Day One, Cincinnati OH: Setting Forth

The long-awaited trip has finally begun. I’ve known that I wanted to take this trip for the last year. It’s a little odd that things have finally progressed from the planning stage to the execution stage. The last six weeks have been an epic whirlwind of packing, gathering things, reading up on equipment and places to go, and making other arrangements. So I’m a little tired. But now this is starting to feel like a vacation again.

Today I drove down to Cincinnati. I plan on staying here for a few days with some family, while stuffing myself full of Skyline Chili. To some people such as myself, Skyline is the kind of thing you make a special trip to another state for. Others find it not as amazing, but I’m not going to single anybody out. That said, Google has located a Skyline in Monroe, MI, so it appears that there is, finally, a glacial-speed advance northward.

So, some web things to draw your attention to. If you scroll down, you’ll see a bunch of interesting gizmos on the sidebar, located on the right side of your page. The “Followers” allow me to see who is reading the site. Besides, you get to be a member of something, and that is almost always fun. As I’ve mentioned before, you can log in with either a Google, AIM, or Yahoo! account. If, after doing so, you still don’t see yourself in the sidebar, you need to go to settings and select ‘follow publicly.’ There really is no good reason to secretly follow along, but I believe ‘private’ is the default setting.

If you want to get email updates whenever I post something, (which I hope will be every day or two), you’ll have to sign up in the form directly below that. Do note that immediately after you sign up, you will receive an email which will contain a verification link. Sometimes this gets sent to your spam folder, so check that, or you will be left out. When I make a post, you’ll receive an email the next morning with a shortened version of the post. It will be like a newspaper, but in your inbox, and for free.

Next, you’ve got the Google Latitude gadget. This tells you where I am, as long as I’ve got it activated through my phone. So if I’m driving, you’ll be able to watch me meander through your screen. It might be a little strange at first, but I think we’ll all get used to it. Also, you can follow me on Twitter. I suppose this will be useful if you just can’t wait until I make a post to see what I’m up to. But I wouldn’t consider it must-see, exclusive content and since I’m not going to be Tweeting every eight seconds, I’m not sure how it won’t be redundant.

With that out of the way, let me just say thank you to all of you who have listened to me talk about this trip, helped me plan it, and are now following it. It’s  a pretty cool thing and I really appreciate it. Keep sending links to your friends and posting the site on Facebook, or anywhere else that you see fit. I expect that the more people are reading, commenting, and following, the more fun everyone will have.