Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Bathing myself, continued

Somehow, wherever I travel, I manage to have problems bathing. In Prague, of course, my apartment had a hose shower (coming from the bathtub), but no shower curtain and no place to *hang* the shower head (if I wanted water, one hand had to hold it over myself the whole time), so I managed to regularly flood the bathroom floor until I finally arm-twisted the accommodation service into finding a removable shower curtain for me.

The morning of Day 2 in Morocco (or Day 1, if the first, showerless with no luggage, day is considered Day 0), I slipped in my bathtub. Not only that, but I tried to carefully step in holding onto the metal towel rack above the tub, which immediately pulled out of the drywall (hence the fall). All towel, by the way: immediately soaked. My right knee is killing me. Bathroom partially flooded, and immediately the towels on the fallen bar fell into shower. And, I can't figure out how to drain the tub. Housekeeping did it... maybe it was just super slow. Adventure for tomorrow morning.

Set the bar low, I always say. So, my shower this morning ought to have been a piece of cake. And it was definitely a partial improvement.

I figured out why I fell in the shower -- while I'd assumed that the far end of the tub would be a box like the watery end, it turns out it's a smooth gradual slope, meaning the real bottom of the tub doesn't start until about three feet in. Stepping on sloping wet surfaces: not so good for balance. However the flooding appears unavoidable. There's a platform on the back end of the tub where the curtain doesn't go, which quickly gets covered with water and drips all of this water onto the floor. Flooding is a big problem, partly so I don't feel a need to hide from the cleaning staff, but also because my slippers become beyond slippery if the smooth rubber bottoms get at all wet. Enter fall #2. My joints are never going to forgive me.

Goal for the conference: leave Marrakesh hotel one morning with a dry bathroom floor. It's important to dream big, I know.

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