Weight A Minute, This Can't Be Right..........

.......which is what I thought when I retrieved our invoice for a night in the old Stephen F. Austin Hotel this morning. Even feeling the effects of a five mile UPSTREAM kayak paddle on the Colorado yesterday, and a night of walking the streets of downtown Austin, I was still cognizant enough to glance at the document and see a short laundry list of outrageously priced little hotel room treats that we were apparently being gouged to the tune of about fifty bucks for. Now mind you while I have stayed in posh Manhattan hotels, as well as places with stick walls a thatched roof and a hammock for a bed, most of my hotel stays are in places like I stayed last night. Porcelain throne, plastic shampoo & conditioner bottles, a Klingon coffee maker, little pads and pens that go directly into the pocket of your backpack, a ten dollar bottle of Fiji water, that is like a fire alarm under glass - you don't dare open it unless your first born is choking on a continental breakfast bagel. Then there is the fridge. Most hotel/motels in rural recreational areas come with a functional, empty fridge, as opposed to the ones in the city which come with a tiny fully stocked fridge and a list hidden somewhere nearby with some really astonishing prices associated with sample sized candy bars, Red Bulls, Evian, and nuts and pretzels. I can safely say that I have never been on death's door from hunger and attempted to even sniff of one of these little high priced treats, so you can imagine my surprise at being charged an arm and a leg for a couple of midget water bottles, energy drinks and a can of pretzels almost light enough to float away on it's own. Which lead me to wonder at 7AM, even if I had gotten the munchies and raided that little treasure box, how did they know? Did they send someone to surreptitiously slip into our room as we slept, with a little flashlight to inventory the fridge? When I brought this to the attention of my partner,(an engineer by trade), she thought for a second or two, then reminded me that I had rearranged the contents of the box the night before to make room for a hunk of cheese and a bottle of White Truck Sauvignon Blanc (2007, which I highly recommend), and asked me what items I had to relocate to make room.........and sure enough, everything I moved was on the list even though with my photographic memory, I carefully returned each to it's proper place after I wiped them down for fingerprints. She surmised that the fridge had weight sensors that charged the little high priced treat to your room when it was moved. Well strip my gears and call me shiftless, if she wasn't dead on. What will they think of next? Call me a country boy for not figuring that one out. I wonder if the bed is also similarly rigged with little sensors that send activity reports back to hotel comm central. I'd really like to see that printout......... Next time, just for them making me wonder about all of these things, I think I am going to slam that bottle of Fiji water and refill it with tap water. Surely the glass top desk doesn't have pressure sensors..........