ZZ Top is Staying at My Hotel...and Other Tales from Pikeville, Kentucky

Usually for work I stay in city centers within a reasonable distance of an airport. They may not be particularly large cities--hello, Ft. Wayne!--but they are cities. When I volunteered myself for a a suicide mission through Kentucky, I thought Pikeville would be near Lexington, like the rest of the schools I'm visiting. Then I learned Pikeville is in eastern Kentucky. Not a problem, I thought, as Eastern Kentucky University is right outside of Lexington, in the same bedroom community I found myself in last week. But there is a difference between the eastern part of Kentucky acceptable for a state-run school and the eastern Kentucky that rubs up against the coal mines of West Virginia. I did my calculations using googlemaps, decided it must be wrong, and, thinking that the fount of incorrect knowledge that is Mapquest might tell me something erroneously different that would at least temporarily assuage my fears, turned there for a recalculation. It told me the same thing: Pikeville is nowhere near a goddamn airport. Unless two hours and change is your idea of near. And unless you count Charleston, West Virginia, as an airport. I've flown into small places (hello again, Ft. Wayne!), but pointing to Charleston two hours away as your access point to the rest of the country does not help convince me that you are not a hillbilly looking to steal my mule and pump from my well. I know Sissy Spacek is probably gearing up to do a public service announcement right now: "I may not be a coalminer's daughter, but I played one on screen, and West Virginia is a beautiful..."

Eventually, it works--DC flies directly into Charleston, albeit on a plane that actually features a hole for the pilot to put his hand through (I kid you not). The next step is booking a hotel. Now, I've had problems before with booking hotel rooms--I've booked rooms at the Hilton even though I know that my evaluators prefer Marriott (beyond a certain age people become convinced that the hotel taxes go straight into Paris's trust/tequila fund. In Pikeville there is no such luxury. The nearest Hilton or Marriott is two hours away...in Charleston. We had two options: the Days Inn or the Holiday Inn Express. Holiday Inn Express it is. I call up the Holiday Inn Express to get a sense of the fine dining available in the area because it's crucial that when evaluators volunteer their time they be taken out to a nice meal. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: "Hi, I'm going to be staying at your hotel next week and just wanted to know what restaurants you have in the area."
Front Desk Lady: "Well, we have the Arby's and the Dairy Queen..."
Me: "No, I mean more like your nicest sit-down restaurants."
Front Desk Lady: "There's the Applebees..."

Notice, first of all, that they don't have an Arby's or a Dairy Queen, but the Arby's and the Dairy Queen. Notice, second of all, that I asked about their nicest sit-down restaurants. Notice, third of all, that I was referred to Applebees.

I've been in Pikeville for three nights. Tune in tomorrow to discover ZZ Top's beard-grooming secrets, what I had at Applebee's and why no one wants to go to the dentist in West Virginia/eastern Kentucky.