[title subtitle=”WORDS Stoney Stamper
IMAGE April Stamper”][/title]
As I write this story, I am sitting in my boxer shorts and a t-shirt on a couch, in the home of someone I do not know, deep in the thick pines of east Texas. Let me repeat. I am in my draws, on the couch in a stranger’s house. Now, it’s not quite as weird as it initially sounds. I didn’t just pull up at a strange house, go in and make myself at home. It’s an Airbnb. But to me, it still feels a bit awkward. It’s not my house. It’s way out in the woods, there’s no cell phone service and the wifi is pretty darn pathetic. Now I will admit, it’s pretty awesome. It’s a little cabin that someone has refurbished. It’s secluded and has a big porch about three quarters of the way around the house. It has a tiny kitchen, two bedrooms, and is probably no more than six hundred square foot – and that’s being generous. My wife, April, adores it. I am still on the fence about it, although I would definitely say it is the best one we have ever stayed at.
Let me back up a tad. I traveled up to three hundred days per year for a dozen years. I have stayed in just about every kind of hotel that you can imagine. Nice hotels, fancy hotels, some crummy hotels, and even a few downright disgusting hotels. One night, for instance, I was driving across Michigan, from Grand Rapids, headed to Detroit. It was very late at night, and a really hard snow hit while I was driving. My intention was to drive all the way to Detroit, where I already had a hotel reservation. But with the snow and road conditions, I decided to stop in Flint, get a hotel there, and then drive the rest of the way the next morning. I stopped at several popular chain hotels, but due to the weather, they were all full. After stopping at four or five hotels and unable to find a room, I found a little hotel that had ten rooms – total.
It was called Jackie’s Motel. I’m not even kidding. I walked up to a window akin to a bank teller’s window, and there sat a woman with a name badge on her shirt. She was Jackie. The glass was bulletproof, and she sent a paper and pen to me through a drawer, just like an exterior bank window.
It was thirty dollars for the night. She gave me a key that had what appeared to be a hub cap for a keychain. I made my way to my room, room number seven. When I got to it, the door was wide open, and with the blizzard blowing in, the room had snow all over the floor, and even on the bed. The temperature was in the single digits and the heater never was able to take the bitter sting out of the air. I didn’t get undressed to go to bed. I didn’t even get under the blankets. I wrapped up in multiple coats, a stocking cap and gloves, and slept for a couple of hours. But it was a horrible night. I got up at 5:00 am, went down the street to the Waffle House and drank coffee until the sun came up with the hope it would melt some of the snow off the highway. After that night, I swore I’d never stay in a place like that again. After that night, I was a Platinum Club member with Holiday Inn, Hampton Inn, Marriott and any other nice hotel chain I could find, and I never stayed at another place that was even questionable.
Enter my wife. She’s a free spirit. A bit of a hippie at heart and she marches to the beat of her own drum. She loves to travel, and so we do. I do it because I like to make her happy, even though I would usually rather stay at home. But here’s the deal. She loves bed and breakfasts. She loves to use Airbnb to find little cozy, out of the way spots for us to stay. And more often than not, I haven’t liked them.
The first one that I can remember was when we took a trip down to the Comal River in Texas. It’s a great place to take our daughters to float the river. There are nice hotels everywhere. But that’s not what April wants. She rents a teepee. Let me say that again. She rented a TEEPEE. It was right on the river and was pretty good size. It actually had two beds in it, but no bathroom. There were bathrooms about two hundred yards down the river.
First off, the teepee stunk to high heaven. It smelled like mildew so strongly, we were spraying perfume and cologne, just anything to try to cover the smell. Everything in it felt damp. I was not happy. The girls were laughing so hard, first, because the smell was so bad, and because we were staying in a freaking teepee. And secondly, because I was so aggravated. This teepee cost one hundred forty dollars per night. We could be staying down the road in a Holiday Inn Express for a hundred bucks!
As I’ve been known to do, I was griping, and as they have been known to do, all the girls were egging it on. The longer I thought about it, the more aggravated I became. For three nights, we were staying in this place and spending an extra two hundred dollars to do it. Later that night, I walked down to the bathroom. The lights in the bathroom operated by motion sensor. As I sat on the toilet, the lights went off. Sitting there, I began waving my hands above my head and after a minute the lights came back on, thankfully. I came back and told the girls about that, and of course they thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.
On another adventure we took a trip down to Gruene, Texas, which is just down the road from New Braunfels. Just April and I this time. No kids. Gruene has a great nightlife, live music, and great food. Again, April took to Airbnb to find us a place. I begged her to just get a hotel, but no dice. She found a little German B&B back in the woods, similar to the place we are staying tonight. Except way worse. WAY worse. First of all, I don’t know how they could call it a Bed and Breakfast, because our cabin didn’t have a bed. IT DIDN’T HAVE A BED.
It had a couch that folded out into a bed. And the couch was stained. And the pillows were stained. Even the toilet bowl was stained. The proprietor told us that he thought a previous tenant had made drugs in it.
First of all, apparently I have no idea how drugs are made. What’s a toilet got to do with it? Thankfully, I don’t do drugs, but I am even more happy now that I know that they are made in a toilet. Secondly, how can you rent a room at a BED and Breakfast for one hundred forty-five dollars per night if the room doesn’t even have a bed? And there were strange German war memorabilia hung all around the room that confused me. I refused to lay my head on the stained pillows and certainly was not thrilled to lay on the stained couch-bed. April, of course, laughed until she cried. Mainly at me, because nothing makes her laugh as much as making me uncomfortable and aggravated.
You’d think by now I’d be used to it. But every time April picks out a new place, I find myself aggravated and griping. And I find April laughing.
So why do I keep doing it? Well, you see, because many years ago, April became my Valentine, and she always will be. So, I’ll keep following her on these Airbnb adventures and keep telling myself, I have my Valentine with me, just how bad can it be?
Stoney Stamper
Stoney Stamper is the best-selling author of My First Rodeo: How Three Daughters, One Wife, and a Herd of Others Are Making Me a Better Dad (WaterBrook) and author of the popular parenting blog The Daddy Diaries. He and his wife, April, have three daughters and live in Oklahoma, where they are heavily involved in agriculture and raise and show a variety of animals.
