On assignment - weird places you have filed from

Folks that know me have heard this story before...

Almost 10 years ago, I was covering the American Legion baseball state championship series in a podunk town. I knew the place had no phone lines (this, of course, is pre-wireless), but my deadline wasn't crazy and I knew a hotel was 5 minutes down the road. Game ends at 9, story is done at 9:30, and I have til 10:15 to get over there and file. I'm not worried.

Until I get there.

The manager won't let me use a room to file. I even show him my credit card, and tell him I only need five minutes to send it in. It's getting closer to 10 and I am starting to worry. I keep lobbying to the manager and then it happens.

Some lady overhears our conversation. She's in her mid-30s, and understands my plight.

"He won't let you use a room!?! Come with me."

I'm like, 'uh, O.K.' So, she takes me back to her room (no, THAT didn't happen) and opens the door.

You should have seen the look on her husband's face at first, and especially her poor 9-year old son who woke up when the light came on. I hurriedly sent in the story, and made deadline by a few minutes.

Yes, nothing like sending a story from some woman's hotel room. Feel free to embellish this in your next letter to Penthouse.

 

I stayed at a Red Roof Inn across the river from civilization six years ago, back before wireless was (nearly) ubiquitous. Not only was the promised wireless at the hotel not working, the phone wasn't either. I walked up the sidewalk-free street to a nearby gas station and talked the clerk into letting me use the office phone to file. I'm still not sure if he understood what I was saying. But hey, it worked!

I also filed from a random house down the block from a high school where I was covering an event. The school had been rewired with digital phone lines since the last time I'd been there, and no one around had keys to an office with a fax line. I took my laptop across the street and started knocking on doors. Luckily, someone was home. The family didn't even think my request was nearly as odd as I did!

I'm now a big fan of Panera Bread, which has free wireless with no password required.

 

And: Local hotel lobby in San Diego. Nothing too exciting.

 

Done the McDonald's route a number of times since they added Wi-Fi....actually have done the gas station and hotel lobby bit too.

Strangest place likely would have been my old alma mater's library (about 3 hours from my home newspaper office). I initially had set up to file from the daily where I worked in college. But, I arrived at that office and no one would answer the door and all sports phones were going straight to voice mail (they were all still out on assignment, I presume).

So, I drive the two miles down the road to the small, liberal arts college that I attended. I still have my old college ID and password, which gets me on the internet. So there, with a few dedicated souls studying deep into the night on a Friday, I finish a gamer and box score. Honestly, it was a little surreal writing in that library, since it was probably the first time I'd been on the campus since I'd graduated a couple years prior.

 

A convenience store's office.

 

Combination gas station and Subway, also because of those damn digital phone lines. I think I filed from the Subway part.

 

I can relate. I can relate - as most of us can - to practically every story posted here.
I sent from almost the same locations - save the bowels of Little Havana.
And it is THOSE experiences that I treasure most.

Please, carry on.

 

back in the days of the TRS-80 and acoustic couplers... the payphone outside at a gas station in the middle of nowhere at 10 or 1030 p.m. because the damn janitors kicked me out of the Community College gym after the AD left because they wanted to go home

 

BY, those kids are adorable.

 

Once did a McDonalds in Bumshit, Mo., but I was doing a doubleheader basketball game and my laptop had ran out of juice. No big deal, I thought, McDonald's has outlets.
Right?
Only one was behind the counter. So I sweet-talked my way into using the outlet and stood at the condiment counter, typing my story while people came by, politely said "Excuse me" and grabbed their ketchup packets or Mr. Pibb.
Amazingly, nothing was spilled and I was done within about half an hour.

 

Damn right Orville, this was the beauty of it. And back then it was f-this and f-that and f-ing shit at that particular moment in time.

 

Done the McDonald's in a rental car at 3 a.m., done just about every type of hotel parking lot, done the laptop connect card on Interstate 81 somewhere in Virginia or Maryland, done the truck stop sitting on the tailgate of my pickup, but the one that I'll never forget was a TraveLodge hotel room bathroom -- standing in the tub to reach a window -- in Dodge City, Kansas. Short of sitting outside the locked "lobby" it was the only place I could pick up the WiFi signal.