Beep Beep Flash Flash

The sights and sounds outside our hotel room in Bloomington, IL on Tuesday night.

Wonderful hotel. We stayed at the Baymont Inn. It's a pet-friendly hotel, which I'd never stayed in before. Rather I should say I've never stayed in a hotel with a pet before. I guess I could have stayed in a hotel that allows them, but I've never brought one with me.

Anyway. My expectations were low. My parents had tried staying in pet-friendly hotels before with mixed results. The principle concern they had was that they seemed to be given smoking rooms, even when requesting non-smoking. Dad's theory was that they must just put all the "bad stuff" in those rooms...smokers and pets.

So Lis made the reservations (she's an AARP member) and I told her, "be sure sure sure it's a nonsmoking room!"

The hotel was spotless. And smelled crisp and clean. They were changing out carpet and furniture in some parts of it, so it was being remodeled as well.

We checked in, confusing the heck out of poor Bear as we kept taking him outside every 15 minutes trying to get him to pass some solid waste. But we did settle down and have a meal of Wendy's chili and salad. And wine. Then Taylor settled in to watch the tube and Lis and I repaired to the pool deck with our other glass of wine. It was a gorgeous evening out. No bugs, perfect temp. We settled in to bed around 10:30 and dropped right off to sleep.

Around midnight we heard what sounded like a loud clock radio beeping over and over. Lis got up to investigate and saw a red SUV parked under our window (we were on the 2nd floor) with the car alarm going off. The headlights were flashing and the beeping was persistent. We figured someone would come shut it off soon, so we went back to bed. About 3 or 4 minutes later it stopped.

An hour or so later it started up again. Lasted 3 or 4 minutes, stopped.

Every 90 minutes or so it would start again. All. Night.

I did not call the front desk. I figured someone else would. I actually slept through it for the most part. I'd hear the beeping sound, identify it, drop back off to sleep. I woke pretty refreshed except for a migraine, which was unrelated. So I was good. Taylor never knew about it. Lis said she was good.

We were in the elevator with our bags the next the morning and I said to Lis, "I see someone did stick a note on the windshield of that car." And the other woman in the elevator said they had complained to the front desk a few times during the night, once running into the fellow that was staying in the room right in front of the flashing headlights. The hotel staff didn't seem to know what to do.

That kind of blows my mind. They take your vehicle information when you register. Why didn't they look up who it belonged to, call his room, and tell him about the problem? If they couldn't reach him they could have gone to his room. And if that didn't work, they should have had it towed.

So Baymont? Nice hotel. Kind of stupid staff, however. At least at that one.