I am sure most of you have figured out that I’m just your average guy.  I live in Po-dunk nowhere and my family is my life.  I have never been to a big city or anywhere really fancy.  I am just Joe Schmo down the block.  Having that in mind you can only imagine the culture shock this average Joe felt while visiting New York City for the BlogHer 12 Conference.

NYC might as well be a completely different country.  The people there are unlike anyone I have ever encountered.  I got such crazy looks just from saying thank you to someone who held the door for my wife and I.  Now I have got to believe everyone in the city isn’t like that.  I don’t know if it is my need to try and see the best in people but I still have to believe it.  I just have never seen a mass of people more angry, frustrated, and in such a damn hurry in my entire life.

The drive from our house to NYC actually wasn’t too bad.  That is until we got to the Lincoln Tunnel!  We were making decent time and reached the tunnel about 7 hours deep into the trip.  Now, the Lincoln Tunnel is about 6 blocks or so from where we were staying and I was dying to get out of the car.  Little did I know that I was still a long way off from being able to exit the vehicle.  I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it took over an hour and a half to go six freaking blocks to the hotel.

After almost 9 hours in the car, I was finally able park the car in the garage and get the hell out of the car.  The only problem was that we had tons of stuff we had to get from the garage to the hotel.  My wife and I are pretty intelligent people so we were able to maneuver everything  just right so that we didn’t need an extra trip.

We stayed at the Hilton in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.  It is actually the same place the conference was being held and it was centralized enough that we could get to anywhere we needed to be fairly quickly.   At first glance the hotel looked pretty nice.  It is too bad looks can be deceiving!

We got up to our room and we were hit by an immediate burst of hot humid air.  It has been my experience that when you check into a place, you just need to go over and crank up the a/c and you will be good to go.  I cranked it up all the way to 65 degrees and played the waiting game.  The room NEVER  cooled off!  Five days and it never cooled off at all.  I have never been to a place more humid than NYC.  Not only did we deal with that but the wallpaper was peeling off the wall and there was no coffee pot.  I have stayed in really crappy motels and they even have one of those 4 cup coffee makers.  Not the 4 star Hilton in NYC.  It definitely couldn’t be a 4 star out of a possible 5 because it seemed like 4 out of 100.

I could go on and on about how rude the people were and how traffic laws don’t mean anything, but I won’t.  I don’t want to overwhelm you with my pure hatred of NYC.  The good thing is that I got to meet a ton of wonderful bloggers and brands.  I made business contacts and friends that I will have for life.  In retrospect I guess it was worth the hassle of the city.  Although I probably won’t do it again, I am at least glad I did this time.