Couch Surfing - Where Do Most Dwellars Live?
 

It's a new year, new start, turning over a new leaf and all that and everything.
So as often before my mind turns to plans of travel.
Sometimes I fulfull them (Amsterdam) sometimes I don't (America, Kenya).
So this is just musing.

BUT. Out of interest.
I see New York is the cheapest return destination and Amtrak trains run from there for a reasonable cost. For example one trip I made up as below only came to £93.

Coming to PA by train I would stop in Philadeplhia as I've always wanted to see it. This is where there is the highest concentration of Dwellars, right?
I can then get the train quite easily to Cleveland OH, which I assume is accessible to Shawnee and Bri?
And from Cleveland I can go back to NY via Washington.

I'm thinking of couchsurfing ie staying free at people's homes. There are verified people online who offer this service, or of course I could throw myself on the mercy of the Dwellars. Well, I mean I could ask politely and see if anyone agrees.

Any ideas?

I could clean off the couch ... or, better still, blow up the air mattress for you. I'd even schedule vacation so we could do stuff!

I'm delighted to see Washington on your itinerary!! You are most welcome to stay with me. With a reasonable amount of advance notice, I'd take some time off and squire you about town. I love where I live and I'm definitely in touch with my inner tour guide. You'll have a great time.

This is where I say that SG is DEFINITELY in touch with her inner tourist - she is a great guest, interested in everything and very easy to have around :)

We Philly people would come pick you up by car in New York.

And I have a big empty house... no couch though. lol.

I have nowhere to put you except maybe among the dead hobos, but we'd work something out, somehow.

Cleveland is about as far away from us that you can get and still be in Ohio, but it's a do-able drive (4-5 hours depending on where in Cleveland.)

Thanks to Kasich we can forget about that high speed rail that could've brought you to Columbus or Cincinnati in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

PS You meant Washington DC, right? Washington State is clear on the other side of the country, so any hopes for a squire might be dire.

huh, so you'll drive 4-5 hours to Cleveland to meet SG, but not straight up the I75 to visit me?

:sulks:

Cleveland is much closer to me than the Ohio girls!

Wow - isn't the Cellar an amazing place :)
To everyone who has offered, my many thanks.
I will keep all this in mind while travel-dreaming.
Like I said, it's all pie in the sky and all about costings, but at least I know it's feasible.

Shaw - what's your nearest big transport hub?
For some reason I thought it was Cleveland but that might be from seeing names of football teams or something?

UT - wow, really?
If costs are about equal I'd be happier to fly into Washington (DC) though, that way I get to catch up with Dwellars there - there are enough for a GTG right? Me & my squire otherwise :)

I found out the US have Megabus too and it's even cheaper than here!
You'd have thought my Glasgow - London experience would have put me off (as when I came back from Amsterdam and said I'd never travel by coach again). But the pain fades very quickly and the low, low fares are so seductive.

Reading up, the trains seem to get the nod for the scenery.

So, okay. It's just a case of settling down to saving and then coming up with an itinerary. If people in more than one location are happy to put me up/ show me round I'd probably want to come in the summer (more time) but it won't be this summer. Otherwise it would be in October, but that's only a week long break.

One of these days I'd finally be in gainful employment and can start saving!

Aaaaah - maybe that's what I was thinking.
I hadn't factored you in because I thought you were well out of reach.

Check off another person to meet - although I admit your schedule probably doesn't leave much space...?

We need that googly map thing that had everyone on it.......

I'm 4 hours up the road friom Shawnee. I could pop down for lunch! :lol: I'm also 4 hours from Niagara falls.....

It's all in the future, it's my Imma Gonna.

Of course I'm coming to see you. I'm not doing anything until spring but I have lots of vacation time saved up.


SG: either Columbus or Cincinnati is closer to us, Columbus is in the middle of the state pretty much, so would be closer to where you're coming from.

Maybe I'll have won the lottery and will have built my dream home by then. :o

edit: and Pico is a hop skip and a jump, too!

I'd love to see London.

I'd love to see France

...

NIAGRA FALLS! SLOWLY i TURNED.....

Step by Step, Inch by Inch

I'd love to see Shawnee's... (sorry, that was your joke)

If you come to London I'll be your guide Jim.
Same goes for anyone else of course.

oh no you can't! :eek:

Nah, was a test to see if anyone would read it and finish it. You win an all expenses paid trip to OHIO. Someday. ;)

what? :eyebrow: i spelled it right...... I'm all 'fused



...oh, the vid didn't show up the first time...

I'm in DC. It would be great to have you visit, although honestly, I can't promise accommodations without talking to Mrs. Glatt first. I could show you the sights around town though.

Happy Monkey is in DC too, and maybe if you visited, that would be the excuse an introvert like myself would need to actually meet the guy who lives only 5 miles from me.

This would be fun!

hmmmph

Jeeze I'm slow typing today. or you lot are on speed.

Never mind the accommodation, Glatt, we just want to know if you'd be willing to squire SG?

You could squire her on over to the Washington spire!

I'd say I wouldn't, but that would make be a liar. With my pants on fire.

Squire, Liar, pants on fire
you could catch your nuts in a telephone wire

Don't bother with the train to OH - use southwest.com, the megabus of the skies.

Shush Shawnee.

just shush, you.



....


In America, 300 years is a long time.

In England, 300 miles is a long way.


In this case, I think you and I could both agree, sadly, that 3000 miles is a long way.

:(

Cheapest flight Phillie to Cleveland $129 one way.

If you're going to fly, then fly into Dayton International.

Philadelphia (PHL) to Columbus (CMH) is a better Southwest route. I got it down to $140 round trip.

Window shopping trips is a favorite activity of mine. I haven't been on a trip in quite a while though. 8 years.

That's because Cleveland is nowhere. Only the rock and roll hall of fame is there....

:ducks:

Actually, I noted when I was there for a seminar last year, they've really made Cleveland look NICCCCEEEE.

I stayed here (these ritzy places will actually GIVE you a smoking room, and I could have set up a volleyball tournament in this amazing room in this beautiful hotel.)

Right across the street was an upscale bowling alley/restaurant (where I drank my dinner and watched the bowlers) and down the street is the Hall O' Fame, and a thousand other things around there. A lot of live music.

It's the awesome!

bah, if it's so good, how come their squirt hockey team had to travel all the way up here for a game and still lost? :lol:

Oh hell, what do Ohioans know from hockey? Football, maybe, but even in Cleveland they're not far enough north to have the real hockey bug that trickles down from Canada!

:)

we have a spare bed room you can crash in SG !

I'd like to see a smurf on your underpants

Yes, Amtrak is notoriously late and or delayed.

I hate it when it's just delayed, or just late. But when it's delayed and or late I lose all my marbles.

The only two Amtrak trains I've been on were bang on time. Main problem is, they hardly go anywhere useful. This was a school field trip, one of the main points of which was to experience train travel -we still had a half hour bus ride to camp when we "got there" and the bus cost more than the train.

Marbles on the track is one of the primary causes of late and or delayed trains. People like you should just be pushed under the wheels and your marbles should be shared out among the urchins begging on the platform

Well, sometimes I am late but other times I am delayed and or held back.

Actually, in college we would run across campus at 10:45 to watch the 11:05 Amtrak come through, laying right next to the tracks, 6 or seven cars passing before the wind even caught our hair then blew it straight back.

Sometimes we were to late and or delayed and we had to get use to it, though.

We never put anything on the track. Even we were smart enough to not want quarters or marbles put INTO our heads.

Her point was Amtrak has scenery.

Wait, I saw the to, and the use, but not the marbles. Where are all the marbles?

The hobos got 'em, or the nomadic smilies have them.

.

There you go! Good find! :)

lost.

Who's In Houston?
 

No, this isn't an addendum to the thread, I'm just after Houston advice not available on the internet.

My bro and SIL are going there for a long weekend in a couple of months.
Ste's part of the trip is going to the Space Center.
E's part of the trip is going to a Joel Osteen sermon.

WTF?!
I am genuinely shocked by this.
And quite alarmed.

Still. Any insider info you can give me re great things to do and see would be nice to pass on to them.
They're there for four days (I think) and not looking to fill their time up, but if there is anything really unmissable I'll pass it on.

Food-wise they're casual restaurant diners. They like decent sized portions, polite and friendly waiting staff and a clean place without any pretentions. They are both teetotal so won't be interested in anywhere more famous for its booze than its food.

They're regular travellers to the States (at least once a year) so unless you have any coupons you want to share, there's no need to mention any big chains.

Oh - and what can I ask him to bring back for me? :)
Foodstuff usually (although I got my Hello Kitty purse when they went to Japan).
If no-one comes up with something to tempt me I might go with Ass Kickin' Cornbread mix, as they simply don't sell it here and I can never get enough.

(Just to add - I am not a spoiled brat. Ste likes to bring back prizes but is an indifferent shopper. Mum doesn't ask because she thinks it's cheeky but I find a specific request means everybody is happy)

I wikied Osteen. Apparently, he's a tv preacher who other tv preachers think is a heretic. I don't know anything about Houston either.

Seems an interesting character. I like that he downgrades 'sin' of homosexuality to 'missing the mark' of what God created them for rather than somethiing vile. In fact he has seemingly avoided the topic as much as possible. The criticisms levelled at him by other evangelicals (calling his views heresy) seem based on the fact that he doesn't include a lot of scripture in his preaching, doesn't focus on sin, but rather the achievement of yourpotential, and doesn't emphasise Christ as the only route to heaven.

Only when pressed has he agred that Christ is the only way to heaven, and only when pressed would he say he agreed homosexuality was a sin: though he then clarifies in an interview with Piers Morgan :

Slightly more worrying (to my mind) is his idea that wealth and prosperity are the reward for piety.

All in all he seems a more reasonable face of evangelicism ( to me) than some. Though I am intrigued as to why your sis is going to see him....isn't she a Catholic?

He does seem like more of a self-help guru. My sister is a hardcore Catholic who dabbles in Evangelical preaching. It isn't terribly consistent, but since when is religion consistent? It could be SG's sister is on her way out of the Church trying to find a soft-landing place more in line with her personal views. I went through a period of that, assuming someone would have already built a system of thought which aligned decently with reality as I saw it, but then I realized I didn't want that either and stopped looking. I'd rather see the world with my own eyes.

That is pretty common Evangelical nonsense in the US. I like the idea of people optimizing their lives and that stability can lead to wealth but there is a blame the victim strain in there. In all honestly, I do see a lot of people who could use a more rigid belief system because they lose sight of their goals and real needs.

There was a similar view prevalent within the British evangelical movement during the late 18th/early 19th century. It was one of the things that justified a lot of the anti-poor legislation of that era. I don't know if the modern mission in the Uk is like that. I suspect so.

Not my sis going to see him - my sister in law.
She has no religion that I know of, which makes it all the more bizarre. We do not need another God-botherer in our family, least of all one of the wishy-washy ones that confuse coincidence with divine intervention and occasional good luck for God's will. I'm also annoyed by his "stand" on homosexuality. No, it's not enough to me to have it downgraded. He does not preach directly from the scriptures so why can't he just drop that idea altogether. If he had the guts to say, "God made them the way they are and loves them just the same" I might have a bit more respect for him.

But at the beginning of each sermon he says, "Hold up your Bible, let's say it like we mean it...
This is my Bible
I am what it says I am
I have what it says I have
I can do what it says I can do
Today I will be taught the word of God
I boldly confess, my mind is alert
My heart is receptive
I will never be the same
I am about to receive
The incorruptible, the indestructible, everliving seed
Of the word of God
I'll never be the same"

Yes I know it's never going to appeal to me as an atheist, but it also doesn't fit in with his preaching style, or his ducking of the question on homosexuality. It gives no indication that he is happy to ignore Leviticus, that he doesn't set much store in Jesus' command to leave all you own and follow me, that apparently God rewards the good on earth and that for true believers God is happy to meddle in all sorts of things.

An example of his preaching. Don't get cross when things go wrong. Sometimes God has set it up to help you or someone else. His wife lost her credit card. She phoned to cancel it. The women in the call centre was intending to leave her husband that day. She recognised her preacher's wife's name and they ended up on the phone for 30 minutes after which the employee decided to give her mariiage another go. When she put down the phone the wife found her credit card wasn't lost at all - it was just underneath her bag! Pesky God. It was obviously necessary to save the fragile marriage of a call centre employee with this trick. And I guess she would need a husband once the extra long call was played back for training pruposes, because she'd have lost her job.

Does make me wonder why God doesn't worry about saving all the other marriages out there that fail. Perhaps they are not good enough people? Like when God saves some people from dying because other people pray so hard for them, but sometimes He decides to call them home. Irregardless :) Maybe the people he saves ae less interesting.

One of the big reasons I like you Griff.

SPLEEN!!!

Are you baiting me, woman?

Moi?
Nah - just testing your irregardless monitor...

aheh. Well, I don't exactly approve of his stand on homosexuality either. But it's a damn sight better than a lot of what gets preached on that subject. He's clearly walking quite a fine line on it, but his reluctance to actually make statements (avoiding the question in most cases apparently) suggests he isn't part of the hate brigade. A definate step up :p