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A rather complex set of graphs was doing the rounds just after lunch. In some of the pie charts the colours of more than one section were the same, so you couldn’t tell which yellow section told you what. I did my usual thing of getting clockwise and anti-clockwise mixed up when explaining to Leo what meant, which elicited the response that perhaps I’d best avoid driving in America.

Hmmm…

Of course, I’ve never been very good at driving in America, so not only did the story of being chased by the police through mountains Vermont come out in all its lurid detail (including the missing luggage and disappearing toilet episode), but also the events that occured in Chicago, when I managed to write off a green Dodge Neon outside City Hall. I dug into my Chicago diary to tell production the story, picking up from the point I checked into the Travelodge…

Service at reception was slow and when I finally got to my room on the 9th floor a strange smell lingered. A brief inspection of the bathroom revealed that it was probably the shower, which looked far from hygienic, but being tired enough not to care I reminded myself that I would not have to worry about it until the morning, closed the door to contain the smell and dropped my bags on the bed. A brief recce of the room that I believed would serve to be my home until the following morning revealed more worrying signs.

The window had been screwed shut, presumably to stop people fulfilling any suicidal tendencies. The coffee making facilities were clearly labelled with health warning stickers talking of germ transmission in cracked and damaged glassware. There was no bible beside the bed and you know that when even the Gideon distributors refuse to enter a hotel things can’t be too good. On the plus side, the bed was about the size of a tennis court and the view was excellent. If you ignored a stretch of the elevated tracks of the loop and a derelict area being used as a car park you had the majesty of the Sears Tower and the Oriental beauty of the city’s primary library to enjoy.

As is often the case, bodily needs dictated a return trip to the bathroom so, holding my breath, I once more braved the poisonous atmosphere. It was not until I lifted the seat of the toilet that I was forced to take back everything I had thought of the shower. The toilet was blocked.

Spectacularly blocked.

We’re not just talking about a toilet that would not flush - this one was half full (and that’s no exaggeration - we really are talking about it being half way to the rim) of paper and crap and a lot of something red. Your guess of what would possess anybody to keep on using it until it got to this stage is probably as good and inaccurate as mine but the sight and the now amplified smell was more than enough to make me retch. Flushing made no difference. Like the soil in a plant pot that has not been watered for a fortnight the contents of the bowl simply lifted and allowed the water to pass between themselves and the porcelain, stubbornly standing their ground while the flush advanced obediently towards the Chicago sewage system, then sitting back down in the bowl.

A return trip to the front desk was in order, only to find myself standing beside a similar complainant.

‘But he opened my door,’ he said.

‘I know,’ explained the man behind the desk. ‘We forgot to put peoples’ details on the computers so we don’t know which rooms have people in them. We sent the staff around to open the doors and see which rooms were occupied.’

The customer’s complaints that he could have been naked or sitting in the bath or, worse still, making love at the point his domain was disturbed were answered with a shrug and a smirk and, resigned to his fate, he returned once more to his now violated territory.

I was assigned a new room and, carrying my ruck sack and day bag back up eight of my original nine floors arrived in a similar, although decidedly less fragrant room. Seizure ensured that the bath taps were wedged into the ‘on’ position for the duration of my stay but at least the toilet was clean.

That was my last night in Chicago. I was, by now, driving a far better car then in any of the previous 24 years of my life. A small prang outside City Hall involving my rented green Dodge Neon and a convertible red Mercedes with personalised plates (in neither car had the airbags engaged) had been awarded by the rental company with the temporary gift of a large blue Ford Taurus. The CD option had not been installed but this was of little consideration. The former car had even had no tape. With this car cruise control was the real joy. Setting the needle at 65 it was now possible to take your feet from the pedals and forget about everything but your hands and the road ahead.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2002 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.