Bladders and Bathrooms

Disclaimer: Okay, maybe not EVERY little detail of this post is COMPLETELY true, but a picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case: 340

We used a lot of bathrooms on our vacation. From lavender-scented handtowels offered at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas to understocked rest stops on the highway to "isn't the Colorado River a restroom?" But one that I never used stands out.

As we drove into town (which shall not be named for fear of retribution), finding a restroom appeared challenging. But desperate times call for desperate measures and we were getting pretty desperate. The diet sodas had done their thing and we needed to do our thing. Soon.

Now, I've driven through a lot of crappy little towns looking for crappy little bathrooms, mostly in Nevada, as it turns out. Sadly for my great trophy-wife state, crappy little towns are sort-of-alive and possibly-well here in California. In the desert. In the twilight.

We thought perhaps we had happened upon a Hollywood set of a crappy little desert town (probably depicting Nevada) as we searched for "FOOD-LODGING-GAS Exit Right." There was actually no sign of life; boarded up windows, broken-down cars, shops with bars. No cars. No folks.

Finally at the end of the road was a flashing red light with a sign pointing to the nearby hotel-with-rates-by-the-hour and the mini mart. We pulled in next to a couple of pick-up trucks and debated.

Bladders won. We were stopped outside the door by a previously unnoted man sitting in a chair outside the convenience store. "You ain't from these parts, is you?"

Judging from the excellent grammar of this gentleman, probably not. We turned to the gentleman. Large and sweaty, he tapped his big rifle on his fat open palm. "You city folk in your fancy cars. You don't belong here. You best be on your way."

Fancy car? (Picture a white Honda Civic).

We had a choice. Restrooms or being on our way.

We decided to be on our way out of the town-which-shall-not-be-named-for-fear-of-retribution. Bladders can wait.