Welcome to Thunderdome

My parents have a place in Carolina Beach. Their house was ok, but a ton of businesss in the downtown are flooded.

Crazy images.

Glad their house is ok.

I feel for anyone who goes through this, but when you live near water you have to assume that water is eventually coming to visit.

Do any of you ever get "comfortable" in a hotel room?

There is no place comfortable to sit. I don't use the TV as I watch everything on my PC, so finding a comfy place to consume content that way is impossible. The pillows are shit. I know bare asses have touched pretty much every surface.

If I have work to do the desk is passable, but there's no place to really unwind. I feel tight and on the edge the entire trip. every time.

My pro-tip was always go for the extended stay hotels, even if just for two days. Usually half/full-sized kitchen, couch, coffee table. Much easier to settle in. ANd my experience they were usually cheaper than a hampton inn.

I ask for extra pillows, so I typically have 4 to 6 to work with depending on the hotel. I usually sit on the bed with the pillows.

I am comfortable that way. But it always takes me like 2-3 nights to be able to sleep in a new bed, and then I'm leaving the hotel.

You know those places that offer massages in malls? They should have those in hotels. Not like you're thinking you fucking deviants. There's always some meeting room near the main lobby that is never used in all hotels. Rent it out to a company that does that. You're telling me people stuck on planes, cars, and dealing with jackasses all day wouldn't take advantage of that service being offered?

On a related note, I land at CLT yesterday and head to AVIS. Why AVIS, well I'm normally with National, but they ran out of cars once post-pandemic, so I rented one with AVIS and paid like $200 less for the week. So, I gave them another shot this time.

I walk up to my car and I see it's a KIA. That's the first flag, but not a deal breaker. Walking up, I noticed the driver's window is down. Weird as they're not usually left that way. I pop the truck to throw my suitcase in, and uh oh, I know that smell. Get in the passenger side, and clearly the previous renters were Cheech and Chong. Not only that, but they lived in this car for the last month. Me being me, I just laughed it off and headed to the office. This morning, with the smell still super strong, I reported it to my HR department as AVIS could possibly try to charge me, and I don't want my company asking me why I'm being charged for a weed smell in my rental car. I also reported it to AVIS, and got a template "That's our bad, not normal, and we will do better."

Not acceptable. No offer to swap out the car. No discount offered. No free days. Nothing. Well AVIS, you got your shot and you blew it. Back to National.

Hertz fucked me over like that, a classic Seinfeld, "You know how to take the reservation, you don't know how to keep the reservation." And they had a line 40 people deep, and told me that after getting out of the hospital the day before (back when i was getting treatment), feeling like shit, and then a plane flight, and having to be in Pennsylvania, it would be 3-4 hours until I had a car.

Walked next door to Alamo with no reservation, and no line, and got a great car immediately. I never always to not use Alamo now.

testing because the forum is going up and down

GORDON wrote: ↑Tue Mar 18, 2025 4:15 pm testing because the forum is going up and down

Seems to be better now.

U-Haul did that to me once. Hertz(?) or someone did that to me in England once...

Seinfeld could have sunk the company if he'd named names.