A couple weeks ago, as I gathered some friends around my dining room table in Portland, Oregon, my phone lit up. It was an inquiry on the travel booking platform Airbnb, from a frazzled visitor looking for a place to stay after the host of the home she’d reserved abruptly canceled. Was mine available?
Sure, I wrote back. But it was 9 p.m., and I still needed to pack for a nine-day trip on Oregon’s John Day River the next day. Can you wait an hour? I asked.
To my relief, she found somewhere else to stay. Had she booked my two-bedroom bungalow, I’d have sent my guests home and dashed from room to room to snatch up clothes, food, and gear, stuff them into the car, quickly clean the house and figure out a place to sleep that night. In seven years of renting my home out on Airbnb, it would have set a record, a request that came in five hours after the 4 p.m. check-in time. But my life is for rent. I try to be ready for anything.
