Hazelton Motel Experience - Part II

I was outside and shivering...where will I go? I was being nudged further away from the room by this invisible force. My friend is staying two doors down from me, so I knocked insistently on her door. Immediately she opens the door, but I could tell I had woken her up. I sputtered out, "I got pushed off my bed! And she kept pushing me out the door!" (How did I know it was a female?)

My friend, always one to help me troubleshoot with technical problems, pragmatically suggests, "Well lets see, have you tried...going back to your room?"

"Gee whiz", I say as I try to dig my toe into the carpet, "OK."

I'm dreading it, but I make my way back, and curl up tightly into a ball under the covers of my bed. And then...I wake up tightly rolled in the same position.

Did this really happen?!!

Hazelton Motel Experience - Part I

Motels and hotels always make me nervous. This time in Hazelton...the walls were thin, and I would hear running water so loud and clear, I could swear it was flowing from the tap in my bathroom. But when I got up to check, the taps were always off.

One night, I finally fell asleep in a comfortable fetal position but woke up because something was nudging me from behind. It became more insistent, and even began pushing me out of bed. I looked behind me and saw nobody there...but this nobody began to push me out the door!

Hotel Experience: Bella Coola - part 3

The next morning, I awoke to see the room saturated with cheerful daylight. I thought to myself that surely nothing sinister could ever happen in a room such as this! I whistled a happy tune and prepared for the day, brushing my teeth, washing my face - conscious of turning the tap off after every use.

When night came, I became a bit anxious about being in the room by myself all night. Luckily, I was invited to my friend's room for a nice chat and some television viewing, so I took a quick shower and scuttled across the hall in my pink pyjamas. When I returned two hours later, I heard a familiar sound. Was it what I thought it was?

Indeed it was - this time, the faucet in the bathtub was running at it's fullest.

Hotel Experience: Bella Coola - part 2

What a wonderful state I was in, sleeping off my exhaustion - when suddenly I woke up. I looked over at the clock, it was 2 am. I turned over and closed my eyes, but the sleep wouldn't come. I adjusted the pillows, pulled the sheets up to my chin, wiggled my toes, but still felt that I wasn't situated right...I just couldn't go back to sleep!

In my grogginess, I tried to concentrate and troubleshoot, it wasn't the temperature, that was fine. It wasn't the lighting, it was sufficiently dark in the room. Ah ha, it was a very loud constant noise!

I tried to tune it out, but after 20 minutes of trying not to think of the noise and hence doing nothing but think of the noise, I decided to investigate where it was coming from. I peeped into the bathroom to find the faucet turned on full blast. Had I forgotten to turn it off in my fatigued state? How was I able to fall asleep listening to it run like that?! HAS it been on this entire time? But if it hadn't, who turned it on?! eek!

Hotel Experience: Bella Coola - part 1

The year before last, I went to Bella Coola for the first time.

This was my wacky transit experience:

I cabbed two hours early to the airport where I was finally let onto a wee little plane that was forced to land at the Anaheim Lake airport because it was simply too snowy to land at the intended destination, Hagensborg. From there I would have had to ride a little school bus for more than 3 hours down an icy, windy road except that one of the passengers on the plane was a pilot who offered me and two others a ride in a helicopter. This mode of transport would take only 1.5 hours to get the Hagensborg but then it would involve a different kind of danger. I took the ride but fretted all the way to Bella Coola about the cargo that I couldn't bring with me on the helicopter. Finally at Hagensborg, a very nice woman from the hotel came to pick me up, but the cargo was on the bus that would arive two hours later - would they go back and retrieve it for me? What was I to do?!

When I got to my hotel room, I passed out immediately on my comfortable bed - exhausted from all the worrying of the day.