Hotels

Unless you have a relative, friend, or a hookup on a free condo close by, traveling will likely result in a hotel (or motel) stay. There isn't a bigger gamble involved in traveling than exchanging money for keys to a hotel room, especially if you blindly booked the room over the phone or internet, and double especially if you know nothing about the area you're visiting. Even with a chain you trust, you're rolling the dice on a 50/50 chance of a pleasant stay or a scene from Psycho.

Pleasant or not, the idea of thousands upon thousands of people taking turns sleeping in the same bed is extremely weird to me, and to a point uncomfortable. We don't know these (literal) strange bedfellows, nor do we know the history of that bed. And, like the ingredients of a hotdog, those mysteries are probably best left unsolved. We instead just close our eyes and hold tight, horizontal between those Egyptian-cotton bed sheets, to the extraordinarily minute likelihood that perhaps the laundry detergent the hotel used eradicated every microbial bit of evidence of any previous human contact with those sheets.

The best part about staying in a hotel room is, outside of holding a rock star after-party, you are virtually free of any normal, humane responsibilities. Included in the outrageous price of the room (which somehow tends to rate about ¼ of a monthly mortgage payment per night) are limitless laziness and irresponsibility. Leaving the room looking like a train wreck is not only acceptable, it's expected. Not that I am encouraging anyone to depart from a hotel with their room resembling an al-Qaeda hideout, but the option is basically there. You just can't beat hotel housekeeping.

Now, that said, I personally try my very hardest to upkeep my room while visiting. Besides the fact that I prefer not to voluntarily subject myself or my living quarters to filth, even if only temporarily, I have immense empathy for people who are subjugated to housekeeping duties for 40 hours a week, cleaning up the mess and debris of others while trying to maintain their own self-respect, so I always put forth some effort in not coming across as a total slob.

I wonder how clean housekeeping employees' hotel rooms are when they're on vacation. It would make my day to know they unapologetically wreak havoc, strewing towels, bedspreads, and toiletries across the room in a free-spirited, rebellious rage.