15. Motel 6 Kingman AZ

If you are not an older person, you may not know that there is a reason for the popular motel chain "Motel Six's" name.


The dollar, young person, is NOT what it used to be and the reason Motel Six is called Motel Six is because many years ago every room in the motel chain rented for six dollars a night. It is considerably more now (2011), but still cheaper than most other standard motels.


There were only a few Motel Sixes back then but now, if you want a basic "clean room and a comfortable bed" for a night when you are traveling, you can stay at a Motel Six all over the United States and Canada. Their Directory Listings booklet gives directions to more than 900 locations and we use them fairly often. Like McDonald's, they are all pretty much alike--but the hot water is hot, the TV works, the floors are more or less clean, there are two plastic cups wrapped in cellophane and the usual number of nice, white rather thin towels per guest. No surprises and not the place for an adventure.


Which is why my adventure at the Kingman, Arizona, Motel 6 was rather a surprise.


We checked in, carried our luggage to our room as the sun set and prepared for an ordinary motel night.


Then a noisy thumpity- thump-thump-thump vibration started in the bathroom. What the heck? Bad plumbing?? 

The noise kept going for a few minutes and we were ready to go over  to the office to complain when it stopped.

A few minutes later--there it goes again and carries on for five minutes, then stops again--but THIS time , for me, the vibration goes on! Not the loud sound, just the steady, pulsing vibration!


Tanya doesn't feel a thing.


 I am perplexed to say the least--for me, the floor is vibrating with a regular pulse and when I touch the door it is vibrating rhythmically too--with the same frequency as the noisy bathroom plumbing. 

On the way to the office to inquire what might be going on, I feel the vibration through my shoes in the parking lot and when I lay my hand on the concrete curb it is pulsing too.


The girl in the office says SHE doesn't feel anything but would we like to change rooms?

Well, I am no stranger to oddball pulsing. I hear the Taos hum when no one else can. I hear a distant rumbling at remote, silent Pate Lake in Alaska when no one else hears a thing. I hear and feel  the yoga "nada" current in empty churches  and solitary beaches, but this is something different. For one thing it is so VERY strong it is bizarre even for ME.


SO bizarre in fact I decide to shut up about it--like I have since I first started to feel the vibrations and hear the nada hum after my experiences with a Sufi teacher in Lebanon many years ago.


I notice a freight train with over a hundred heavy cars passing on the mainline across the highway and a block or two away. Maybe constant heavy train traffic has set up this constant pulsing vibration?


I have no problem sleeping and the next morning I keep quiet about the vibration. I'm not nuts or "hearing things that don't exist"--I don't think--and away from Kingman I don't feel anything unusual.

...