed. It was super gross and that door had the same damage as the first room.

While we walked back downstairs, the security guard reassured us that he had 34 bullets for his gun. He would patrol the perimeter all night. It was 3 buildings though and he was all by himself. He made it clear without saying so that he would not stay there if he was us. Great. I am pretty sure that the motel was being used for drugs, prostitution and that people were squatting in the rooms.

I decided that we needed to look for another place to stay. (Kelly was not happy about that. He had been up since three when they left our house to drive over.) It was after 10pm and the state tournament was in town. There were probably no vacancies anywhere near Tacoma. But, I decided I would try anyway. Then I decided that Priceline should find us someplace else to stay. I called them while Kelly and the kids ate dinner. I spend almost an hour on the phone with Priceline. They transferred me three times. They told me that I had three options: stay there for 20% off, be relocated or cancel and get a full refund.

First of all, I think if we would have stayed at that motel, 20% of us might not have made it out of there. A full refund wouldn't give us a place to sleep other than the car, so I chose relocation. They found us a place to stay about 20 minutes away in Gig Harbor for the same price. We had to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to get there. (Reminder to myself that I need to tell Priceline about the $19 in tolls we had to pay to cross the bridge to and from the Tacoma Dome.)

The new motel was hard to find in the dark and it took some driving around (and swearing). We didn't go to bed until after 1am. It was a very nice motel and best of all, we didn't feel like the door might get kicked in and someone would kill us while we slept.

Other than that, it was a nice weekend. I missed our oldest boy. He couldn't miss school, so he wasn't able to go, I didn't get any homework or grading done. I am going to keel over from exhaustion. Kelly and the kids already made it home, so did the bus full of State Champs!

I was able to accidentally, not accidentally, get three knives into the Tacoma Dome in my bag on the first day, but my sandwich on gluten free bread was almost confiscated on the second day. Security is not so great at the Dome, but food sales are. (The guard let me keep my sandwich because I told him I could not eat anything they sell at the concessions stands.)

This week's lab for my TA class is a bone practical. I have a paper due Tuesday for Research Methods. I have a mini-ethnography and a weekly commentary for MedAnth. I need to get started on the final paper for MedAnth too. I think I will start on all of that tomorrow. Too tired today.