Ohhh, Hi Oh

This is my first illustrious post to the SEO travel blog and we're off to Columbus, Ohio. My journey started off in Albany, NY (yes my hometown) and also known as "An All American City". I recently only found out we received that award years ago and the city likes to keep re purposing it in an event to curb the fact that it's a lovely city nestled between two terribly bad neighborhoods and reeling from some scandal involving a powerful politician. Either way, I'm departing from Albany International. Not sure about you but "International" kinda leads me to believe you could leave the country from here. Well all that Albany International can do for you is bring you to an airport that will fly you out of the continental US. It does have flights to Canada but I don't consider that international, they are more like a good neighbor with lots of trees.

So I flew from Albany to Philly (ironic yes) and it seems as if the Philly airport is doing it's part to save electricity by not turning on the AC. The entire experience was horrible, I mean if your not going to run AC when it's 100 degrees out at least funnel that cash to get some new seats while I wait for my flight that is already 45 minutes late to board.



Before I landed in Columbus, William asked me to rent a car for the trip as we were both unaware of how difficult it would be to get around in a cab. I made it to the rental car area and jumped in the shortest line (not the best decision) and anticipated leaving the airport in some swanky ride for the next 24 hours. Well, swanky in Ohio means a late model Chevy Impala (sorry William, no BMW's here.. i tried). I was also asked if I required a GPS system for my travels to which I responded, "hell no, just tell me how to get to the Sheraton".

Well it turns out this is how I fell into the scam. Nobody knows where your going so you are forced to rent a Garmin. Also note that nobody knows how to work the Garmin either. I was literally asked if I have used one of these devices, to which I responded, "no". Their answer, "we don't know how to work it either".


Yes I took this pic with a Treo doing 80 while lost in Columbus, I like to live on the edge.

After an hour (stupid Garmin), I found the Sheraton Suites. For the past 2 years I always ask William where he's staying and it's always the same answer, "the Sheraton". I'm not sure if it's brand loyalty but this Sheraton beats the hell out of the one in NYC. My room is about 200% bigger, has 2 TV's, a couch and other things I will never use but just like to have. (I'll post some pic's tomorrow)

After I got all checked in I decided to see what Columbus was all about. I stay away from the hotel bar and sightseeing activities cause all you'll find is tourists. So what did I do? Well I took my classy ride out and cruised Columbus for the mecca of all culture, the local Gas-n-Sip. In this case it turned out to be a Speedway gas station.



The local Speedway was full of amusement, and to my delight they had an actual Beer Cave! How sweet is that, a cave full of beer chilled to a perfect 34 degrees!



While I marveled at the brilliance of the beer cave I noticed something was wrong, Columbus was having AC problems also and the beer cave was not cooling properly. The pic is hard to see but it says, "Beer cave not cooling properly. Sorry"



After a quick chat with the clerk I also learned I could score some fireworks down the street and that the local kids have been trying to rip off the 1$ an night DVD rental kiosk outside.

After those shenanigans I met with Whippy and we worked for a while on our presentation and learned that William was stranded in Chicago... again.