There's Something About Mary

This past Monday, 4 of my closest friends went skydiving.  Sadly, I had to work and could not complete my mission of remaining two feet on the ground, in charge of guarding purses, cameras and cell phones while they went forward with jumping out of a perfectly good plane from 14,000 feet in the air.  I totally would have jumped.  I just figured they'd be much more relaxed with their dive if they knew their personal belongings were secured.  After all, they were so nervous, I wasn't sure they'd go through with it if I wasn't there cheering them on.  From the ground.  Safe and sound.  But, yep definitely would have considered it otherwise.  Might have thought about it.  Potentially.  If only I hadn't had to work.  Or take care of personal belongings.  Shucks.   Thankfully though, even without my help, all 4 of them successfully completed their first (and hopefully last) skydive!  But now it's my turn to be the dare-devil since I had to miss out on Monday...

On June 22, I will be traveling avec roommate to NYC.  After 2 hours of Expedia, Skoosh, Travelocity, Hotels.com, and Hotwire-ing, we discovered this fancy little link called "unpublished rates".  Basically, you pick an area and a star rating, and it gives you a special deep dark discount by allowing you to book a hotel without knowing the name until you confirm.  Cool!  Sounds like an adventure to me!

We may have been delirious, but after the hours of consistent $400 a night hotel options, the $225 option sounded like a dream.  How bad could it be?  It's in the area we wanted, it was close to our 3-star rating minimum (close, meaning 2.0) and it was such a steal!  I like the mystery, I said.  Do it, book it now, she said.  And so I did.  And so...we were sorry.  Oh so very very sorry.

After coming so close to booking The New Yorker, and The Excelsior, where beds looked like giant pillows, and the decor delivered the sudden urge to go to Home Goods and redecorate, our undisclosed deal delivered The Days Hotel.  Yep, a Days Inn.  For a savings of a measly $100 total over 2 nights, we would be sleeping on cardboard boxes, and substituting sandpaper for carpet. Oh, and did I mention, the trip was non-refundable?

Panic set in.  I've never laughed so hard or wanted to cry so much.  What did we do?  What were we thinking?  And why on earth do we make decisions like this at 1am?  Rage and panic settled in as I dialed the customer service number for Hotwire.com.  I'm a salesperson damnit.  I can convince them to cancel my reservation, right? 

I first spoke with Sarah, who either transferred me because she couldn't understand me through my high-pitched anxiety ridden voice, or, because she couldn't handle telling me that there was nothing she could do.  But I did not waiver.  After 42 minutes of hold time, Mary picked up my call.  And in the end, Mary refunded us our money.  Mary is my hero. 

Rumor has it that I'm not a risk taker.  Or a thrill seeker.  Or, adventurous.  So what if I may not want to jump out of planes (solely because I'm just too good of a personal belonging watcher, of course), or off a bridge, or even book hotels blindly.  I prefer to stay right where I am most useful and comfortable, on level ground, while occasionally taking trips to hotels that are nicer than my own house.  I don't remember what I said to convince Mary to break the fully disclosed "no refund under any circumstance" rule for me, but I do know, I love Mary.  And...that I could probably really sell ice to an Eskimo.