I arrived in Madison and headed off to pick up my car. \u00a0Unfortunately there is no Emerald Aisle at Madison so it meant that I was at the whim of the staff as to what I was going to end up with. \u00a0The bags were not even close to rolling when I reached the area and the car counters were right there, so I got my keys first and was handed the keys to a Chevy Equinox. \u00a0Considering I was hoping for something like that for a week so I had some space, guess it worked out ok. \u00a0As I turned around the bags were rolling and I had my bag in hand quickly and out to the car. \u00a0But I got lost in the car park trying to find where I was meant to be going (I should pay more attention to the directions).<\/p>\n
One the flight coming in I had noticed FiFi the B-29 on the ground on the opposite side of the airport and the ladies at the National Counter had given me directions to that side of the airport. \u00a0So that is where I was headed, I got around to the far side and there wasn’t all that much of a crowd which was good. \u00a0What was dissapointing though was they wanted $15 just to walk up near it, let alone get in it, and then the line to get near it was huge. \u00a0With no real cash on me, I just gave in and walk around the fence line, since I knew it would be at OshKosh later in the week. \u00a0I bode my time!<\/p>\n
I headed into the city via the nearest Walmart to pick up the chair that I was suggested to buy and a slab of water for the week. \u00a0The hotel I was staying at was right in the middle of downtown and it was an easy find via the GPS. \u00a0I was heading to the Doubletree by Hilton Madison. \u00a0When I arrived I had to wait for the hotel shuttle to stop blocking the driveway so I could stop blocking the street and once that happened I was able to park the car briefly. \u00a0Checked in nice and simply and my status was not mentioned and if I had of not mentioned it, I doubt I would of gotten any of the benefits. \u00a0I had been “upgraded” to a Deluxe room, which is really just a normal room but on the top floor (her own words). \u00a0Can’t complain to much I guess. \u00a0With check in completed I was handed the Doubletree Cookie. \u00a0It was warm which was wierd as the staff had pulled it out of a draw (turns out the draws are warmers and they are baked in the morning and kept warm all day). \u00a0I was handed some parking tokens and I put my car away for the moment.<\/p>\n
The room was not to bad, for a standard hotel room. \u00a0Clean, efficient and nothing to complain about. \u00a0Crabtree & Evelyn products in the bathroom and nothing at all to complain about really. \u00a0Pictures should do the talking but there was a distinct lack of outlets around the bedside (as expected), \u00a0I counted 1. \u00a0After a quick settle in the plan was to walk into town and just explore a little, get a coffee to keep me going (since I had been up since very early) and then possibly just chill out for a bit. \u00a0I got some directions at the front desk and off I went to the State Capitol and a few other places.<\/p>\n
After some exploring and some chilling out I headed out for a dinner to a place that was close to the hotel that apparently served fantastic burgers and I was up for some goodness. \u00a0Dotty Dumplings Dowry apparently serves the best burgers in town and it was less than 2 blocks from my hotel. \u00a0Score! \u00a0I walked over and it was \u00a0nice quiet bar kinda atmosphere and when I walked in, was told that there would be a wait for a table, as soon as I said “Bar?” “You can go right over” was the reponse. \u00a0Love it! \u00a0You get the same menu and I can sit and enjoy it. \u00a0Funnily enough as I was sitting down one of the other people at the bar cleared some space for someone else and it turned out to be the owner! \u00a0Funny. \u00a0I was starting to crash out a bit by now so just took it easy and enjoyed my burger. \u00a0I had the Alumni Burger which was really just an awesome Cheeseburger. \u00a0Prices weren’t bad and it was a good simple, easy, tasty cheeseburger.. What’s not to like?<\/p>\n
I had seen on the drive into town a really weird looking place that was meant to be an ice cream parlour so that is where I headed for dessert and it was a unique experience to say the least. \u00a0Ella’s Deli was a bit out of town (almost back out to the airport) and it had the most undescribeable eclectic decor inside. \u00a0On the outside it was 50s diner, meets carnival (including Carousel). \u00a0Famous for their Grilled Pound Cake sundae, that’s what I went with. \u00a0But it was pretty generic and nothing at all special. \u00a0BIG dissapointment. \u00a0Headed back to the hotel pretty unsatisfied with that part of the adventure, ended up crashing out half way through a video. \u00a0Sad sad end to the day.<\/p>\n
Sunday 28th July 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n I woke up pretty well rested and since I couldn’t sleep as long as I had wanted to as probably had to much energy, I hit the gym for a big workout. \u00a09.2 miles on the bike, a mile run and that should do me right? \u00a0Well not really, some ab exercises thrown into the mix as well. \u00a0Right at that moment all I wanted was to burn off some of the crap from last night and expend some energy and damn sure that is what I did. \u00a0What was good for me though was the fact that I had breakfast at the hotel, so I could at least get some coffee into me prior to hitting the road. \u00a0Breakfast was in the hotel’s restaurant\/sports bar and it was a pretty simple affair. \u00a0I wasn’t expecting much but as long as they had plenty of fresh fruit and coffee, I would be sorted. \u00a0I was not dissapointed as I was given the entire pot of coffee.<\/p>\n With breakfast out of the way and my route out of town planned I packed up my gear, into the car and checked out. \u00a0I mentioned that the cookies were great to reception as I was leaving and she handed me a couple more for the road. \u00a0AWESOME! \u00a0I settled in for a good drive out of town, I had about an hour and a half up to the hotel where I would drop off my stuff before another 20 minutes to get up to OshKosh from there. \u00a0Sadly it was on this drive that things didn’t go to plan.<\/p>\n About 10 Miles out of Madison I got a tire pressure warning. \u00a0I figured one of the tires must of been under inflated by the car rental office, so as soon as I found the nearest gas station I would pull in, get some air in the tire and keep on going. \u00a0Sadly no. \u00a0The nearest gas station was another 10 miles past where the warning came on, but after paying to put air into the tires (not free… wtf!) the warning wouldn’t go off. \u00a0I even tried inflating with the car running to see if it was just not enough air and the gauge on the pump was wrong. \u00a0Nope that wasn’t it either. \u00a0So I called up National as I didn’t want to drive all the way to OshKosh and find out that the problem got worse as I would then be without a car (nearest offices are Madison or Green Bay). \u00a0They told me I should start heading back to Madison to switch the car out. \u00a0So that’s what I did.<\/p>\n When I got back to Madison airport (only depot open on a Sunday), they told me I should of been instructed to fill the car first (even though I was swapping out a faulty car wtf!) so I had to redrive the 2 miles I had just driven in, back to the nearest Gas station. \u00a0#FAIL! \u00a0Filling up the car cost me a further $10 and when I got back I wanted to make sure I had a decent car. \u00a0Again they gave me another Equinox, but this one had 1\/4 of the miles of the other one, and was more pimped out with Leather seats. \u00a0After transffering all my gear between the cars (and making the National staff come get the keys of the old vehicle as I wasn’t wasting any more of my morning) 2 hours after I set off for Osh originally, I was this time, really on the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I arrived in Madison and headed off to pick up my car. \u00a0Unfortunately there is no Emerald Aisle at Madison so it meant that I was at the whim of the staff as to what I was going to end up with. \u00a0The bags were not even close to rolling when I reached the area […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,8,1,30,18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-spotting","category-expat","category-life-in-general","category-oshkosh-2013","category-travelling","category-tripreports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49RU0-111","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3909,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions\/3909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}