My month-long California vacation is over. I spent most of it on my yacht—but I also stayed in a number of motels. Yes. Motels. Cheap motels. I normally stay at Hiltons. The first week of my vacation, I did. Then I woke up sweating in the middle of the night because of lousy AC controlled by a gaslighting thermostat (post below), took a weak shower, and discovered I’d paid $35 a night to park at a highway hotel surrounded by acres of empty asphalt. So I tried an experiment: forget the brand. Prioritize cold AC, hot showers, and good reviews. My criteria were simple: Giant AC unit visible in the photos. Recently remodeled. No horrifying guest photos. Rating above 8/10. In one month, I saved $1,359. And it’s been glorious. I did walk into one terrible room. But it cost less than half the Hilton rate, so I ate the charge, walked out, and booked another cheap motel. Will I do this again next trip? I don’t know. There are three major drawbacks: Every motel smells like lemon Lysol. Most of the lighting has all the warmth of a police interrogation room. The walls are sometimes approximately three molecules thick. But I’ll take all three over waking up drenched in sweat, then standing under a low-pressure Hilton shower wondering why I paid 3x for the privilege. So what did I choose for my last night in California? The Vagabond Inn in San Luis Obispo. It’s clean and the AC could preserve a cadaver. The shower has the water pressure of a fire hose. Five stars. No notes. Now I just have to explain to my wife why our credit-card statement looks like I spent a month in California having a string of affairs with truck stop barmaids. 💀