12 Another Town, Another Wash

On the map, Lake Havasu looks like a thriving metropolitan area. Not true. Three days has been enough to show that it’s just another Redneckville, expanded by the tourist army that comes to gawk at London Bridge and then move on, perhaps wondering if anyone ever stopped before the bridge arrived.

It’s reached the point in the week where I either have to wash my clothes or buy some more and, believe me, there have been times when that was a valid choice. Not now though, so I need a laundromat.

Despite Verizon’s claims about nationwide coverage with their big red map, something happens as soon as you leave large centers of population. Google Search develops a form of insanity if it can’t find what it’s looking for. Yesterday, a simple search for coffee shops delivered an ice cream shop and a gas station but failed to find the Starbucks where I was actually sitting.

I’d prefer the thing admitted it couldn’t get a hit, or apologized that the nearest is a thousand miles away, rather than this insistence on making stuff up. This time, asking for a laundromat actually finds one – in addition to a local hospice. Technology – isn’t it wonderful?

Driving down the road, the sexy Google voice sends me to a Chevron station topped by a giant wooden sign in the shape of a pointing finger declaring “Laundromat, Gas and Deli.” I’ve decided I’m in love with Miss Google. She always gets me to where I’m going and never loses her temper when I screw up and go the wrong way. The perfect woman, really. I wish I knew her name.

The gas pumps are obvious and the car’s thirsty so I deal with that.  John Wayne’s rule number one was always look after your horse first – or was that Clint Eastwood? Someone with a gun and a mean way with words, anyway. After a circuit of the gas station there’s no sign of the laundromat, nor any further reference to it, just that giant wooden finger.

I have to break a cardinal rule and go inside to ask. It’s not fear of admitting failure, just that experience has shown 90% of people who don’t have the answer will make something up. Very Fox-News.

“It’s right there,” says a chunky brunette, pointing vaguely towards a spot where the corner of the wall meets the ceiling. “The next door around the corner.” Her attitude is one of wonderment and the tingle of irritation begins to climb up my back.

Outside again, I collect the laundry bag and follow her directions to a door covered entirely by a Mountain Dew poster but otherwise unmarked. Is this it? Why the mystery? Why is there no indication of what lies beyond? Why would someone go to these lengths to keep a normal business a secret? It can’t be an accident unless the owners are stupid. Is there a speakeasy in there? Are they distilling illicit whisky or gin?

I’m hesitant to open it and burst in on a surprised threesome having an orgy, but it’s the only door so I do. Inside there’s a spacious laundromat, complete with three large couches and a widescreen TV showing the shopping channel with the volume at a level needed by deaf people. I suppose the couches could be used for an orgy but, at the moment, there’s only an old man draped over one of them in a manner suggesting that he’s dead.

This must be the only laundromat in the whole of the country that has no change machine. In England, where anything that might contain money would be immediately stolen, that’s the norm, but not here. Laundromats, like diners, are an American way of life and generally they do them well, so this is truly surprising.

The only solution is another interaction with the deli brunette, which is also a good excuse to get some greasy food from the deli. Whilst paying for potato wedges and a fried object that might once have been meat rolled in a tortilla, I make the mistake of mentioning that a sign on the laundromat door would have been helpful. It was only a light-hearted comment but, almost imperceptibly, her shoulders rise and her eyebrows furrow like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. “Everyone knows where it is,” she says, as though I’d just insulted NASCAR. “It’s obvious.”

It’s not obvious, of course, but I have enough sense to leave it at fifteen-love. People use that word way too much, usually to describe something that only they know.

It takes half an hour for the wash and the dryer promises fifty minutes, but the TV is so mind numbingly raucous in its attempts to demonstrate merchandise not available in stores that I spend the time wandering around outside, watching the antics of drivers trying to park. It shouldn’t be hard, if they just observed courtesy and used a small percentage of brain, but that seems to be the problem.

A yellow Mustang’s diagonally across two spaces and encroaching onto a third and I watch a guy in his backwards baseball cap and sleeveless plaid shirt, cutting off a minivan to reverse his house-sized truck into a spot clearly marked by a handicap sign and blue curb markings. Is it that he didn’t read, couldn’t read or simply doesn’t give a shit? Probably the latter, but I can’t rule out at least one of the other possibilities.

After fifty minutes, I go to retrieve the clothes, which are hotter than one would expect. So hot, in fact, that I have to vigorously shake each item and then drop it back to avoid losing my fingerprints. It might be possible to cook an egg on the belt buckle and the jeans look like they’d been ridden hard and put away wet. Three tee-shirts are burned with large charred holes – but I can’t face the prospect of complaining to the brunette next door, so I mentally shrug, push everything back into the laundry bag, throw it into the car and drive away.

C’est la vie…

11 The Vehicle Method

Choosing a hotel’s easy when you’re rich or just don’t care about the expense. Choose it by the size, by the big-hair architecture, choose it by the household name or the fact that it appears at the top of all the Google searches you make for five-star hotels.

It’s not so easy when you’re on a budget, or you don’t have a credit card, if your driver’s license expired or you’re on the road for three months and simply don’t want to spend your entire budget on a week’s worth of sleep in the size of bed reserved for first weekends away with the new girlfriend.

That would be me – the one before last – although sometimes the last one’s me too. Not right now though, but that’s a different story.

Consider what you get for spending big. The lights work, it doesn’t smell like bleach, sheets aren’t over-used seconds from Walmart, the sink drains properly, wi-fi doesn’t need a prayer and $2.99, there’s a hairdryer, the towels don’t feel like cardboard, the TV gets several channels without commercials and there’s little danger of being mugged walking back from the restaurant.

It’s all good.

Not the same at the other end of the spectrum though.  All those advantages – turn ‘em around and take your chances.

I spend a lot of time on the road and the cost is down to me, so I’m averse to parting with a lot of money for a few hours’ sleep. It’s all about the trip – not the room.

So – how to avoid the worst pitfalls?

Not easy, but here’s what I do. It’s called the Vehicle Method.

If the parking lot is empty, either the place so despicable no one else can stand it or the only people there can’t afford a vehicle.

If it looks run down and cheap but there are REALLY expensive cars there – the Maserati or high-end Mercedes type – it’s a drug den.

If most vehicles are old, dirty, or wrecks and all have local license plates, it’s used by social services to house their ‘clients’.

The only acceptable state of the parking lot is a mix of vehicles, undented and clean, with a smattering of out-of-state plates.

Of course, there are other considerations – the presence of homeless wandering the premises, couples having verbal fights in the parking lot, a customer yelling at the front desk clerk – but those are no-brainers.

I like the Vehicle Method.

It’s worked so far.