A Full Life, with Hotels Mixed In

On a recent spring evening, after a four-plus-hour drive to wherever I was working that week, I lugged my gear down a long hallway and keyed into another anonymous hotel room. For some reason, on this occasion, I found myself pausing on the threshold before entering.

For a moment, there was something akin to a pang—not necessarily of regret, but of something—it interrupted my usual purposeful stride and acceptance of the routine of this line of work.

And it was almost immediately supplanted by a recognition that this is actually a very fine life. Sure, I'm on the road a few days each week, and I'm constantly packing and unpacking suitcases. But people give me a chance to do work I love, and just about everywhere I go, I am working with very fine people of whom I've grown quite fond.

Then, when each work week wraps up, there is an amazing house and life to return to in Winston-Salem. The weekend will offer rest or relaxation and quiet, or it might see a house playing host to any of a variety of events, or there might be a brood of unexpected guests. Perhaps some attraction in Winston-Salem's thriving downtown will draw my attention, a movie at a/perture or a performance at the Stevens Center, or a show at Ziggy's or the Millenium Center.

When I'm home, of course, it's unlikely that I'll head out for a meal, since that's what I want to be doing for myself in that fine kitchen, but there's no small number of bars and one or two good places to shoot some pool.

If I weren't walking most weeks into some hotel room somewhere, I don't think I'd get all that good stuff waiting for me back home in the Roediger House.

Oh, and let's be honest: not all destinations are cookie-cutter hotel rooms. Sometimes I get to spend a night or two in a cool place like the historic Linden Row Inn in Richmond. Last time there, it was this gracious and lovely two-room suite: