Unreliable Timepiece

As an experienced veteran of many conference and vacation trips, and as a traveler who sometimes has had to rely on early-morning wake-up calls and alarms to make a plane flight at some ungodly hour in the morning, I’ve come to depend on hotel room clocks.

Actually, though, I bring my own travel alarm. If I have to wake up in time to catch a 6 a.m. flight, for example, I set my travel alarm for 3:30 a.m., order a wake-up call at 3:45 and just in case, set the room clock alarm at 3:55 a.m. That way, I’ve assured myself plenty of time to get cleaned up and on my way.

In the old days, before the 9-11 thing, it was okay to get to the airport maybe as close as a half-hour before the flight. Today, it’s smarter to get there at least two hours before the flight.

Say you forgot your travel alarm clock (which I’ve done). Say you sleep through the wake-up call (which I’ve done). Your last chance is the room alarm clock. So it had better work or it’s heart palpitation time as you rush, rush, rush.

Look at the clock in my room at the California Hotel when I stayed there last December. I had to get up and be in the gathering area at 6 a.m. (tour thing, y’know), and if I had to rely on this clock, I’d have missed the bus … literally.

So you know what? I ordered two wake-up calls. By the way, I didn’t set the clock alarm. I couldn’t see the numbers well enough to set it. Friggin’ miserable piece of equipment.