I travel for work, and tonight was the fourth hotel fire alarm I've been through. This one appears to be a malfunction of a new alarm system. One other was a guest pulling a fire alarm for no good reason, and the other two were small kitchen fires.

In every hotel I make a conscious effort to know where the two nearest fire exits are to my room. I also leave a flashlight on in ultralow mode on the dresser where I set the contents of my pockets. Tonight, I executed my exit plan with one flaw. I was out of bed, putting on pants, shoes, pistol, magazine carrier, and cover garment immediately. I had my phone, wallet and keys and scooped up my winter coat on the way out the door. The alarm was already turned off by this point.

This hotel has a large central atrium, and I could see dozens of guests standing on their balconies looking around. After a quick look around and not seeing evidence of fire, I marched to the stairs, went to the ground level, out the building and to my car, where I grabbed a bottle of water out of the trunk before heading back inside.

My one significant failure was that my room key was not with my other things and I walked right past it on the way out the door. It was no problem getting a new keycard made; but if I'd been unable to exit the building and needed to retreat to my room that would have been a problem. I also neglected to check the door with the back of my hand before opening it, but with the fire alarm having been turned off this was a procedural fail that I don't feel as badly about.

Now to figure out how to get back to sleep.