How I got persuaded to do a series of presentations in Nevada in July I really don't know, nor why anyone would want to round up delegates for such an event in high summer, is anybody's guess, we're talking 110° F/ 43°C in the daytime. However, on balance, there are good reasons to be happy it took place.
At least the choice of hotels is excellent in Las Vegas (I don't ever stay with the delegates- though it's essential to socialise with them sometimes). Some hotel chains have establishments there which have a choice of pool/spa areas, various options on fitness facilities, the works. These would not usually be part of their global brand. So, when my clients go off to party, fill their bellies and blow their hard earned money at the tables, your truly goes back to his own room for quiet time, some physical exercise and who knows, maybe some fun company.
Well, the incident I intended to relate to you is indivisible from the extraordinary heat and anyone who has stepped outside the air-conditioned paradise of a major hotel into a scorching hot dessert environment will put this into context really easily.
Now, I was born prematurely and the story goes that my mother, having been informed that I was too weak to survive, decided to take me home put me by the fire and feed me every 20 minutes. My older sisters complained that through that summer the house was like a furnace. This might explain why, though I come from a temperate, some would say a cold city, I am rarely bothered by the heat. That said, when I'm trying to rest or to sleep, if I'm paying for the luxury of air-con then I expect it to be provided.
My hotel, typical as ever of big chains in it's uniformity, perhaps a little larger owing to the entertainment levels, palatial dining areas, open 24 hours to serve the inevitable casino and acres of slots. It manages space for guests who need accommodation in an efficiently familiar manner. A modest 18 storeys of accommodation: 16 levels of generously proportioned double rooms, anonymous, identical; one level of suites comprising two doubles with an interconnecting lounge and the penthouse level which the merely mortal among us would never, normally, get to see. Another facility that one would rarely find in hotels of this particular world-wide chain, a rooftop helipad. I was unaware of the mass of steel, glass and concrete surrounding me as I ploughed up and down the pool or as I stretched and challenged my muscles alone in the weights room. A single customer. Pretty meaningless in the machinery of global hotel business. A statistic.
Until, that is,I returned to my room to find the reassuring, almost imperceptible purr of the air-con, replaced by a suddenly obvious silence and a temperature in the room already uncomfortably high for sleep.
My singlet and shorts darkened with perspiration, my muscles glistening in the crystalline clarity of LED down-lighters, I stomped down the corridor to get the stairs down to reception, only 3 floors below. Once I'd taken to the stairs and the fire door had closed behind me, I noticed my error, I was in the service stairwell, not the guest stairs. No carpet, bare walls, echoing of lofty, empty space as my trainers met the treads. Not knowing where this would lead, I turned back. Tried my room key in the swipe and no response. I had no alternative but to follow the stairway down and hopefully out through an emergency exit.
There was a sudden rush of hot air from below, the sound of a door closing in the distance. I trotted down the 6 flights to a concrete lobby with service panels all down one wall, one of which was open, showing it's guts of wires and LED indicators and where lay an open tool case and a discarded polo shirt. No business of mine. 'Let's be on my way!' I thought. When it occurred to me that the engineer at work just might be in the process of getting my air-con back online. I decided to go round to reception anyway to ask and approached the emergency exit, large door, clearly marked, on the opposing wall.
As I pushed the bar, releasing the catch and allowing the door to open a crack, I allowed a second rush of heat into the service lobby, I hissed in surprise and heard another sharp intake of breath from the missing service engineer marooned on the other side of the door, who as if drowning, snatched at the edge of the door with strong fingers and pulled.
At this, in complete surprise and in comedy fashion, I was yanked forward and off balance. Flushed, covered in sweat and half naked from the gym, jolted so my face, in the hairy navel with the air-con guy. You couldn't have written this because no-one would have believed the chain of coincidences. Could have been so much worse!
