Calgary Hotel Break-In

I arrived in Calgary on Tuesday night and I am thrilled that it is a balmy -10c! Now, business travel is typical bland and boring. More often than not, nothing overly exciting happens when I travel for work. Sometimes, I will go to dinner with my counterparts at the other office or have a business dinner with counterparts at competing firms. It’s mostly shop talk with the occasional polite questions about how your family is doing and the like.

Well during my visit to Calgary, I decided not to have such dinners. I was looking forward to spending some down time on my own. One night I wanted to find a few new books to read so I headed up to 8^th Avenue to a quaint bookstore called McNally Robinson Booksellers. The store is nice with a café upstairs. I was delighted that I could leaf through a few books while having a nice, quiet dinner. After my enjoyable meal of sun dried tomato and pesto tortellini, I purchase my books and start walking back to the hotel about 8 or 9 blocks away.

Accompanying me on my walk is my trusty Blackberry mp3 player. I love listening to music while I wander around. Good tunes always make things much more pleasant and enjoyable for me. As I strolled through the streets of downtown Calgary I was completely and elatedly enthralled with the music that I am certain I was singing out loud, and likely singing badly. I didn’t care… I was enjoying myself and I didn’t care who knew it.

I continued to trot along until I arrived at my hotel. Needless to say, I was still in a great mood and listening to music very loudly on my headphones. At this point the music has been so stimulating that I am pretty much strutting! I strut into the hotel and gleefully dance to the elevator heading back to my room. I am looking forward to delving into my newly purchased books. I will tell you more about my book selection in my next blog because I am truly disgusted and disappointed with myself. Anyway, I get off the elevator and skip down the long hallway still entrenched in the music playing between my ears. I pull out my keycard to open the room door. Nothing happens. I try the keycard again and the door does not open. I quickly wipe the magnetic strip on the back of the card onto my jeans in hopes that it was a bit a dust or something. But no, the key doesn’t seem to be working. Of course, I am still enjoying the music playing loudly from my mp3 player and I’m not at all frustrated by the fact that I can’t get the door open to my room. Like a fool, I must have been standing the for a good 30 seconds cramming the keycard into the keyslot and wrenching on the door handle while pushing on the door.

All of a sudden, the door swings open and there is sweaty man standing in my room wearing a bathrobe looking somewhat tired and perturbed! I was so startled that I let out a little scream! I think my scream scared him. My first thought was “who the hell are you and why are in my room?!?” Well, it turned out this was NOT my room. The man said to me in an annoyed tone “I kept asking who was at the door and you didn’t answer.” Of course I didn’t answer, music from my mp3 player was playing way to loudly for me to hear anything! At this point all I could do was laugh. I literally laughed out loud and apologized profusely to him. Even though I had a huge grin on my face as I walk to my room giggling to myself, I was truly sorry I had interrupt his Thursday evening. My room was at the opposite end of the hallway. I turned the wrong way when I got of the elevator. How embarrassing.