My Summer Hot Takes

Here we are on Aug. 28,  another beautiful day in Happy Valley. Anyone else notice anything different around town yesterday morning?

Lots of yellow school busses driving here and there. Kids with backpacks walking intently on sidewalks. A traffic jam on Westerly Parkway. That’s right — yesterday was the first day of public school for the 2018-2019 school year.

Here in the Hook household it was also the last first day of public school we’ll ever have. Our son, the second of our two offspring, is now officially a senior in high school. It made my wife and I a little sad as we reminisced about the educational journey our children have taken us on the last two decades. You can read a little about that journey here.

But as sad as that was to think about, we also thought about all the fun experiences and traveling we had as a family this summer. So, in the spirit of a teacher asking their new class, “What did you do and learn this summer,” I present the following thoughts. Or as the students might say, my hot takes of summer.

The Hooks did a fair amount of traveling visiting soccer camps and tournaments, which allowed us to spend many nights in hotels. Most of them were clean, comfortable and full of great modern amenities such as refrigerators, microwaves, and lots of power and USB outlets. However, when did it become a thing for hotels to tuck the sheets into the bed so tightly you have to be a strongman to get them open enough to get under them? And once I release the sheets from their bonds, what’s with the quilt and covers only coming up to your chest? I understand normal-size people can slide down under the covers but for those of us tall folks who need the whole bed, it would be nice to have a sheet and comforter that covered your entire body.

Another hotel development that is becoming more common is the low water consumption pressure-assisted insert in toilet tanks. What that mouthful means in practice is that to conserve water a company has created a device that goes inside the toilet tank and supposedly improves on gravity. Let me be the first to tell them, you can’t improve on gravity. I’ve never had an enjoyable stay in a room with one of these inserts. “Give me gravity or give me a different room,” is my motto.

And I can’t understand why people staying in regular everyday hotels somehow think it is acceptable to leave trash outside their door. If you are staying in the Ritz Carlton and room service tells you to leave the cart outside your room when you are done, they know they have people checking the hallways regularly who will remove it quickly. If you are staying in the Hampton Inn and got take-out from Chick-fil-A, don’t leave the bags outside your door when you’re done. They’ll be sitting there for all of us to see and navigate around until housekeeping arrives in the morning. Just keep it in your room.

While doing all this traveling we also spent a greater-than-usual time in stores picking up odds-and-ends we forgot, ran out of, or just needed. Am I the only one who finds it enjoyable to go shopping these days because the selection of music playing inside stores is pretty darn good? The old days of traditional elevator-style Muzak have been gone for a while in fashion-forward apparel stores. Years ago I worked for The Limited and the monthly music tapes we received always held some interesting tunes. But it seems even stodgy grocery stores have moved into rock and roll. Picking up my OJ and lettuce to the sounds of Led Zeppelin always amuses me.

One of the places we visited over the summer was a town and university that shared a name – High Point in North Carolina. It was an interesting dichotomy between town and gown. The university was a beautiful and immaculately landscaped oasis of learning and sports plopped down in an area that may have seen better days. They seem to be striving forward toward the Happy Valley model though – where the university is the dominant industry and becomes the driving economic force of the area. It will be interesting to see where they are in 20 years. Although we’ll be able to see where their men’s soccer team is much sooner – they play Penn State on Jeffrey Field on Tuesday, Sep. 11 at 7 p.m.

The traveling also meant we spent a great deal of time in our new vehicle, which because it was purchased in another state needed a vehicle inspection soon after we bought it. Though I’m grateful the commonwealth of Pennsylvania has long since abandoned the “every-six-months” vehicle inspection, the exercise in futility that is the current vehicle inspection annually wastes hours of a day and sometimes an entire day. Back in 2009 the state commissioned a study to determine the effectiveness of the state vehicle inspection program using data from 2004-2007. If you need a sleeping aid you can wade through it here. The two items I found interesting are they proposed that people having their vehicle inspected are only inconvenienced for one hour (LOL!), and Pennsylvania had a higher rate of fatal crashes per billion vehicle miles traveled than states without vehicle inspection programs. If the state is concerned with lost revenue I suggest they simply increase registration costs and drop this antiquated relic of an earlier age.

One other reminder of an earlier age we had while traveling was the reminder that some states (looking at you New Jersey) still don’t allow you to pump your own gas. Luckily we were able to arrange our travel in and through New Jersey in such a way that we survived without ever buying gas there. Although we did buy a car there!

When we weren’t traveling, we were able to spend a few days in the comfort of our own home — which highlighted this one construction issue for me. In hotels, hot water comes out of the bathroom faucets rather quickly. Why is it that home builders, even those doing custom homes, invariably locate the master bathroom as far away from the water heater as is physically possible? Every house I have owned has had this issue. In Florida it wasn’t much of a problem because the houses were single-story and the pipes ran through the ceilings so the water was always at least warm. But here in Happy Valley I find myself needing to run the shower or sink for what seems like minutes before the water gets warm. Wouldn’t it make sense for the master bathroom, the one most likely to be used by the people paying for the house, to be closest to the water heater so those people get hot water quickest?

And there you have them – my hot takes of summer!