South Lake Tahoe, California (2012)

Two floors. Open air walkways. Room doors open to the outside. Large curtained room window.

Private, quiet, dark, secluded, unpretentious, comfortable.

I loved it.

South Lake Tahoe, California (2012)

Aside from a five star Hyatt Regency in Baku, Azerbaijan I stayed in while returning from Afghanistan, this humble Best Western was my favorite of all of the hotels and motels in which I’ve ever stayed.

Emerald Bay, California (2012)

We had a couple of hours to kill before the interview, so we decided to drive around the area and see the sights.

Glorious.

South Lake Tahoe, California (2012)

This was one of the best investigative trips I ever went on.

We were interviewing the main suspect on a major fraud case and he amazingly agreed to meet with us.

We flew into Reno, drove over the mountain passes, then circled around Lake Tahoe until we came to our hotel on the south part of the lake.

This was the view from the hotel parking lot the following morning right before I went for a run up the mountain.

Brooklyn Bay, New York (2012)

This was one of my worst travel experiences, which is saying something because I’m generally able to make the most out of any situation.

I wanted to interview a kid who was a minor suspect in a much larger fraud scheme. Normally I would have just located the individual, cornered him, and interviewed him right then and there before he knew what hit them.

But since he was of relatively minor importance and I was trying to build goodwill with a partner agency, I let them handle the approach, which the bungled.

They located the kid, and then instead of interviewing him, gave him their cards and told him to call them to schedule an interview.

The kid, who was illegally in the U.S., went promptly to his immigration attorney (isn’t it weird how they all have one and how they even exist at all…?) who called them, who called me, who then had to call him and explain why I wanted to talk to his client.

So, hoping to sweet talk the attorney into letting his client speak to me, I hopped on a shuttle to LaGuardia, whereupon I promptly left my handcuffs behind in my seat and had to be called back by the bemused airport security to retrieve them.

The interview was scheduled for that afternoon in the attorney’s office in Sheepshead Bay, which is a curious mix of Orthodox Jews and expatriate Russians.

I went straight from the airport in my rental car in my suit and tie to the neighborhood and couldn’t find parking anywhere because:

A. It’s Brooklyn
B. They were doing construction everywhere

The entire scene was calamitous and cacophonous. There were cars everywhere, workers laying blacktop, the stench of tar, horns blaring, people yelling in Russian and Yiddish. Plus it was summer and I was sweating in my suit and tie, weighed down by my sidearm and Bat Gear, and I had to pee.

It was one of the most unsettling experiences of my life.

After grabbing a quick and shitty bite to eat in the restaurant located literally next door to the attorney’s office, I climbed the spongy and rotten stairs whereupon I was met by the suspect, his attorney, and a translator.

The office was so small there was barely room for the four of us and two of them were sitting in lawn furniture.

After about five minutes of attempting rapport, the attorney wanted to know about what formal protections his client would have before speaking to an investigator like me?

I tried to use the Jedi Mind Trick on him and minimize his client’s importance, but he wasn’t having it.

After ten minutes I knew it wasn’t happening and he said he’d be happy to talk to me after I’d obtained a formal letter from the prosecutor guaranteeing that his client would not be charged.

Dejectedly, I hopped back into my rental car and headed to the Best Western I’d reserved a short distance away. This was the scene that awaited me while waiting to check in.

From FB:

“Guy screaming and muttering to himself in the lobby. Hotel clerk says he’s OK.

I felt compelled to ask about bedbugs…”

Hazlet, New Jersey (2010)

We stayed at this Best Western while doing an interview with a wealthy Middle-Eastern woman who was essentially involved in labor trafficking of her Indonesian maid.

I made the mistake of putting my hand on the upper shelf in my room closet and found what I thought was some type of dirty tennis ball.

It was a moldy orange.

The bed was so broken and spongy, the moment you laid down in it you sank to the middle.

They had an attached restaurant cum night club that served sushi. And it was damn good.

I loved that place.

Fairfax, Virginia (2013)

This one was off Chain Bridge Road near an I-95 exit.

My parents always stayed there when they were visiting my family and my brother’s family in Oakton, a short drive away.

It was great. Probably built in the 80s. Two levels with a concrete walkway by which you accessed your room on both floors.

I love hotels in which you can gain access from the outside. It seems so decadent to me.

Crummy Hotels

I have a thing for them. Particularly Best Westerns.

Not Best Western Plus. The Best Westerns with this logo.

Probably because we did a lot of traveling as kids. I just realized that. (Though Best Westerns were a bit pricey for our family. We usually were patrons of Knights Inn and their like.)

Early Social Media Writing (2014)

This was one of the first pieces I wrote in which I tried to convey my experiences in a quasi-literary form.

It feels a little overexposed, confessional, and too revealing. Quite maudlin and overwrought in retrospect, but people seemed to like it:

“I was at Fort Bragg and I was doing anything I could to stay the hell away from that place.

The summer of ‘93 I’d graduated college and was living in a cheap assed $250 per month off-beach apartment in Kill Devil Hills, NC working days at the front desk of the local Best Western and getting bombed out of my gourd at night on King Cobra and trying to continue the college experience. Every night.

Shit didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped after that disappointingly short imaginary Endless Summer, so I decided to join the Army.

From my failed attempt at an idyllic beach life the previous year I brought with me to Fort Bragg a 7’4″ WRV fatboard, that I kept displayed prominently in my room as if to say to all who viewed it, “I’m not one of you. I’m different. I’m special.”

Every chance I had, I’d try to get away from that place. I absolutely hated it.

Nevertheless, one of the guys in my unit fancied himself a surfer as well because he was allegedly from Florida, and after talking a bit, we decided to make a road trip one weekend day to Wrightsville Beach, NC – about two hours to the east of Fort Bragg near Wilmington.

I don’t remember why we didn’t just spend the night there, but all I recollect is that there was no surf that weekend and we eventually retired to some beachside bar where they were serving Red Wolf beer.

The bar was sterile and the AC was frigidly on high. I mean, it was freezing. No ambiance. No nothing. Worse, there were no windows overlooking the beach – despite the fact the bar was right on the beach and this was supposed to be a locals “beach bar.”

I remember there were only one or two other patrons at the bar besides us chattering obliviously, and after two or three beers, my Florida friend and I decided to drive back to Fort Bragg, having accomplished exactly nothing.”

Return Of The Goddess

“March 25th is celebrated as Lady Day or as the Return of the Goddess from the Underworld – the return of Spring from its long Winter hibernation.

In the Roman Catholic Church, March 25th in the old liturgical calendar is called the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Annunciation means an ‘announcement.’ This is the day that the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was pregnant with a child.

Naturally, this had to be announced since Mary, being still a virgin, would have no other means of knowing it.

Why did the church pick the vernal equinox for the commemoration of this event? Because it was necessary to have Mary conceive the child Jesus a full nine months before his birth at the Winter Solstice (i.e., Christmas, celebrated on the fixed calendar date of December 25).

Mary’s pregnancy would take the natural nine months to complete, even if the conception was a bit unorthodox.

This is also the month of the Hag, the Time of the Old Woman, and is notorious for bad weather. In the Scottish Highlands, each week of March has a name: the Sweeper, the Whistler, the Sharp-Billed One, and the Cailleach – The Hag herself.

At this season, the folk who sail the North Sea ask kindness of Aegir and Ran, god and goddess of weather and tides.”