At 9 pm, two hours later than expected, we were finally opening the door to our cabin. Everything looked exactly like on the photos in the brochure and the evening seemed to be getting better. Although, contrary to my public announcement, there was no heart-shaped jacuzzi in the bedroom. I had completely forgotten that we sacrificed the shape of the bath tub for a bigger kitchen and had picked a different cabin. I know that this sounds weird since I didn't plan on doing any cooking anyway. You should have seen the kitchen in our second choice cabin, though. You had to enter it sideways to squeeze in between fridge and kitchen table and it would have reminded me the whole weekend that I had planned to lose those five pounds since May last year.
Considering the fact that Pigeon Forge seems to be closed at dark, it was a little bit too late to go to a restaurant. We could still order food, however, and have dinner in front of the fireplace before trying out the hot tub on the patio. Speaking of fireplaces: I have the luxury of having one in my apartment and after some initial difficulties (that was before the discovery of the damper and the fact that it doesn't open itself when you make fire) I consider myself quite an expert. This fireplace was different, though. Instead of going through the tiresome process of collecting firewood, or buying fire logs at your nearest convenience store this one had a button next to it on the wall. It turned out to be the timer for the gas fireplace. "Wonderful," I thought, "and so efficient. We can finally make up some time that one of us spent taking pictures of pumpkins." I turned the button - and nothing happened. I started to think that we booked All-things-that-can-go-wrong-inclusive and called the really nice guy.
He emerged from the bedroom to where he had disappeared earlier to neatly stack his clothes in the bottom drawer of the dresser. I was impressed. When I'm traveling I always leave all my clothes in my bag and after only a day the whole room usually looks like my suitcase has exploded and spilled its contents all over the place. "The fireplace doesn't work," I said to him.
"I tell you what," he replied, "let's order food first and while it's on its way I have a look at the fireplace." According to the Yellow Pages there was a place that delivered steak dinners. That sounded fancy and because we've already had pizza earlier that week the choice was easy enough. The really nice guy dialed the number. "I would like to place an order," he said, immediately followed by "I see. Bye." Wasn't there supposed to be a long conversation in between these two sentences? What happened to 'I like my steak medium', and 'As a side, I would like to have a baked potato and salad'? "They said that they didn't have any business tonight and closed the restaurant," the really nice guy explained. How was that possible? Haven't people returned from the pancake houses in time for dinner? "Pizza it is, I guess," I sighed and this time our order was accepted.
The really nice guy left the cabin only to come back with a huge metal toolbox that he had left in the car. "I'll fix the fireplace now," he announced and disappeared in the chimney. Time for me to check out the hot tub, I thought and stepped onto the patio. The thermometer of the spa indicated a whopping 68 degrees Fahrenheit. In contrary to the US units of lengths and my lack of comprehension thereof I know very well that a water temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit is not what gave a HOT tub its name. No matter what button I pressed the tub was unperturbed and the temperature on the display seemed to be mocking me by not changing at all. This was just getting better and better.
I returned back into the cabin just in time to see the really nice guy, covered in his favorite color black, re-emerging from the depths of the fireplace. "I fixed it," he grinned and turned the timer. And sure enough, where there was nothing but a black hole only minutes ago a flame magically appeared. "That it great," I replied. "I hope you are ready for a new task because the hot tub isn't working either." I wasn't really serious about it because I didn't want him to spend time on fixing appliances when this was supposed to be vacation. So I convinced him that it was easier to call maintenance, especially since the guy in the rental office had pointed out the respective number to us. I wonder if he knew that we had rented the fix-it-yourself cabin?
If you are still hoping that the evening got better I don't want to torture you any further - it didn't. The delivery guy arrived an hour later with a cold pizza because he couldn't find the cabin either. He had to call us to find out in what direction he needed to crawl. The grilled chicken salad that I had ordered was the worst I ever had, mainly because they put fried chicken on it. While we were still waiting on maintenance I was hoping to find a nice movie on TV. Even though it was described in our 'Welcome to your beautiful cabin' brochure, HBO was not an option. We ended up watching South Park instead. The two maintenance guys arrived at 10.30 pm, found the magic switch for the hot tub and projected four hours for the temperature to rise to a comfortable 102 degrees Fahrenheit.
Do you think our vacation continued like this, or was a new day a new beginning of something better?
I'll keep you posted.
Bis bald,
SAPgirl
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