The photo was taken from the fourth floor of the hotel next door. Yes, that's where I spent the weekend. In 20.5 years at WNEP, it was only the second time I stayed in one of the adjacent hotels. The first time was during the Blizzard of '17.
Here's how that latest stay came about. I was tooling around on the internet Friday morning. A private and well respected forecasting service raised the possibility, not the likelihood of two feet of snow. My panic button was at the ready. I went on the hotel web site and saw a notice that rooms were filling up fast. A few clicks later, and I had a room for two nights.
My situation is different than most because I work funky hours. The hotel management was kind enough to grant me an early check in, so I could get a few extra hours of sleep. I took a second night because, according to the original forecast, it was supposed to be snowing hard on my drive home time.
Here is where experience pays off. When I stayed there in March of 2017, the nightstand had a very nice alarm clock, but no radio. I slept horribly. I need my radio. I can't sleep with the television on. Yes, I could have received audio from my phone, but I was having some wi fi issues. This time, I came prepared with a trusty transistor. Worked like a charm. Great AM reception, and the radio stayed on for more than 12 hours on the same set of two AA batteries. I was impressed. Thank you Sony and Duracell.
I left my SUV in the WNEP parking lot, walking to the hotel and then back to the office. It was really cool to be able to walk to work. I needed to time it better because I arrived at the office way too early Saturday night and Monday morning. The early Saturday night did give me time to have a nice dinner of newsroom pizza.
I can't say enough nice things about the hotel staff, but I hope it will be a very long time before my next stay.
