I just got back from a three-week long business trip to Australia. Two of those weeks were spent at the Royal Coach Motor Inn -- "Adelaide's First and Finest Four-and-a-Half Star Motor Inn," according to its brochure.

It's autumn there, and the days were averaging around seventy-five degrees. After a long winter in the northeast, these temperatures were as welcome as make-up sex, so I threw open the windows like they were lover's legs. But I'd find them closed each time I'd return after the room had been made up. This confused me, since neither the heat nor air conditioning were going, and I was up high enough in the building where the chance of a window break-in seemed nil. But in a foreign country, I give the benefit of the doubt to confusing practices like this.

Entering my room the evening of my third day, I was hit with the unmistakable smell of human shit. I did a search, fully expecting to find a wayward turd -- it was that strong. By the next day the smell was gone; but a couple evenings later, on returning to my room, it was back. Was this a nursing home, I wondered, renting out vacant rooms to unsuspecting Americans as payback for Australia's membership in the ‘Coalition of the Willing'?

The odor made me even more determined to keep the windows open, but the maid seemed every bit as determined to keep them closed. This tango continued for two more days, until one afternoon, while throwing the windows back open, I finally took notice of what lay just outside.

I was on the second floor. The first floor extended out about ten feet below my window. On the roof of the first floor extension was a tangle of plumbing. I stuck my head out the window and saw a pipe coming out my bathroom, right in line with the toilet. Leaning further out, I could see down the full length of the external wall of my wing. Each room sported a similar fecal flange, all of them feeding a large PVC pipe that coursed right beneath my window. The poo roof was along the north side of the building, which Down Under is the sunny side that moss don't grow on. So during the day, the sun works its magic on this pipe, building a pressure strong enough to force offending gases out of its nooks and crannies.

So the knowing maid had been trying to look after me, but didn't dare leave a note to explain. ("Sir, you may not have noticed, but right outside those windows...")

Thereafter, I kept the windows closed tight as a sphincter on a first date. I never smelled shit again. And I was left to wonder what surprises I'd have encountered had I booked a four star motor inn.