Back at the Breakfast Bar
Sleep patterns are an interesting beast. They certainly set the tone for the night and they can wreck havoc with your day as well. I wish I could tell you what normal is in general or even to me, but I can’t. There is a new normal at every turn when you get to my age. My consistent gold standard is to get from six to eight hours of actual on-the-CPAP sleep and I have the imbedded timer in my CPAP machine to keep track, carefully excluding the time I am up and out of my CPAP mask for whatever reason and for whatever duration. Driving days on the road are particularly hard to sort out, but they are equally important to be attentive to since alertness is at a premium on these days.
Because we got in early last night and because our room had two queen beds instead of one king, we went horizontal pretty early. Hotel TVs have come a long way. They are 100% flat screen, of course, and probably a minimum of 46” diagonal (I remember buying an early Philips 46” flat plasma in perhaps 1998 that cost almost $12,000, where the equivalent today can be had for $300), and they all have cable of some sort. The problem comes in with figuring out the channel selection and who wants to bothered reading the laminated page of channel choices. Instead, you drift through channels, being thankful for the on-screen labeling, until you find something you can tolerate. A regular go-to for Kim and I is any of the Law & Order shows. The characters are all familiar and the venues in NYC are scenes we recognize from our decades-long sojourn in the City. I like the updated Dragnet feel of it and Kim likes the fact that Law & Order has always been such a regular employer to her gang of wannabe actors. So, as soon as I hit a Law & Order channel, I was set for what ended up being the whole night.
You see, modern multitasking requires that the TV be on for background and occasional attention, but with Kim on her iPhone and I on my iPad, we were reasonably engaged in a manner that could have been in Ithaca or Escondido with equal commonality. Kim was doing what she does, which is mostly word games. She does Wordle in the morning and Words With Friends in the evening…always. I browse (and mostly delete) emails, scan news articles and write stories with the last of those occupying most of my time. Last night I ripped off a days-end story about finding dinner on the road and referenced the fact that the difficulty in doing that would be matched by the ease of finding breakfast in the hotel lobby this morning. So here I am, doing what I always do. I get up early (6:43 sleep hours on the CPAP clock with two get-up events on account of shoulder soreness), shower, pack quietly, and exit the room for the car. If I need gas, off I go, otherwise, its into the breakfast room to compare and contrast the Fremont Indiana breakfast bar with all the others I have sampled on this trip. This has become a very formulaic event for the hospitality industry.
I taught hotel economics during graduate school at the Cornell School of Hotel Management, universally known to be the leading hospitality school in the world. I recall that they used to separate the hotel courses (courses with nicknames like Flush & Gush) from the food and beverage courses (F&B) because most students usually chose one path or the other. My job was to connect both to the standard template of economic science with supply and demand examples and a touch of economic order quantity thrown in for good measure. The trend in U.S. roadside hospitality has clearly taken a change (I think for the better) in that the provision of a breakfast bar is as central to the business model as providing sheets and towels. I am sure there is a course at Cornell focused on how to offer just enough of a quality breakfast bar to meet the price point expectations of your clientele. If local hotel competition is brisk, you might add biscuits and gravy to create a trucker buzz and if you are aiming higher for a more upscale clientele, perhaps a broader array of fruits and granolas is in order. I am certain that there is a final exam somewhere that goes through the cost/benefit analysis of the breakfast bar that comes right after the ADR (average daily rate) calculations and CPR (cost per room) capital allocation decision.
This morning, I give the Holiday Inn Express in Fremont, Indiana a solid but unremarkable B grade. It had the normal pre-cooked cheese omelettes with sides of patty sausage and medium-crisp bacon. The biscuits and gravy were in evidence, but there were no potatoes. Twin waffle-makers were in evidence, but no pancakes. I gave extra points for each table having salt and pepper as well as Heinz Ketchup (anything less is a serious demerit). Kim will be happy because they have bananas if she arises early enough to snag one before they are gone (I suppose I could grab one for her now, but where’s the fun in that?). The food brings the score of the breakfast bar up to a B-, but the offering of cranberry cocktail, which is a morning favorite, bumps it a half grade up to a full gentleman’s B.
The only person who beat me to the bar this morning was a trucker who sat in the dark waiting for his biscuits and heavy sausage gravy. The term “enough to choke a horse” came to mind. Then the traveling retired housewife (she might have been a teacher in her day) arrived and reduced the banana inventory by one. Her hubby eventually joined her and mumbled something about how he got 5 hours of sleep, but that was enough for him. It seems everyone at this stage of life is thinking more and more alike. Now there are two traveling hipsters who are sporting sandals, shorts and long flowing tank tops as well as shoulder-length surfer-dude hair. They are clearly on the Keto Diet since no carbs are getting near their plates. This is when I notice that the two waffle irons are looking lonely. I suspect those are for families with kids. Can an adult who has anywhere to go with any sort of schedule truly be expected to frequent the waffle iron?
Meanwhile, back at the breakfast bar, Kim has just turned the corner and she has made what may be a tragic mistake in taking her stuff to the car before sitting down. She has no idea how close she is to losing her beloved morning banana. It’s touch and go now but I’m rooting for her and traffic has not really picked up. She’s back now and…there it is, right after filing her coffee cup, she spots the bananas and bingo, she is due for a solid day on the road. No, wait a minute, she doesn’t like the look of the bananas and she tell me she has a good one in reserve in the car, so oatmeal it is.