You just can’t make this stuff up. Our shinny new hotel was raided yesterday

So yesterday I blogged about finding this Oasis of a hotel actually called The Oasis. It’s a brand new and very comfortable resort outside the city of Montgomery.

The plan was to take a day off from cycling and work and rest our legs. I didn’t even leave my hotel room until after our auction ended around 1 pm. After that I was heading downstairs to Starbucks to get a coffee.

As soon as I came out of the elevator, David came running towards me saying, “Go pack, we have to get out of here. We are all being kicked out.” I look around and people are running in all different directions.

There’s a time to ask questions and this wasn’t it. I went up to my room, grabbed my camera and packed. I couldn’t have been up there more than ten minutes or so.

As soon as I got back down the place was a ghost town.

All but one of the doors had been chained and the turnstile was blocked with furniture.

We were told that anyone on the property was subject to arrest. I suppose David’s television interview can explain it the best.

Good things can happen to good people. Lost in the woods, we found an Oasis

There’s an app for that. Right? Well, as a loyal iPhone fan I’ve been navigating mine and David’s journey to New Orleans with my smart phone. Between the map app and an app from mapmyride.com everything had been going smooth…. until today.

What I’ve been doing is using the map app and having it set to walking directions, figuring that it would show me the shortest route.

Problem number 1 - David and I were both so busy with work that we didn’t even get started today until noon. That was after getting up at 5 am to start working. We had 47 miles to go before dark.

Problem number 2 - I didn’t think about the fact that the walking directions might include dirt roads.

Problem number 3 - We decided to take the dirt road and go for it. Only, I didn’t think about the fact my phone might have no signal thus making the map app completely worthless. Duh!

Fortunately, we kept going in the right direction but we were making very slow progress.

We found ourselves with the sun setting and we were still 10 miles from a Holiday Inn Express which I had found on the net earlier that morning.

Get this. We turned the corner and low an behold, a brand new multi-million dollar resort complex aptly named The Oasis.

Absolutely shocking. Now I’m going to the restaurant to have a nice meal then get back to work.

See? Good things can happen to good people.

Sweet Home Alabama - Three days down

So David and I have now completed three days of the cycling trip from Atlanta to New Orleans for Domainer Mardigras.

Yesterday was so brutal that I’m just now getting this post up, and we still have to ride another 50 miles today to Montgomery.

Thankfully, the weather will be terrible tomorrow. That means we can sit in a hotel room and work and rest.

So far, things have gone smoothly. David had a flat on his front tire but he was able to fix it quickly.

It’s funny how the human body works. We are all capable of doing so much more than we think we can. It’s our minds that hold us back. Yesterday we had to go 47 miles on rolling hills and were convinced that we wouldn’t make it 30 miles in our shape. Yet, we rolled into the hotel an hour before sunset, albeit completely exhausted.

Oh, hat’s off to 5-hour energy drinks. I couldn’t have made it without those little bottles of joy. I’m sure they got me through the last 10 miles.

Who knew that north Georgia to the coast was all uphill?

Either I’ve been riding a bike for two days or David snuck into my room last night. I feel like I’ve been sitting on the curved handle of an umbrella for a week straight.

Today while we surely lost altitude, regardless of my post title, it felt like an endless climb. Every time we went downhill, there was an relentless climb that followed. Next time someone tells me, “the rolling hills are beautiful”, they are going to get an talking to.

Somewhere along the line I realized that having headphones were a bad idea. I guess it is important to hear the sounds of the cars or your companion yelling, “look out!” So, I decided to invent my own handsfree system. As you can see in this photo, the iPhone fits nicely between my helmet and my face.

I know it sounds like I’m complaining but it really isn’t that bad. It’s hard while you are riding but only while you are riding. After all, this is credit card touring. At least I can take a shower at night, eat at a restaurant and sleep in a bed. On Kilimanjaro its freezing in a sleeping bag time.

I would type more but I have to get back to answering emails. I don’t think I’m going to be awake much longer. I just had to get up to get my remote control and it almost broke me.

You can read the first part of this series here.

I ride for domains, I ride for clean water but mostly, I ride for me

Sunday morning David Clements and I went on a bicycle ride. Our journey will take us from Atlanta to New Orleans for Domainer Mardigras.

While that may not sound like a lot to those of you in peak physical condition, it’s a heck of a journey for two middle-aged, over-weight guys like us.

Keep in mind, we are doing this while running an auction. I justify this because I know that I’ll work just as many hours and I’ll have David by my side and we can work on deals together for the next week and a half. Hopefully, this journey will also bring more attention to our cause.

The thinking is that we don’t have to get to New Orleans for another ten days. So, rather than killing ourselves it is basically just three or four hours a day of riding and the rest of the time working from cheap hotel rooms.

All I know is that I have to get my butt up that mountain on March 1st so its the best thing I can think of to drop weight and make my legs stronger, in a hurry.

Day one has gone something like this:

10:06 am - Left my house and dodged traffic for 45 minutes trying to get out of town.

11:00 am first break at Waffle House. Stayed there for an hour and a half emailing people trying to get them to buy domains from our auction.

12:30 pm - It’s about 32 degrees fahrenheit now (0 degree celsius). We decide since it is Sunday we are going to put as many miles behind us as we can. Bring on the pain.

1:30 pm - I get a call back from a potential buyer of LongIsland.com. We pull over and I do my thing for 45 minutes.

2:00 pm  - We are still in Atlanta, by the airport. I take the opportunity to ponder why I didn’t bring a more powerful weapon. We are in south Atlanta and nowhere near our first night goal.I realize that it is going to be a very long week. We start peddling again.

4:00 pm - David is on the phone now with a prospect on camsex.com. I really needed the break.

6:00 pm - We pull into our hotel in Newnan, Georgia. We rode 44 miles our fist day, left a big city and north Georgia where there are a lot of hills. Took a lot of breaks but hey, it’s a job.

I compare this trip to actually climbing the mountain except that I feel like the first day was the summit.

8:30 pm - I’m tired and going to bed. I need to get up early and work for 5 hours before starting out again tomorrow.

Here’s a link to day two

Hard Rock Drops Room Rates Again

After reading a post on Domain Shane’s blog about him finding a room at The Hard Rock for only $64 per night, we immediately called our contacts there.

Even if you have already booked your room, they will lower your rate, again. We didn’t get them down to $64 per night but we did get them agree to lower the rate on the rooms of all of our guests to $69 per night, even if they have already booked and paid for their room.

When you get to Vegas this week, make sure you check what they are charging you. Refuse to pay more than $69 per night. Find someone from TRAFFIC or Latona’s Auction if they give you any slack about it.

Hard Rock drops room rates for TRAFFIC attendees

After an intense round of negotiating, we’ve gotten the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas to drop the room rates for our attendees down to only $99 per night. The cut off date for getting that rate is January 11th.

Even if you have already booked your room, they will lower your rate. If you have already booked your room, drop me an email and I will personally make sure you aren’t over charged.

Hopefully this will help those who may have planned at staying at a lesser hotel.

Who do you want to meet in the domain business? Let TRAFFIC arrange it for you

A couple of weeks ago, I sat with my team in the conference room and called most of our top customers, polling them on why they would choose one trade show over another.

The overwhelming majority chose networking opportunities as their number 1 reason. That’s great news because I can make a difference here.

For one thing, if you look at the schedule of events on T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s website you’ll notice the first day of our Vegas show is front loaded with networking events.

Between networking event 1 and event 2 (speed networking) and our opening night cocktail party, we hope that most of you will know each other already over days 2 and 3 so  you have a chance to talk real business.

This also brings me to our new campaign. If you have someone you would like to meet, I will personally setup an introduction. Just take a moment to fill out the form in this banner. Note, I also have one of these banners running on dnforum.com (in the threads), elliotsblog.com and dnjournal.com (if it isn’t up yet it will be soon).

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Glaciers disappearing from Kilimanjaro - CNN.com headline, why it matters

*In this image you can see how far back the glaciers were from the summit I was standing on.

As I type this; there is an article headlining the home page of cnn.com. It’s titled “Glaciers disappearing from Kilimanjaro“.

I can tell you that from my own experience, the guides on my journey had all said they could tell the ice was going away.

It seems appropriate to remind all domainers of our upcoming Kili2010 trip. Around 30 of us have already committed to climbing the tallest summit in Africa in an effort to help bring water to those in need.

In 20 years there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. Let me know or visit Kili2010 to join the effort.

Kili2010 - Climb Kilimanjaro with top domainers and help provide clean water for those in need

We are happy to announce the launch of Kili2010.com, a website about our March 2010 climb of Mount Kilimanjaro.

As previously written, a bunch of us are going to climb that big rock right before the Nairobi ICANN meeting. We are doing it for the exercise and experience but mostly to help bring clean water for those in need.

It would be great if you could join us. Yes you.

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