Traveling for business was often fraught with hazards, things like late or cancelled flights, traffic tie-ups when trying to get to a flight, booking hotel rooms and rental cars on busy race weekends and terrible hotel/motel rooms.

A couple of things that worked in my favor were the fact that I didn't let delays get to me - I figured I'd get where I was going eventually, so why raise my blood pressure? - and I didn't care what a hotel/motel room looked like as long as it had a decent bed, working AC and heat and hot water.

But it was a different story when I was traveling with Judy and the kids.

Since I often left them in the room while I went off to work, I tried hard to stay at places that were well appointed and located in convenient areas for eating and shopping and possible entertainment.

And we definitely had some interesting adventures when it came to hotel/motel rooms.

For some reason, Jackson, MI was our little piece of hell.

We stayed in Jackson for a number of years because of it's relatively close proximity to Michigan International Speedway, about a 30-minute drive away.

Since Jackson is a small city, hotel rooms on race weekends were at a premium and we often wound up using rooms booked for us by the racetrack or the sanctioning body, although AP paid for them. We took what we could get.

The first few years that Judy, Tory and Lanni traveled with me in the summer, we stayed at a motel on the outskirts of Jackson. It changed names several times but its first entity was a Quality Inn. It became known to us as the "No Quality Inn."

It was pretty no-frills, but it seemed like a decent place at first. So, when we were booked there the next year, I had no qualms.

We checked in and the room looked okay until Lanni remarked about the pattern of the wallpaper that covered most of the room. Judy took a good look at it and said, "Oh my God, that's not a pattern. That's fly specks."

Apparently people had been swatting hordes of flies on the wall, leaving lots of dirty spots.

She called the front office, told them about the fly specks and asked to be moved to another room. Apparently, the room clerk balked at this and I heard Judy said, "Fine. I'll just call the health department and have them come out and take a look."

We were moved to another room where there were at least no fly specks.

That night, Tory, who was about seven years old at the time, went to the bathroom. Moments later, we were all awakened by pounding on the bathroom door, which had jammed shut when he had closed it. I managed to get it open and we all went back to bed.

In the morning, I called the front desk and told them about the door and was promised someone would come and fix it.

About 15 minutes later, a young man, who looked about 15, showed up with a step ladder and a hammer. He got up on the step ladder and began banging on the top of the door with the hammer, apparently trying to make it fit more easily into the frame. That was the fix I was promised.

Several Indy car drivers were also staying at the "No Quality" on that trip and the wife of one of them reported that a pair of leather pants was missing from her room. It turned out that one of the maids had taken a liking to them and took them home with her.

The next year, we stayed there again _ although I had tried hard with no success to find another place.

One of the good things about the "No Quality" was the pool and pool deck. When we showed up, the kids raced to the pool area to check it out and came back looking confused. The water was a bright orange.

No problem, the front desk people said.  "It's just chemicals."

Needless to say, there was no swimming for our kids on that stay.

The next year, I finally managed to find a different place to stay in Jackson. This time, it was a new high-rise hotel in the heart of the city.

The rooms were large and well set up and I thought we were out of the woods. Not so.

On the night we checked in, there were thunderstorms and, in the middle of the night, the big floor-to-ceiling windows began to leak. Pretty soon, water was gushing in and we had deployed all of our towels to stem the tide.

They moved us to a different room the next morning along with profuse apologies.

That night, Judy and the kids had gone to sleep - Judy in our queen-size bed and the kids in sleeping bags on the floor. I stayed up to watch TV for a while.

Finally, I was tired enough to get some shuteye. The kids were sleeping in front of the TV table, so I leaned over them, put my left hand on the glass top of the table and reached for the TV off switch. The table began to flip up, with the TV sliding toward me.

I tried to take my hand off and keep it from flipping over, but I couldn't stop from falling forward and the TV slowly slid down the glass top and then down my back.

There I was, laying on top of Tory and Lanni with a 25-inch TV resting on my back.

The kids didn't wake up, I was not hurt and I was able to move the TV to the floor without damage. But it was definitely a scary moment.

When I told the hotel manager what had happened, he apologized for the TV not being secured and offered to give us a free night. I took it, but that didn't really do anything for me since AP was paying for the room.

The next few years on our trips to Michigan, we managed to stay at much nicer motels in Jackson or Adrian, MI, a small college town which was about 30 minutes from the track in the opposite direction.

The hotel where the TV incident occurred went bankrupt and closed. Several years later, under new management and with a new name, it was scheduled to open again. It was not quite ready for guests, but the track convinced the new owners to open early for the media and some of the NASCAR officials.

This time, it was just Judy and me. The kids were with grandma Rosee in Chicago. We showed up with some trepidation and found construction still going full-bore in the lobby area.

There were no luggage carts available, but Judy found a stray grocery cart in the bare kitchen area to help us take our stuff to the room.

The room was pretty bare, too. There were no curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows, although the rods were hung. The guy at the front desk suggested we use sheets to cover the window.

There was no closet, but the shelf and hooks that were going to be installed on the wall were lying on the floor.

I left Judy there the next day as I headed to the track. When I got home, Judy was bursting to tell me her adventure that day.

With no knock or any warning, the door to the room was suddenly gone as Judy sat and studied inside. Workmen had removed it to replace the old lock with a card key system. But nobody had told them people were staying in the rooms.

So there sat Judy with sheets covering the windows, no closet and no door. All she could do was laugh.

Finally, there was a new parking system at the hotel, with the lot shared with a local business. To get out, you had to use quarter-size tokens that the hotel provided.

That worked for most of our stay. But, when it came time to check out, the desk clerk said, "Sorry, we're out of tokens. You'll have to use quarters."

I said, "Fine, give me some quarters." He look at me like I was from outer space. I repeated, "Quarters please," sticking out my hand.

He shook his head, grimaced and finally reached in a drawer and handed me four quarters. It only took two to get out that day, so I was ahead of the game.

Judy decided to call the place Hotel California. Like the Eagles song, you could check out but you could never leave.

Another of our interesting motel stories took place in Watkins Glen, NY., a small, charming village in the Finger Lakes District.

I had booked a room at the Watkins Glen Motel in the downtown area. I told the lady who ran the place that we weren't going to arrive until late in the day and she said, "Our desk closes at 9 p.m., but you can pick up your room key at the police station. They're open all night."

No problem, I thought.

But, when were arrived at the motel, I looked around and could not spot the police station, which I assumed was nearby. We drove around hoping that we would see somebody to ask. But it was about 11 o'clock and the streets were empty.

It must have been on the third or fourth trip around the block that Lanni pointed to the second floor of a brick building across the street from the motel and said, "Is that it?"

Sure enough, there was a small sign "Watkins Glen Police Dept" hanging below the second-story window.

I found the entrance, trudged up some dark, dingy stairs and found a police officer sitting in  quiet room at a small desk.

"Do you by any chance have a room key for me from the motel across the street?" I asked. "He said, "Mr. Harris. I've been waiting for you. I was supposed to make my rounds 30 minutes ago."

So, we now had the key and went to the room. Happily, there were two beds and a rollaway cot, as I had asked. Everyone was tired, so we immediately went to put the kids to bed. Lanni jumped into one of the doubles and I unfolded the rollaway, which was all made up and ready.

Tory went to lay down and the rollaway flipped up on end, nearly dropping him onto the floor. It turns out one leg was missing from the cot.

We all started laughing. It was ridiculous.

Judy pulled out a lower drawer in the nearby dresser and propped the corner of the rollaway so Tory was able to get in and go to sleep. There were times you had to have ingenuity.