Bad Hotel

This past weekend was one of  the most enjoyable weekends that I've had in my life. It was Dad's Weekend at University of Illinois and I spent it visiting my oldest daughter who is a freshman. I got to see how her  college life is going. She doing great so far and having a great time which makes me so happy ( and jealous! Man, college life is the best!)...Well, this is not about my visit or how my daughter is doing but about the  hotel I had the 1st night of the weekend.
  So being new a college dad, I didn't realize that I had to book my hotel for Dad's Weekend when my daughter was in kindergarten. All the decent hotels on campus were booked solid and I started to search for any hotel  that might have a room for 2 nights in the area. If you're not familiar with the University of Illinois, It's in Champaign, Illinois which is as rural as it gets in Illinois. Let's just say after Champaign, the closest towns to Champaign probably just got indoor plumbing. So I finally find a room at a Days Inn in Rantoul, Illinois. Rantoul is quiet town 15 miles from the University of Illinois  that has a Walmart, McDonald's, a gun shop and a couple of hotels/motels that probably haven't seen a building inspector in a good 20 years. I pull into the parking lot and wasn't initially that concerned. I went to the front desk where there was a kid working,who by the way he looked, made me fairly confident that his mom and dad were at minimum 1st cousins but probably brother and sister. Also I believe that "Dueling Banjos" was playing in the background to give the hotel more ambiance. So "Gomer" tells me about my room, check in and check out. I ask "Is there some kind of breakfast in the morning?" He replies "Oh yeah, we should have coffee, water and there's a shot there will be donuts too".  The Four Seasons has nothing on this place. I get my room key and drive around to the back to go to my room. Well, it's been a long time since I've had a room with the door on the outside of the hotel but this room had it. The hotel officially became a motel. I enter the room and the disappointment continued. The motif for this room was 1970's bad discolored yellow. I mean this room(and I'm assuming the rest of the hotel must have been the same) was last updated right around when Nixon was in office. Bad clock radio that was constantly blinking. The TV was an old box version that probably wasn't replaced because it was too heavy to move. The bed, well I've tried to block that out, so sorry for no description at this time. The bathroom was discolored yellow with a shower curtain that had stains that were either mold, dead bugs or God knows what.  The towels, which there was only one bath towel and one wash cloth, were not made for human skin. There was a bar of soap and a little bottle of shampoo that I had to to double check to make sure that it wasn't a bottle of WD40. The best part of this room was the lock on the door. It was a chain. Yes, a chain that any hard working serial killer could dismantle with a butter knife. So now I'm feeling really safe. Picture the scene in the movie "BIG" where Tom Hanks spends his 1st night as a grown up in a seedy flop house in the city. Yes, I was minutes away from barricading the door with the 400 lb TV and lying in the fetal position in bed. I then realize I left something in my car and had to go get it. I open the door and standing right in front of me is a man who weighed about 275 lbs shirtless...shirtless!!!! He says in an inbred drawl,"Man, I love a cool night like tonight". I'm thinking, Dude, I''ll give you $100 to put a shirt on! As I quickly move away from the Hillbilly Fabio, I go to my car and notice that there are lot of rooms with the doors open and some really scary looking people milling around. These were not Boy Scouts. I'm guessing there was a Meth Lab Convention being held at this motel. So I quickly get back to my room, lock the door and call my wife to tell her where my life insurance policy was. I woke up after sleeping maybe 8 minutes the entire night and cannot wait to get out of there. I quickly take a shower(Brown water is not bad for you, is it?) and I then check out (I was super lucky to find a nice hotel available for my 2nd night on campus- Thank you Hotels.com)...The funny thing is that as I was pulling out of the parking lot I saw a mix of BMW's and  Audi's along with the pick up trucks and methmobiles(rusted out Camry's and I think I actually saw an El Camino). So half the motel was occupied by parents like me visiting their kids and the other half was extremely sketchy folks. Gotta love America!