Motel Mentality? (6/22/25)

When we travel, we look for Hampton Inn hotels along the route.  They offer options for breakfast that fit our plant-based, whole food diet choice; oatmeal made without dairy, topped with nuts and dried fruit, grab and go apples, bananas and oranges, often also roasted potatoes, and sometimes fresh berries and chunked up melon!  If we have not had enough physical activity for the day, there are an exercise room and indoor swimming pool, and often a hot tub. (Usually, no one is in the hot tub or swimming pool, and at most one other person in the exercise room!)  The Hampton rooms have plenty of space to spread out, with a king or two queen beds. My neck so agrees with one of their several pillow options that I purchased one online for home.  

Hotels offer a sense of privacy, a quiet refuge, an escape.  Once you enter the front door, you are in the fortress.  Vehicles and their noise are at a distance.  The carpeted hallways mute sounds of passing feet. The hall lighting is subdued.  If you come across a fellow lodger, generally, at most, a polite greeting is uttered, but nary a conversation started. 

Hamptons also offer carts and elevators so you can make one trip from your car into the safety and privacy of your room.  You can’t open the windows, which are shrouded with thick curtains to block out the light.

The door to the room is heavy, almost like a door on a bank vault, and automatically shuts tight, which makes it difficult to get your luggage in with you.  But once you are in, you feel safe and isolated from all that is outside. The complimentary Internet and television allow engagement with the world, if desired.

Perfect for an introvert!

Recently on our trip out west, we found the Hamptons scarce in some of the places we were going.  We ended up at a Best Western Motor Lodge in Wall, South Dakota, a motel.  It had been quite a while since we had stayed in a motel.  It had a different feel, something like a social center at a retirement community. There was a separate building in the middle of the U-shaped parking area where we gathered for breakfast, also serving as the entrance to the outdoor pool.  People sat around outdoor tables eating, drinking beverages and conversing. 

As I unloaded our car, a fellow guest more than politely greeted us, beginning what he obviously intended to be a conversation, asking about us, where we were from, what we were doing on our trip, what we had already seen, what we were going to see…. He commented on the smoke from the Canadian wildfires and seemed ready to explore that topic in more detail.  As an introvert, I clumsily disengaged and took the first of several trips up the steps with our luggage.  Since we were staying more than one day, we needed to unload most of the car’s contents.

Load after load I walked up the steps, choosing a different route to avoid our initial contact, who continued to patrol the parking area chatting with other folks who were milling around.  Doors, rather than facing inward to a hallway, all faced the parking area, remaining open unless purposefully closed.  As I walked toward our room, I passed many open doors and windows, people sitting in the doorways or milling around the rooms, their conversations audible, as close to me as if they were in my own bedroom.  Many even made eye contact as I walked by, smiling and nodding, some even audibly greeting me!  

The introvert in me recoiled, wondering how close the nearest Hampton was.

Then it hit me: Community!  This was a community!  These were fellow travelers, who were not obsessed with isolation and privacy, but were engaging in community!

Was I avoiding community?

When I was working as a physician, seeing one person after another seeking help of some kind, or engaging students to impart them with some knowledge, I often felt drained at the end of the day.  I had community most of the day at work. As an introvert, vacations were welcome escapes, retreats to recharge.

Now, recently retired, I spend most of the day at home with much less interaction with anyone other than my wife, except during our daily walks around the neighborhood and our weekly church community activities.  I am pretty comfortable with that.

However, I give intellectual assent to the idea that we are created for community, but wrestle with what that should look like in this new phase of life.

So, is it time to switch to a motel mentality?

Dave Drozek, with

Ruminations from Retirement

6/22/25