The Key to Power

August 11, 2021

Last weekend, we visited Kid #1. She lives about five hours east of us, and the first part of the drive is through the scenic Columbia River Gorge. After that, it’s nothing but windmills and dust devils.

She’s starting college in a few weeks, and we wanted to squeeze in one more visit before she’s knee-deep with her studies. The drive was pretty tame, save for the fact that Black Momba decided to crack her overflow tank and leave us this heartfelt message the morning after our arrival.

If you’ve never been to Moses Lake, it’s a pollen filled agriculture town that’s more or less in the middle of Washington state. There is an actual lake, but no resorts or overpriced marina shops to wander through. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, which I highly recommend it if you find yourself there. Trust me, the other options aren’t as nice.

I travel for work and vacation here and there, so I’ve seen some pretty cool tech gadgets in hotels over the years. But I did not expect to find one here. In fact, it took me a bit to even find it!

What’s the first thing you do when you get to your hotel room? I claim the bed I want by dropping my bag on it, take a peek out the window, and then go check out the bathroom.

· Bed by the window, check

· View of highway, awesome

· Bathroom…why won’t the light turn on? Flick…flick…flick, flick, flick…ugh.

I figured there was some sort of master light switch by the door, and voila! But never had I seen one like this before. In what I’m guessing is a green attempt to conserve energy, this room required me to insert my key card to activate all the power in the room. Pretty cool! Or is it?

For the first day, my husband and I diligently kept track of our two room keys. We must have swapped them in and out of that slot a dozen times, trying not to lock ourselves out while splitting up for different outings. The system sort of worked because the key was in the switch, conveniently right by the door to grab on the way out. But this wasn’t the system we were used to. Usually, we both keep a key card in our wallets so that we each always have one.

After a day of swapping, we got lazy and just left one of the cards in the slot. I knew this increased my chances of doing the walk of shame down to the lobby to get another key card, but somehow I lucked out.

About ten minutes before we were leaving to return home, my hubby figured out how to trick the system. Better late than never, I guess, and now we know for next time we encounter one of these master light switches.

The trick – It doesn’t have to be your room key! My husband just happened to have a parking lot pay stub that was the same size as the key card, and it worked perfectly.

So, the next time your hotel room has one of these switches, Keep it Golden, Girl, and insert that Dutch Bros punch card floating around the bottom of your purse. It will spare you the anxiety of locking yourself out of your room!

Golden Girls Episode Recommendation: S7E8 The Monkey Show Part 1

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