I went in and sat at the bar and ordered some food and a stiff fruity drink. It was a typical place, kind of like an Applebees, but I had never heard of it before. I was also starving, so after checking in and getting the key, I didn't even go in the room to have a look, I just got back in the car and headed for a restaurant a little ways away the clerk had told me about. I just wanted to get out of the car and get some rest. I didn't really care at this point, though. The hotel was pretty run down and old-what most people would refer to as a “flea bag”. I told the clerk it was fine and took it. They had one room left with a single bed. Everyone kept telling me to go a little further down the road and I would find a room.Ībout an hour latter I finally found a place with a vacancy. Unfortunately every hotel I found was booked up. It was starting to get dark, so I decided to find a motel to stay the night and make the push through Indiana and Ohio the next day. I was making really good time, but being alone I could only go so far in one day. The moving truck bringing my things was a day or so behind me, so it was just me and the open road. Luckily, I had a fairly new car and the a/c was in good working order. I was somewhere in Indiana, and the thermometer in my car said it was 103 degrees outside. It was the second week of August, and we were in the middle of a raging heat wave.
I was driving cross country on my way to a new job.