i thought the ocean, the ocean thought nothing

Right. So when Heather, Josh and I headed up north over Memorial Day weekend, we ended up staying at a Travelodge in Flagstaff. Pretty standard budget hotel--our room had two beds, a fridge, a microwave, a little table with 2 chairs and a sliding glass door that led to a 2 X 3 concrete patio. Bathroom was typical--toilet and shower in one room with a door and the sink just outside of it. All in all, remarkably like every hotel I've ever stayed in.

On Sunday morning, Heather and Josh got up early to do a long run (they're in training for the SanFran half marathon. Heather attempted to get me to train and run this with them. Aaaaaahahaha. I last wore my running shoes for running purposes in March, but that's a story for another time.) to keep up with their training schedule. They headed out, I lingered in bed for awhile, and finally decided to hop in the shower so the bathroom would be clear when they got back and we could all get a move on and get to the Grand Canyon.

So I haul my clothes and toiletries and whatnot into the bathroom, disrobe, jump in the tub and turn on the water. At this juncture, I would like to explain that the shower was a one handle affair. You pull out to turn on the water, and turn the handle left for "HOT", right for "COLD." No problems, chief! I turn on the water, adjust the temp and get the showerhead to do its magic (diiiiirty. I just mean I turned on the shower). About 30s later I move to adjust the temperature and very gently turn the shower head towards "HOT" in an effort to make the bathroom good n' steamy.

The handle, and assorted small parts which dropped into the tub, came off in my hand.

The water that was flowing through the showerhead was instead pelting my torso in geyserlike fashion.

I tried valiantly to push the handle back in, poke around at whatever pipey parts were in the wall, etc. No luck. I cannot shut off the water. If I stand to the side, the water mostly stays within the confines of the tub, so I hop out and grab my stuff, slightly more panicked than I usually prefer for a Sunday morning.

The towels this particular hotel provided were approximately the size of my ass, so you can imagine how much coverage I had when I ran into the bedroom and remembered the drapes to our first floor room were kinda sorta open. Awesome! Without dressing, I called the front desk, figuring I'd throw on clothes when they got there. There was no answer, so I cursed and threw nice, dry clothing over my very wet body (no bra, no undies, no shoes. Epitome of class, I was.) and tore out of the room.

I first tried to flag down a member of the housekeeping staff, but she blatantly ignored me when I addressed her. I had no idea where the front desk was because I didn't check us in and the building was all laid out weird. I ran towards a lounge type area and accosted an elderly gentlemen:

"Where is the front desk?"

He leans in. "The guest?"

"No, the front desk."

He looks confused. "The guest??"

"No. Where. Is. The. Front. Desk?" I say through clenched teeth (which I'm sure helped his comprehension immensely). He points me out the door and across the "street" to another building attached to ours.

I show up at the desk and the only person working (the manager, it turns out) is helping someone else. "Ummm, excuse me but I have an emergency. Our shower handle came off in my hand and I can't turn off the water. Room 115." He panics and runs around and gets tools to turn off the main water line and I go back to our room.

Which is easily identified by the water creeping out from under the door, into the carpeted hallway.

I open the door and cause some kind of small tidal wave. There are inches (INCHES!) of water on the tile in the bathroom area and it is quickly flooding to the carpeted bedroom and, of course, out into the hallway. The entire tub is filled and overflowing, unable to keep up with the rate of water spewing from the wall geyser.

Eventually, the manager guy shows up and manages to staunch the flow of water with some tools and by shoving the handle back into the wall. Cleanup and negotiations ("We are going to need a new room, sir.") begin, but we still need showers and whatnot. Ugh. To their credit, the management was pretty responsive after the initial shock wore off and he stopped being snippy with me ("I can't accept what you're offering because I'm staying with 2 other people and don't know what they want. When they get back, we will come to talk to you." ...to which he said, "Well, there's no other place for you to go, so you'll HAVE to cooperate with us." OK, thanks, jackass, for restating the obvious!) He found a room that was recently vacated, got it cleaned immediately, and let us move our things there before we left for the day.

The carpet outside our room was still soggy some 12 hours later when we walked to the pool.