20 - Are you sitting comfortably?
Those people with a weak disposition should probably skip this chapter
because it's all about comfort stops.
90 days of travelling exposed us to a lot of restrooms...and exposed is
a very appropriate word given some of the rooms we visited. In the best
traditions of British toilet humour I've decided to bring some of these visits to
your attention.
Our feelings on campsite bathrooms have already been made abundantly
clear - clean and with lockable doors being the main criteria required. When
we were on the road and nature called we did not have the luxury of turning
down one establishment and driving to the next, as we sometimes did with
camps. We were much more of a captive audience. Fortunately there did
seem to be plenty of public toilets in the USA - at least compared to the UK -
and whenever we stopped for fuel there was a restroom on hand. The trick
sometimes was getting access to the toilets.
I have never really understood the practice of keeping public toilets
locked and forcing people who need to us the facilities to ask a staff member
for the key. Presumably it is to make sure customers only use them, but would
a non-customer needing the toilet really be denied access? Apparently not, at
least in some places, as Emma and I discovered during an emergency visit in
Downtown Disney, Orlando, Florida. We went to the nearest building, a
cinema on this occasion, and the staff member did let us use the facilities
even though we had not paid to see a movie. He just made us go one at a