To paraphrase a Florida TV ad, when traveling I miss my bathroom most. I miss my comfort-height toilet. Every toilet on our 7-day trip was standard height and I swear some of them were even shorter. For 15 years my body and brain have trained to sit on my 17.5” high toilet seat. My body knows precisely what height I need to shift the weight from my thighs to my butt, so I glide gently onto the seat. I’ve developed a comfort-height muscle memory. Using the standard height toilets, my butt free falls the extra two-plus inches, crashing on the seat. It’s jolting, like when the elevator jerks before stopping. I used these short toilets at least 45 times – maybe more.
But at least gas station bathrooms on the road are heavenly compared to the gas station bathrooms of yore. As a kid, many gas stations had outhouses. As a young adult, it seemed the bathrooms were an afterthought and cleaned monthly whether they needed it or not.
I remember dreading the dirty pink-tiled bathroom in Kentland, Indiana on our trips to visit my family. You dare not sit on the seat. They hadn’t invented seat tissues back then so you’d better have strong thighs. Once done, I couldn’t decide if washing my hands in the scuzzy, scum-covered sink and sink handles would deposit even more germs than not washing. Then you had to dry your hands with a loop towel dispenser that looked like they hadn’t been changed in the last decade. You’d search the upper back corner to see if there was an unused spot. There also was no hand sanitizer in those days. The best you could do was pack a clothespin for your nose, use tissue for the toilet seat, and wear disposable rubber gloves for sanitation.
Today, many gas stations and rest stop bathrooms are as clean as a hospital operating room. They are getting the message that travelers are grossed out by less than spotless bathrooms . Love’s gas station bathrooms have a three-button rating above the hand dryers: green smiley for a happy rating, yellow no smile for so-so, and a red frowning face for bad. You just push the proper face to rate your experience.
Roady’s Truck stops even have a pristine latrine award. Potty patrons nominate a station with a pristine latrine and the regional managers visit nominated stations. (1) Only thing, I’ve never seen a Roady’s Truck stop. And Buc-ee’s in Texas regularly ranks as having the top-rated bathrooms in the gas station industry. The company uses billboards along the highway to advertise its facilities, including “Top Two Reasons to Stop at Buc-ee’s: Number 1 and Number 2” and “Rest-Rooms You Have to Pee to Believe.” (2)
Gas Buddy, a travel app that lists gas stations and allows customer ratings of bathrooms, found that gas stations with above-average bathroom ratings saw a 33% increase in foot traffic over those with below-average ratings. The top-rated brands for restroom quality during Q3 were Buc-ee’s, Kwik Trip, and Kelley’s Market. (2)
For you women out there, I’m really glad to announce that I didn’t encounter a single toilet seat with pee puddles on this trip. Yeah! It seems women have taken to heart the jingle “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat.” Philip Tierno, MD, Professor of Microbiology and Pathology at NYU says it’s unnecessary to stand while peeing. “It’s very difficult to pick up anything from a toilet seat. So, at least when it comes to science, you actually don't need to attempt to balance over a clean bowl while making a mess on yourself—and the woman behind you.” (3) But I still use those tissue toilet seat covers.
Even though the restrooms appear cleaner, nasty things lurk in those seemingly pristine latrines. The hand dryer machines spew from 4.5 to 27 more times bacteria on your hands and in the air than paper towels. (4) A University of Connecticut study shows that hot-air dryers may be acting like bacterial bombs, shooting loads of spores from bathroom air directly onto your hands. Hot-air hand dryers in public restrooms might be sucking up bacteria from the air, and dumping them on the newly washed hands of unsuspecting patrons.
I think of those germs every time I use one of those dryers. At one gas station, the hand dryer was at eye level. I turned my head to avoid the germs it would spew in my face as I used it. I used Purell when I got back in the car. I should have dried my hands on my pants like a teenager.
Even pristine latrines can have smell pollution. Yuck! Don’t you hate to enter a rank-smelling stall? Not only is it disgusting but you worry when leaving the stall that someone thinks you stunk the place up. Isn’t that crazy? We’ve all left stink at one time or another. Pourri company has a great solution for gaseous odors. Poo-Pourri is a pre-poop spray that “leaves the porcelain throne smelling better than you found it.” (5) But you are supposed to spray it before you go so I don’t know if it works after the fact. It’s worth a shot and it’s in a tiny, purse-sized spray. We used it when in our Motor Coach.
When traveling on the road restrooms are always a challenge. You can use an app like Gas Buddy to find a good one. If you are app-adverse, you can pack toilet seat covers, Purell, poo-pourri, and maybe goggles to keep the bacteria from getting into your eyes. I know it’s off-putting, but maybe we should pull out those Covid masks for bathroom visits.
I haven’t solved the short toilet problem yet. Any ideas?
References
Wendy Parker, What Truckstops Have the Best Restrooms, Overdriveonline.com, Oct 30, 2015
New Study by Gas Buddy, gasbuddy.com, October 23, 2017
Brie Schwartz, Can we agree to stop peeing on toilet seats, Oprahdaily.com, April 19, 2019
John Ross, MD, FIDSA, The bacterial horror of hot-air hand dryers, health.harvard.com, May 11, 2018
Those Hand Dryers in Public Restrooms Are Actually ‘Bacteria Bombs’, healthline.com,
Oh no! And I am going of vacation soon! Alas!
so true, so true. Great article…………..