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Go Air Travels Suite 500, 35 East Seventh Street, Cincinnati OH · +1 (513) 744-0219

Step four of four, above 2.20 hours of road for every night

Book a drive from Cincinnati where the road is half the trip, and reserve the two nights that close it

Four stays sit in this step. Each is two nights long, and each asks between 4.61 and 5.74 hours behind the wheel before the first night begins. Go Air Travels puts that division in front of a reader rather than behind one.

Nothing is held here until the office has written back and you have said yes to what it wrote. No part of a stay is ever paid for through these pages.

Two nights against a road that runs most of the way to another state

The figure beside every entry is one division: measured hours of driving divided by nights reserved. Under 2.20 the stay still outweighs the road. Over it, the driving stops being the way in and becomes a part of the trip on its own account. All four stays here run two nights, so the division is steep by construction.

Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio opens the step at 237.6 miles and 4.61 hours of road, which is 2.31 hours for each of the two nights. Cleveland is 251.6 miles and 4.87 hours, or 2.44 a night. The Detroit riverfront is 260.9 miles and 5.00 hours, or 2.50. Pittsburgh closes the step and the whole list at 288.6 miles and 5.74 hours, which is 2.87 hours of road for every night in the room.

Two of the four are inside Ohio, which surprises people who read the step as a list of distant places. Distance from Cincinnati is not the same thing as distance from home, and the road north runs the length of the state before it stops.

Who reserves out of the fourth step

This step fits a reader with two nights already fixed and one place actually wanted, rather than two nights and an open question. The driving is accepted in advance here, not discovered in the second half of the drive.

It also fits two drivers who trade the wheel, or a household that leaves early on a Friday instead of after work. A road of this length reads differently when it is split between two people in daylight.

With four or five nights free, the same road divides into more nights and the figure falls. Those pairings sit higher up the list, and the office will say so plainly if a note asks for a longer stay.

How this step parts from the one below it

The line between them is 2.20 hours of road a night. Below it the driving is most of a day and the stay still carries the trip. Above it the driving is half of what was bought. Nothing else changes between the two steps: the same measuring, the same two columns, the same list.

A place does not belong to a step. The division moves with the nights, so Pittsburgh at two nights sits at the bottom of the list, while the same 5.74 hours spread over five nights would land in the first step, where the road barely weighs. What this step measures is the pairing of a place and a number of nights, and for these four the pairing is two.

None of that ranks the steps against each other. A reader with two nights and a fixed idea of Cleveland is served by this step. A reader with two nights and no fixed idea is served by the top of the list, where a short road is spread over a stay that lasts.

Why the office prints the division instead of burying it

A stay can read well on a page and still be a poor use of two days, and the simple way to hide that is to print a distance and stop there. Mileage says nothing about how much of a short trip is spent in the driver's seat. The division says it in one figure.

Printing it in front of a reservation costs this office some reservations, which is the intended effect. Somebody who reads 2.87 and books anyway is not going to write afterward to say that the drive was longer than expected. The complaint that never arrives is the whole reason the number sits above the price.

The office is narrow on purpose. It reserves beds at the other end of a road it has measured, from this city, and it arranges none of the moving itself. The car is the reader's own, and the figures above are the only claim being made about it.

The hatched square beside each figure counts the steps of the axis: one line is a road that barely weighs, four is a road that is half the trip.

Start with the number of nights

Tell the office how many nights you have. Everything else follows from that number, including whether the drive is worth making at all.

A first enquiry is answered inside one working day. A question about a stay already reserved is answered the same day it arrives. A change of dates takes longer, because the far end has to answer first.

What you type here reaches one mailbox and stays there. It is not sold, not merged with anything, and not used to reach you about something you did not ask about.