Road Wars Episode I: The Lodging Menace

A while ago now, in a commonwealth far, far away . . . .

(I’ve only had one full week in the office over the past nine weeks thanks to so much travel. What’s worth posting about April’s travels has been posted. So here is the first PA travelogue.)

The first week of May was my first trip to Philly. As in the first time I’d ever been there, even. On this trip, and only on this trip, I was accompanied by a lovely young lady who also works for the hospital who also had some familiarity with the town. There was still a bit of light as we got the rental car and started out to the Valley Forge area, but by the time we got to the hotel, I was glad the hotel was right on the highway as it was quite dark out. We each retired to our respective suites and chanced room service. I’ll spare you the details, other than that the room service food produced copious unwelcome special effects.

The next morning, after a breakfast buffet that has established itself as the worst I’ve ever encountered, we found our way to the vendor’s location for training. We passed a few colonial-era farmsteads and an architecturally charming 18th century Presbyterian establishment complete with a burgeoning churchyard. (I wonder how much spinning goes on in those graves over things like this.) A bit farther down the road we came to a complex of recent commercial buildings that are sure to be forgotten and buried in well under 200 years. Our training room was deep in the basement. There’s not much to say about software training, and that’s even more true of software like this that’s so highly specialized. It should be a good tool. I hope to use it well.

After we got out of the first day of training, we took a spin to the nearby King of Prussia Mall area to find somewhere to eat. The mall (properly two malls connected with a walkway) was indeed big, as advertised. I didn’t see anything that looked especially Prussian – not even Prussian Blue signs, which would have been a subtly fitting touch. I was the only person to stand ramrod straight and probably one of rather few in the neighborhood to have even nodding familiarity with von Clausewitz. I not only refrained from goose-stepping, I even eschewed the pickelhaube.

There were chain restaurants of every description including, oddly enough, the faux-southwestern Chili’s. Rather sad evidence of how everywhere is becoming indistinguishable from everywhere else and they’re all just shadows of things that could be done so much better, if slightly less profitably. We ended up eating cheesesteaks at a local diner. The sandwiches and the service were good. The room was something else entirely. James Lileks’ book Interior Desecrations focused solely on bad residential décor, but if ever he puts something together about bad commercial spaces, this diner would have to make the list. Every horizontal surface was either garishly bright blue, yellow, orange or a combination of all three – likewise the banquettes and chair backs. But for the dingy ceiling, the other surfaces were generally mirrored. Yikes.

After the diner we decamped to find a grocery store so as to avoid another nausea-inducing hotel breakfast and to get some snacks. Serendipity led me to get some Unique Splits – the best hard pretzels I’ve had.

The second night we took the adventurous step of going downtown to get a bite. I don’t think it’s that adventurous to go afield in a strange city per se, but the “expressways” of southeastern Pennsylvania are themselves a risk akin to backcountry skiing in avalanche season. The roads generally have only two lanes in each direction with very short merge lanes for entering traffic. They’re built in spots that don’t lend themselves to expansion. Weirdly, most intersections coincide with bends in the road, compounding the traffic-flummoxing influence of each. The worst culprits, though, were two widespread driving socio-pathologies: (1) miscreants using the shoulder as a passing lane and (2) milquetoasts letting such miscreants back into traffic lanes. (This incenses me to no end as I saw it so often cause collisions and otherwise snarl traffic in San Diego.) A twenty mile trip took well over an hour on the euphonious Schuylkill* Expressway.

The trip was worth it, though, for the great shellfish at the Sansom Oyster House. Downtown was also quite picturesque. The City Hall is quite a sight, perhaps the most ostentatious building in the country and made all the more so by its positioning in the middle of the intersection of two major thoroughfares. I also passed by an edifice that has a great claim to the ubiquitous title “First Baptist Church” as it dates to the 17th century, about the time of the very first Baptists as we know them today. The downtown is pleasantly bustling, without seeming harried. This trip I didn’t get to any “old city” landmarks like Independence Hall.

The third night we stayed a bit closer in and had a tasty meal near the picturesque town of Wayne. A sign noted that this town had originally been known as “Louella”, but that it had been renamed for revolutionary war General Anthony Wayne. I’m confident I’ve never before heard of a town named “Louella”. If forces hostile to religion and all other attributes of truth get their way and cause the city once known as Yerba Buena to change its legal name, I suggest it be renamed “Louella” so that we’ll then be able to refer to adherents of those particular antisocial behaviors as “Louella Fellas”. But I digress.

That night I noticed to a great degree how differently a dining party is treated when it includes an especially pretty woman: things like the speed with which plates are removed or even undercharging for drinks. At first I thought we’d just stumbled on restaurants that had particularly good service, but at this restaurant we were close enough to other parties that I could see and hear enough to the compare staff’s attentiveness to other parties. It was rather fun to have a taste of how the other half lives. BTW, if you’re around Wayne, PA and are up for a great, if not inexpensive dinner, by all means try Nectar – terrific Asian fusion cuisine. Just remember to try to either bring a really pretty woman or leave any envy you might have with the parking valet, ‘kay?

That night happened to be Cinco de Mayo – and not just some delayed celebration thereof. Consequently the hotel was throwing a big celebration in the atrium (a/k/a excuse for folks to buy drinks). They advertised “authentic Mexican music”. Since I’m a sucker for mariachis – even if they aren’t very good - and I was homesick, I was hoping to catch a little music before retiring and maybe even enjoy a Presidente or two. Alas the music was a very loud and remarkably untalented Jim Croce impersonator. He was so bad that it took me at least a minute to recognize “You don’t mess around with Jim” due to problems with pitch and phrasing, rather than an accent. Needless to say, I passed. I had to turn up the volume on the room TV to uncomfortable levels to drown out the caterwauling below.

Friday afternoon we got out of class early and headed straight for the airport, this time taking the somewhat quicker and also oddly-named Blue Route - there really isn’t anything blue about it in either the literal or the euphemistic sense. Ordered a “big beer” at the airport bar and was surprised to get a quart mug. That with some pretzels made for a pleasant wait for the flight home, glad to know that I was free from the dread hotel.

Of course the first orders of business when I got back to work were to make alternate hotel arrangements for the next stay and to send a blisteringly accurate survey response to the hostelry.

Coming next – Road Wars Episode II: Attack of the Drone

*Pronounced “skook’ll”. Try it, it’s really quite fun to say.