Packed Weekend!

What a weekend! Ivy and I had an action packed Memorial Day weekend! I was on call, so I couldn't go far. Luckily Ivy and I were able to find things to do close to Columbus. The farthest we went was 80 miles to Kings Island (near Cincinnati). Initially I had thought about going to Great Smoky Mountains or Chicago, but they were too far. The whole weekend was pretty humid. We were sweating so much that we got pretty sticky the whole time. At King's Island we had to buy those big-gulp 42 oz. souvenir cups because they let you get refills for $2 with those cups. Guess what, with both of us sharing one cup, we went through the equivalent of 3 fills!

Here's the weekend breakdown:

Ivy arrived to Columbus late Saturday morning after I went out for a bike ride. For lunch we went to Benihana! Yeah, Columbus finally has a Benihana. It opened about 2 months ago. They don't have much business though as the restaurant was almost empty, but at least their sushi was just like the one in LA. Their lunch boat seemed bigger than LA for less than $10.

After lunch we went for a short visit at the Specialized bike demo at a local mountain bike trail. It looks like Specialized puts out these demos across the country as they travel in a truck and trailer. We only browsed for a few minutes before heading to see an RC airplane competition near by. The planes were huge in person, but so small in the air! The RC pilots got some skills too and did a few acrobatic tricks.

Later we stopped at the 15th annual Asian Festival at Franklin Park. The whole event was free with music and stuff. The music wasn't great and the boutiques sold pretty cheap looking stuff. They got a lot of foods there, but we decided to eat dinner elsewhere.

In the evening we spent a few minutes at a free concert at a city called Gahanna. We didn't stay cus they were playing country music, which both of us don't like. We then decided to go see the Star Trek movie. It was a pretty awesome movie!

Sunday morning I got up bright and early (6:30 am) for a 20 mile bike ride. Not a lot of people riding that morning, but other riders say "hi" when passing. At about 11am we arrived at King's Island! Memorial Sunday was filled with events at the theme park because it's the beginning of their "summer" season. There's a new roller coaster ride called Diamondback. They also had a BMX competition in which Sunday was the finals day. There was also a motocross acrobatics demo. But...the main event of the day was the Collective Soul concert!!! They threw in an extra concert by Pop Evil, but it's obvious everyone wants to see Collective Soul. Collective Soul played all of their hit songs and also a couple from their new album. We were sitting pretty close up to the left, but we were also in front of the speakers. It was so loud that my camera couldn't pick up the audio when I recorded videos. The day at King's Island ended with extended firework show and 3 pyrotechnic skydivers. The ticket for the theme park, including the concerts, was just $33 per person! That's so cheap compared to $70 per person at Disneyland. We didn't get back to Columbus until almost 1am.

On Memorial Day we basically slept in. I decided to skip riding my bike for a day. All we did was just visit the OSU campus. For lunch we had $6 Chinese buffet. The food was great and the restaurant was filled with people. I think Ivy over-stuffed herself cus she felt nauseous afterwards. She skipped dinner since she was flying back to LA.

So that's my 3-day Memorial weekend. In about 10 days it'll be my turn to visit LA. I am also 32 days away from my road trip back to LA! I've already booked my hotels at Kansas City, KS and Grand Junction, CO. We'll pass by St. Louis, Denver and Las Vegas. It'll be a straight shot with maybe short stops at the big cities.