Why did Jack clean the chest in an hotel?

[annie]

In Jack #2 - his reply to a question about how clean the Chest looked - “The treasure was filthy, and dirt got all over the interior bag I had it in. I spent a night at a hotel on my way to New Mexico and wiped dirt off everything with the hotel towels (not with any type of soap or cleaner, just occasionally wetting them a little bit). I went through all the towels in the room and left them totally brown from all the dirt. I left a nice tip”
Does any one else find that a little odd, for someone who is trying to keep a low profile?

[Chouetteur]

Mar 25, 2021 16:10:39 GMT -5 annie said:

In Jack #2 - his reply to a question about how clean the Chest looked - “The treasure was filthy, and dirt got all over the interior bag I had it in. I spent a night at a hotel on my way to New Mexico and wiped dirt off everything with the hotel towels (not with any type of soap or cleaner, just occasionally wetting them a little bit). I went through all the towels in the room and left them totally brown from all the dirt. I left a nice tip”
Does any one else find that a little odd, for someone who is trying to keep a low profile?

Certainly sounds quite odd. Likely means the chest had gotten quite a little muddy in the decade it spent in Wyoming. But wouldn't anyone have noticed, a man leaving a hotel with a sizable, medieval bronze chest?

[Jeff]

Hi annie, it didn't strike me as odd.  He was bringing it to meet with Fenn and whoever else might have been there, so I can understand wanting to wipe off the caked on dirt.  All that debris would just flake off as its carried around, getting Jack and everything else dirty, including that atrocious turquoise colored carpet in that depressing office park conference room.  The chest was a small thing, so it probably wasn't a huge ordeal it wipe it down.  I personally wouldn't have used the hotel towels, but I'm sure those towels have seen worse grime.  I bet the hotel staff hardly thought twice about it in the grand scale of muck and other stuff that they've seen.

[goldhunter]

If memory serves me correctly, the chest in the discovery picture didn't look too dirty.

[tighterfocus]

Nothing (purportedly) said by Jack would help determine where the TC was hidden. Better to ignore him and solve the poem independently, for anyone who
is seriously trying to solve it.