A Towncar Whisked Me Back Home

Last night a towncar whisked me away from the Ritz Carlton at Battery Park, one of New York’s finest hotels, right on the tip of Manhattan. Before the car came I went out on the terrace and drank in the million dollar view, a sweep that including a dark Statue of Liberty and the buildings of Hoboken, with speedy ferries zipping between the New Jersey coast and the port at the end of the city.

I was there at the top floor of the hotel to join Travel Ad Network’s staff after finishing a day-long publisher’s conference with the agency. Over the years I’ve spent as a web publisher, one thing has become the clearest: face time means a lot and relationships are still the glue that holds things all together.

Many websites only offer a sterile comment box if you want to reach them. They hide behind their html and act like they’re not run by people but by robots who can only answer you if you dutifully type messages into a box. Not us. We feature phones, photos of our building and answer you like real people. The Travel Ad people too, are humans who I can call up and speak to, they’re not like Google ad sense where the only way to reach them is by email.

As the towncar took us up to Westchester and we sank into the soft leather seats, closing our eyes after a night of schmoozing, I felt content, and happy that I made this trip down to New York, and happy too, to be returning to my New England village.