I googled myself (no mom, it’s not a mortal sin, it’s typing one’s own name into Google;-) and here’s this article I was interviewed for. I excerpted my part so you can read it right here:

One of those who won’t be buying a room this year is longtime race fan Susanna Schick, 37, who wouldn’t dream of missing a MotoGP.

A former amateur racer, she plans vacations to Europe and across the states around big race events. She’s been coming to Monterey since 1997 for the World Superbike races, then when MotoGP returned to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca two years ago, she and her friends came from Los Angeles. This year, she’s coming from South Carolina.

Not ready to pay $300|

The racing, she loves. Monterey, she’s a bit less crazy about. Last year, she got charged for a room she’d inquired about but never authorized. It took repeated phone calls to get the charges removed.

She’s fed up with what she considers unfair pricing. For a luxury hotel with a bay view, $400 would be reasonable, said Schick, but a $300 motel room is out of line.

This year, even though she hates camping, Schick and her friends are skipping the hotel scene, staying in RVs instead. Even at $2,000 for a rental, it’ll cost less for a group than hotel stays, she said.

Angered by her experiences, Schick posted two online petitions urging the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce to intervene in hotel pricing, one for camping fans, the other for race fans who chose to boycott the event.

“We do not deserve to be so grossly overcharged and would rather stay home and watch it on TV,” she writes in the latter. “If the Monterey area hotels only increased their rates by about 30 percent over their normal rates, we would probably attend.”

People always mix up South and North Carolina. Oh well. Here’s the whole article:

http://www.hotel-online.com/News/2007_Jul_17/k.MNE.1184691358.html

Yaaay! Indy next year, baby!!! But I must admit, I had no idea that Monterey county only had 12,000 hotel rooms. Kinda makes sense that there’s a hotel shortage. Hard to believe, though. There’s soooo many hotels there. But they’re mostly tiny.