Ranting and Writing (aka, when your horrible airbnb experience makes you miss your blog post)

A Post By Jonathan

So apparently I took Steve's last blog post, Writing Tips for the Holidays, a little too seriously, especially his tip about taking some time off, because I'm a day late on my blog post. Oops.

I realized it while in the movie theater last night, watching The Last Jedi. I think I thought of fellow Boarder, Mary Fan, as she is a huge Star Wars nut, which then brought my thoughts back to my delinquent blog post. I'd use the holidays as an excuse, but Steve managed to post on Christmas day, so that doesn't really hold water. I will, however, blame it on the horrible airbnb experience my wife and I had on our attempted holiday vacation in Williamsburg, Virginia. I still need to write a hopefully account-ending review of our experience, so I will share it with you now (and maybe kill two birds with one stone)... Warning, some details may be too graphic for some readers. Parental guidance is advised.

This was my first time using airbnb. I was excited, since a lot of my other friends had used the service and seemed to enjoy it. I looked all over for a nice place, and ended up choosing what I thought was someone's condo in a resort that my wife and I had stayed in previously, during one of our earlier trips to Williamsburg. When I contacted the owner to ask if the dates I chose were still available, she said yes, but that she wouldn't be around to clean the unit after the other tenants left, so I would have to clean the sheets and the towels and that would be it. She said she would take $50.00 off our stay for the inconvenience, so I agreed.

When we showed up to the unit, I knew something was wrong. First of all, the whole place smelled like Indian food. I have actually been to India, so I didn't necessarily have a huge problem with that, but it wasn't the first think my wife and I were expecting to encounter at the start of our vacation. Then I started in on the sheets and towels, only to find hair and food and disgustingness all over them (the floors, walls, ceiling...). Then we quickly realized that there was no detergent, soap, or any cleaning supplies in the unit at all. There was a Target nearby, so my wife sent me up to spend probably the $50.00 dollars we were saving in cleaning supplies and candles. Lots and lots of candles.

When I was at Target I called the owner and told her about the condition of the place and she said she would knock another $50.00 off, so I said okay. Then my wife called me and told me our three-year-old son had just discovered an unflushed toilet with unspeakable contents in and around it, so I called the woman back and told her were leaving and wanted a full refund. Among other things, we are currently potty training our son and did not want him anywhere near this place. Then she demanded that I take a picture of the toilet with said unspeakable contents inside before she would give me a full refund. A picture! So I did. I texted it to her and she said, "okay, if you want to leave it's up to you, but it looks like you could have just flushed it."

We decided to leave. And she did refund us the money (thank God).

As I returned the key to the resort, I told them about our experience and they offered to potentially put us up in another room. Then we got to talking and it turned out that the place we thought we were renting was not even available for the time that we were renting it. It was the woman's time share and she was subletting it on airbnb! And all the time she had available went to the lovely folks who rented the room before us. Apparently, when I asked about the rental, she had retroactively tried to get additional time, but was never able to. The person at the front desk who checked us in had made a mistake and should have never let us into that horrible room in the first place. We ended up leaving the resort and feeling pretty awful and in need of a shower or three.

With that horrible start to our vacation, we ended up in a hotel and left the next day. On the way home, I thought we might drive a little on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but that turned out to be a horrible decision as well. My wife's bladder nearly exploded and in our search for a working bathroom we ended up in Deliverance land with no cell service and no idea where the highway was. Then when we finally found the highway, there was a huge accident and we had to take the backroads home, which added quite a bit of time to our already fubared trip.

So instead of writing my blogpost in front of the fire at our beautiful condo rental, I ended up driving home two days early and escaping to the movies. And then The Last Jedi had to go and suck, which made my day all the more worse. But it was nice to retreat to a galaxy far, far away for a time nonetheless. But that's why I was late, but better late than never they always say.

So, dear reader, have incidents like this thrown your writing schedule off before? Or are you the kind of person who never lets anything get in your way? Either way, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping by!