Say you and your girl are taking on your semi-annual or annual road trip, and three days out you have a ring around the sock line and your scalp’s starting to itch. Why spend a hundred bucks (more or less) for a night in an antiseptic room with bad art and depressing television, when you can meet all your primal-up-tomodestly civilized needs by almost but not quite checking into the Comfortably Dazed Inn?

Let’s start (enter soft lounge music) with an evening at the CDI.

You’ve been hiking, biking, climbing and binging while living out of your van for three days — exactly since your last shower 839.4 miles ago — and it’s getting dark. The camping has been good and celebratory, and you radiate a fragrance that is a firm yet flaccid combination of wood smoke and cheddar cheese — a tad skanky — and, like an oasis, a CDI looms ahead; it’s warm, neon yellow glow beckons you.

“Take a right!”

You pull in and park. Now it’s a matter of getting all the stuff you need out of the back of the van/camper shell. After three days, stuff gets pulled out and spread around and yup, now it’s an Official Road Trip: Your dog’s food bowl overturns and the kibbles scatter. You rake 70-percent of them back in the dish then start grabbing the essentials.

Walking into the lobby, try to look overweight and numb. Try to look Republican.

You need your changing clothes, but don’t just carry them loosely. You might as well be some dank street hobo pushing an overflowing grocery cart into the lobby. A daypack may be employed for smuggling, but it should be clean and, preferably, never have touched actual earth.

If the Jacuzzi is by the lobby, you have to work up confidence. You do this by looking dazed yet hurried — act like you’ve been there before.

Give the desk clerks a quick glance as you walk by, because if you get questioned, in that one quick glimpse, you’ll decide if they’re kind or cruel, if you lament or lie. Freeze, flee or fight.

Primordial, strolling toward civilized! Open that steamy door as if it’s No Big Deal.

Now … if there are other people … first: Make little contact with your significant other — you’re supposed to be bored. If there are kids, they’ve no doubt splashed chlorinated water all over the tile and grandma sits in the one chair and the only table is full of the kids’ crap and you need a place for your dry things. Walk to high ground and look for the driest spot. You don’t have to worry about hiding your room key because you have no room key! That’s part of the beauty!

Now, if that one elderly man goes into cardiac arrest, you and your girl should work together to drag the victim into the lobby. Armpits yank is to be preferred over ankle dragging. Many desk clerks are familiar with CPR. Don’t call 911 yourself, as the dispatcher will ask your name.

Before one enters the Jacuzzi, a quick shower is in order. You don’t want to turn the Ja Cuse Me water the color of beef consommé if it’s family hour. It should be a good shower for what these people are paying … slake the brown mud from above your sock line. Quick splash to the armpits and you’re done. You qualified. It was a shower!

Because you want to savor Total Immersion, gradually lower yourself into the hot water. A softly muttered “ahhhhh …” is acceptable here. Sink slowly all the way up to your neck … exhale slowly, sink farther; now let your head disappear beneath the surface. This act feels good and any small forest critters that have invaded your hair will now have to flee or drown. Eventually you have to get out. Back into the shower. No shampoo.

“Cheap bastards,” you mutter, and make a note to write a letter of complaint to corporate headquarters.

Now a tricky part. You have to get dressed for the evening’s ceremonies — another night of sleeping in the back of your van — but your clothes are ten steps away. You can cross center stage and fetch your attire … but … there are no hooks to hang your dry stuff and the floor’s wet.

“Unacceptable”: Another word you’ll add to that letter of indignation to CDI corporate central (maybe, if your letter is convincing enough, they’ll even comp you a room!).

Option two is to cross center stage, grab your stuff, and walk out of the Jacuzzi area and to the public restroom, but that looks mighty suspicious should the desk clerk or (horror of horrors) a Super Visor walk by, as real, paying guests would change in their room.

But in option two, it’s much easier to lock the door behind you and get naked (objects in the mirror are smaller than they appear), because in option one, you gotta get nekkid behind the flimsy curtain and one by one pull out clothing and reassemble yourself. Should you screw up and lose your balance stepping into new fresh undies, grandma’s three screeching and horseplaying underlings may get their first look at a smiling man with, oh my god, Hairy Balls.

Oooops.

Yes, in the corporate, natural and social worlds, there are choices.

So if all goes well to that point, you walk through the lobby and stroll casually down the hall. Your world is now trippy squares and rectangles, wavering wallpaper, brassy annoying electric lanterns and troubling symmetry, and you need a cold beer and a warm campfire. At the end of the hall, you turn left and there it is, in Danger- Will-Robinson red: Emergency only! Do not open! Will activate alarm!

My general attitude is to ignore this bullshit. I look at it this way: 97-percent chance there is no alarm, and the other 3-percent solution is that you’re already clean, so get in your van and duck — it’s all part of the fun!

Now you’re free and refreshed. Go camping, go to the closest bar for a drink, cheeseburger and some local color, or, simply, stay in the CDI parking lot. This option works especially well if you have to be back on the road early.

Sunrise. One of you walk the dog, one of you prepare for First Assault. My recommendation is to walk right into the lobby carrying your favorite insulated mug and your Camelbak draped over your shoulder. Perfect: The morning staff is new and busy. Then sit and reach for the phone book. Turn to the Yellow Pages and look up Motels. Neatly tear out the ad for the CDI. Keep it handy as you stride toward the buffet.

Now you’re legally armed. If a desk cleric hassles you, whip that “coupon” out and point emphatically. “Right there, baby! Free Deluxe Continental Buffet. It says nothing about being for registered guests only.” Just act indignant. I would not say, “I read Glover’s howto article in Mountain Gazette and …” … um … no …

But hopefully all goes well and you stride up, blend in with the other Dazed ones and caffeine up. The buffet is neither continental nor deluxe. White doughy stuff, cereal with thin milk, reconstituted OJ, the usual. Rely on your training here. Toast a bagel or two and snatch the last four packets of strawberry flubber — a.k.a. fructose-flavored cream cheese.

Once your significant other joins you, I don’t recommend sitting in the lobby with the other ComDazed, as, no doubt, CNN will be blaring. Ten minutes of World News can chaff a caffeine buzz real quick-like. So I suggest power munching and taking turns filling your Camelbak with ice water and just keep a movin’ on.

Grab a couple oranges and, oh, what the hell, two bananas for the road. A mere pittance compared with your discomfort. After all, we all pay taxes and we all bailed out the Corp Are Rats. (Included in the financial bailout is a $100 million dollar tax break for owners of motor sports complexes, and $2 million to exempt wooden practice arrows from excise tax.) So, really, all of us are co-owners of the corporate world … generally speaking.

Now, some common FAQs.

1. Can I bring my dog into the Jacuzzi?

Not a good idea here unless the Jacuzzi is deserted and you have a Shitzu or some such micro-pooch that you can smuggle in inside your daypack. Hope Ceci LaMiniMutt doesn’t bark as you pass through the lobby.

2. Is it acceptable to request a wakeup call?

The answer here is a surprising, “Yes!” You explain to the night desk clerk that the loud obnoxious telephone ring alarms and stresses you first thing and, as your doctor has you on Flopodil, could he be so kind as to call your cell phone, which wakes you in a minor-key Mozart Divertimento?

3. If I do get busted, what’s the worst thing that can happen?

Usually you will get cursed at and threatened by a desk clerk from India. At that point you might try to act self-righteous: “All the times I’ve spent nights here … all the money I’ve spent … ”

But then Faduky Armoroff can look up your name on his pooter and it’s, “Hmmm, yes sir, I have you staying a total of one night, three years ago in Moab, Utah.”

You flash back to that rainy night and how good it felt to get out of the G Loop and the blowing sand and gusts of rain.

But you’ll probably come through it all smelling like an apricot: You’re freshly quaffed, carbed and caffeinated, and ready to take on a new day. Look forward to those replenishing, yet minimally annoying days when you can once again get Comfortably Dazed. Thank you, Corporate America. Thanks for letting us share.

— Cal Glover

Cal Glover’s last piece for MG was “Undaunted Porridge,” which appeared in #143. He has three novels out and runs tours of Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks in the summer.

MG