Extra Special Travel Safety Guidelines

This information will help you avoid trouble on your next vacation or
business trip. Never assume that nothing bad will occur while traveling.
Absolutely anything can happen. You need to read this carefully.

1. Don't answer the door in your hotel room just because someone is
knocking. Verify who it is. Speak in a calm tone. Do not try to disguise
your voice by using a fake accent, like Peter Lorre or Fernando Lamas. If
the person claims to be an employee of the hotel, call the front desk and
ask if anyone on the staff has been told to knock on your door, and for what
purpose. If the front desk person says, "Our employees have all been
murdered by a hatchet-wielding maniac, and he's somewhere in the hotel right
now!" you should not open the door.

2. When returning to the hotel late in the evening, use the main entrance.
Do not try to avoid detection by crawling in through the ventilation system
or sneaking onto the roof.

3. Never invite strangers into your room. Don't invite celebrities in
either, not even Angelina Jolie or Dr. Phil. If other people want to enter
your room, tough toenails for them.

4. Keep your room door locked at all times. Always check to make sure the
door is secured before going to bed. If you wake up during the night and
the door has fallen off its hinges, or is missing completely, call the front
desk and arrange to have a new one installed.

5. Do not draw attention to yourself by displaying large amounts of cash,
or by singing jingles from old TV commercials, or the lyrics from Gilbert &
Sullivan musicals. Never extend your hand in an effort to make friends with
stray dogs on the street, or draft animals.

6. If you notice one of the windows in your room is cracked or broken, or
if there is a huge hole in one of the exterior walls that allows people to
enter and leave without supervision, notify the front desk.

7. One more thing about the door: upon returning to your room after being
away, knock three times. If someone opens the door, you should say, "Why
are you in my room?" It¹s possible you made a mistake and knocked on the
wrong door. But if the person who answered suddenly runs away, and is also
carrying a bloody hatchet, you should walk quickly in the opposite
direction, locate a member of the hotel staff, and tell them to notify the
front desk.

8. If you knock on the door and a person answers who looks and talks
exactly like you, ask for identification. If the person shows you a
duplicate version of your own passport or driver's license, you might be a
victim of identity theft. Or you may have slipped into a parallel universe.
Contact the front desk and make sure you are not being double-billed for the
room.

9. Another possibility is that the person who looks and talks like you is
indeed someone else, and you are not actually the person you think you are.
If this turns out to be the case, there may be no valid reason for you to be
staying at the hotel in the first place. It may be that your entire life
has been a gigantic hoax. You should return home immediately, hire a
private detective, and embark on a quest to discover the mysterious truth
about your real identity. It's an unusual scenario, but not utterly
fantastic. Remember: when traveling, anything can happen.