Me: Hi, Blog! Haven't seen you in a while.

Blog: Thanks for ignoring me for the past... *counts on fingers* Three months.
Me: You're welcome.

I just got back from a trip to the East Coast to visit a couple of friends and a couple of colleges. I flew into Portland, ME and worked my way down the coast and then inland to fly out of Columbus, OH.

These interesting things happened:

1. I stayed in a Motel 6 for 5 hours from 5 am. to 10 am and was lucky to be rented a room as they usually don't rent to under 21-ers. There was a sketchy stain on the floor from the door to the foot of the bed that my uneasy, sleep-deprived and popular movie saturated brain turned into blood.

2. A bitter, middle-aged and failing businessman named Constantine may or may not have been flirting with me at 3 am. in an Amtrak station full of 1 part Amtrak customer, 1 part policemen and 2 parts homeless.

3. I met a guy named Devon who I'd call a legit, modern hippie-- A glassblower of "water pipes", huge fan of the band Phish (A weird mix of Bob Marley, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix), hopeless romantic (Philosophically) and staunch advocate of hallucinogens. :)

4. Sitting two seats away from us on the train was a lady with a portable DVD player. I watched movies over her shoulder-- Including one called "It's Alive". The menu was a picture of a baby in a womb. I immediately assumed it was an anti-abortion movie. It turned out to be a horror movie and... I kid you not, the thing that went around killing everyone in excessively bloody ways... was a baby.

5. I saw an albino squirrel on the lawn at Oberlin College.

6. I was almost stranded in Mansfield, Ohio as I was trying to find my way to Kenyon College from Oberlin. We arrived in Mansfield around 8 pm and I was the only one to get off the bus. It was dark and raining outside and the Greyhound station closed as soon as I stepped out. Unlike all other bus stations, train stations and airports I'd been in so far, there were no Taxi's idling outside.

My phone was just about dead and the rest of the surrounding city was deserted so I looked up Taxi services in the Mansfield phone book. Only two numbers were listed-- one was the number for the Mansfield Public Transportation Office. The other was a number for a cab company who refused to pick me up because they only had one taxi in operation that couldn't leave the city limits.

I tried 411 on my phone and was connected to an out of service number, so I walked a few blocks towards the closest city lights I could see. A few bars were open, but that was it.

A middle aged couple got out of their car as I was about to cross the street again, so I asked them if they knew of any local taxi services or convenience stores that might be open. They thought for a while and invited me into their jewelry store to figure things out. They called the same numbers I'd called earlier with no luck and finally tried the Hilton Hotel where they found a rather new service called C+D Taxi.

The taxi driver didn't even know where Kenyon College or Gambier, Ohio was until I told him it was near Mt. Vernon and they had to ask for directions at a gas station there. That was definitely my most expensive day of the trip.

A thank you advertisement: Haring Jewelers, 13 Park Avenue West, Mansfield, Ohio.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. I met really great people, saw some close friends, fell in love with Boston and discovered that traveling in the U.S if you're under 25 is going to cost you a leg, an arm and over 10 hours of waiting in train or bus stations.