Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Mitigate This

I'm definitely out of practice at my job. Oh I can fly the airplane fine, but I almost injured my wrist falling out of the hotel bed in the dark. I forgot that I don't get to sleep in the same bed twice in a row, and there isn't a ledge here. That has to happen periodically: flight crew injuring themselves badly enough while on the road that company has to send someone else out to fly the airplane home. In this case I remember in time while falling to just crash onto the floor and take it on my shoulder rather than try to catch my whole weight on my hand. Crazy reflex that probably works better in species with less complex wrists, and that run on four legs.

Dress, hotel breakfast, check out: I manage to remember the usual routine. Then it turns out company doesn't want us to take the airplane home. They want us to take it to another province. Okay, we can do that. Our current charts include those for the next province over. We can buy clean underwear there, too. After a week on the road we come home wearing Wal-Mart underwear and thrift store t-shirts, carrying our essential toiletries in now-battered plastic bags. I note once I get home that I have bruises on my legs. I always have bruises on my legs after road trips and I'd assumed before that it was from using my legs as a backstop and rebound point as I hurl my suitcase in and out of cabs, airplane and hotel room luggage racks. But there has been no suitcase this week. I have a new theory.

It's hotel room chairs. For some weird reason, few hotels spend any effort making their chairs match their desks in any way, so sometimes I have to grab a couple of pillows for the chair in order to work at a computer on the desk, and sometimes I can't jam my legs underneath the desk while sitting in the provided chair. Sometimes there's no desk at all and I move the TV to one side to do my paperwork on top of the piece of furniture that supports the TV. These hotel chairs usually have armrests, too, so my theory is that I bash my legs getting in and out of hotel chairs in awkward configurations with hotel desks. I don't bash them hard enough to make myself limp around yelling "ow" or to remember doing it, but just hard enough to come home with a week's worth of bruises.

I will also take this opportunity to complain about hotel lamps. This one has been festering for a while. In your own home you know which switches control what, but in a hotel ... you know what, this is going to take more time than I've got right now. It will have to fester a little longer. I will tell you about hotel lamps another time.

6 comments:

nec Timide said...

Sadly I know all about hotel lamps.

Anonymous said...

I sympathize. Sometimes there's no desk, and the computer has to be propped on a dresser or end table. There's nowhere to put your knees, so you end up twisted sideways. And you have to pull furniture away from the wall and then unplug the TV or refrigerator to get at a power outlet.

[I usually end up unplugging hotel refrigerators anyhow, as the noise keeps me awake.]

DataPilot said...

And the older you get, the more frequently the "where-the-heck-did-THAT-bruise-come-from?" moments occur. Hotel or no hotel.

townmouse said...

I get bruises when travelling from lugging my Brompton about, but then I bruise easily anyway...

D.B. said...

I double lock my hotel door - not so much to keep other out, as to keep me in. You see, I like to sleep as nature made me, but I sometimes sleepwalk when my bladder gets full around 2 or 3am, and one door feels like another in the dark (and they're usually right next to each other).....

rw2 said...

"In this case I remember in time while falling to just crash onto the floor and take it on my shoulder rather than try to catch my whole weight on my hand. Crazy reflex that probably works better in species with less complex wrists, and that run on four legs."

I don't know which is better statistically, but given that I've seen a broken collar bone and a dislocated shoulder in the past year using that strategy I'd just redouble your efforts to not fall out of bed! :-)