Spending a Little Too Much Time with Gerald

Today I went to Grand Rapids for the second time in my life.  The first time I was there, I took a picture of myself with a bust of President Gerald Ford, so I thought it would be fun to reprise that 3.5 years later.  After that, I thought I'd hop on a plane for my layover in Detroit, and then be home in Kansas City by dinner time.  Not so much.  There is rain in Detroit.  Lots of rain.  Historic, disastrous, widespread-flooding amounts of rain.  The metro area nearly broke its all-time daily record, and the airport received more than double the amount it had ever received on any previous day.  Detroit was on a groundstop for hours, with planes from around the country headed for Detroit stuck waiting in their originating airports.  We boarded our plane in Grand Rapids, headed out to the tarmac, sat on the tarmac, came back to the gate, de-boarded the plane, sat in the airport, re-boarded the plane, almost took off, waited on the tarmac again, and then finally five hours after our original flight departure time, we took off for Detroit.  I had long missed my connecting flight home to KC, but the last flight of the day to KC had been delayed enough that I was able to get on it and make it home to sleep in my own bed tonight.

Just One Small Catch...

Normally when I have a hotel room booked for work, it was one that I booked online. This means it was done with my profile, which includes my status. I'm SPG Platinum with the Starwood properties, which is their top level, so there's basically no chance of having any room mishaps, as they would ensure my room was available, even in a sold-out situation. I flew in to Detroit last night for one of the presentations I do, but due to a recent change in management in the Marketing department that runs these events, they are now booking the rooms for us. I just figured I would show up at the hotel and get them to add the reservation to my account so I'd get the credit for the stay and the points and all that. But when I got there late at night, they told me they were in an oversold situation. The only room they had left was a hospitality suite. That sounded like a nice upgrade to me. But when he sounded apologetic and offered me 7000 Starwood points as compensation, I realized something was wrong. He then told me the catch: the room didn't have a bed. It's a suite meant for hosting small social gatherings. So there's a bathroom, a kitchenette, a living room, and plenty of space. But no bed. But he quickly informed me there would be a roll-away brought in. He asked if I would be okay with it. I realized I didn't have much choice unless I wanted to switch hotels, so I accepted it. Plus, I'm really pretty easy-going when it comes to travel. I'm okay with most things, and it takes a lot to frustrate or aggravate me. I figured it would be nice to have all the space, and I had a LOT of work to do, so I knew I wasn't going to get much of any sleep anyway, and the 7,000 points would be nice to have. So it really wasn't a big deal to me, but I can imagine a lot of customers would have been pretty unhappy. I think he felt extra bad because he knew I was SPG Platinum, but since they didn't know that until I got to the check-in desk, they hadn't reserved a regular room for me knowing I'd be arriving.  It turned out to be fine.  Here I am in my suite with the roll-away bed in the background.