Saturday was my day, and we started it off by sleeping in and then having waffles. Having fortified ourselves, I took a nap (Senior Trip really wore me out) before heading over to the nearby Kendall Lake in the Virginia Kendall Park. I have run around Kendall Lake before, but there was a trail there I had never taken before called Salt Run, which is the name of a stream that runs through the area. I wanted to hike the trail, which is about 3.5 miles long.

It was a pretty trail with lots of trees and undergrowth. The undergrowth changed depending on terrain. The trail started out on high ground, and there were wild flowers there. It then dropped quite a distance, and the plants changed to low-growing plants that like moisture. The hike was challenging in that it was quite hilly, but we took our time and enjoyed it. It was a pretty hike, although one without any spectacular views or areas.

Later in the day we headed up to Hudson, to go to a goodbye party for a young man who graduated CVCA last year. Nate is in the National Guard while in college, and this summer is his basic training for the army. His family decided to give him a going-away party, which was fairly small, but we were still invited.

It was a good time. It was sunny, but cool, so we tried to sit in the shade. The surprise of the day was that a Norwegian exchange student who had been in my Connections group three years ago was visiting the US, and he was at Nate’s party. That was pretty unexpected. Mer and I ate too much and sat around and chatted with Nate and Tor and Nate’s dad for almost two hours. We then went home with the intent of going back out to see a play, but I was not feeling well, so we stayed home instead.

On Sunday, I slept in again. I woke up before my alarm was to go off, and I still did not feel well, so I decided to skip church and sleep. That seemed to work because I felt much better when I woke up three hours later.

In the evening was CVCA’s graduation ceremony. It is fun to see the seniors one more time, and I like sitting with my colleagues. This year, Mer had a small reading part in the ceremony toward the end, so she sat right down front, so we did not get to sit together. The ceremony was pleasant, and was more or less similar to past graduations. It is a slightly weird thing to have attended nine of these things in the last ten years – it is hard to imagine that so much time has passed.

After graduation, we met up with Zach and Londa and agreed to go have a late supper at the Cheesecake Factory. We drove our separate cars to our house, and then took Zach and Londa’s car to the restaurant so we could talk along the way. I love Zach and Londa, so the company was most welcome. The food was good, although my stomach was still in the last grasp of the mess that Senior Trip had made of it, so I only ate a few (very salty) fries and only a little of my dessert. Don’t worry – the dessert went home with me.

Friday was the last day of Senior Trip. We had to have eaten, cleaned the cabin, and be packed and ready to go by 8:30, with the goal of being on the road by 9:00. I think it was closer to 9:30 before the buses actually left, but that was fine. One of the guys in the cabin managed to get up early enough to make breakfast for the cabin. I passed on it since I had been queasy the night before, and I opted for a hot chocolate from the lodge, and later a breakfast sandwich from Subway.

Students had the option to head home, got to Put-in-Bay, or go to Cedar Point. All but about twelve students picked Cedar Point, so that is were Mer and I headed as chaperons. I drove myself, and Mer went on the bus. We met up in the parking lot around 10:30 or so. It was really windy and cold – Mer asked for her winter coat and I dug out more shirts to put on. I’m guessing it was in the high forties and very windy.

Mer and I made the decision to hang out with five students whom we know pretty well. We figured that since it was Senior Trip, we should be happy and flattered that seniors wanted to hang out with us. The park was stunningly crowded, so we did not get on too many rides during the trip. Some coasters that usually are more or less walk-on coasters had thirty-minute wait times. We rode three coasters and the racing carousel (I beat Mer in the race), and then Mer and I went to meet the other chaperons at Famous Dave’s barbeque restaurant. We had never been there before, and we were happy to find a non-chain restaurant in which to eat. We had a great meal with six male teachers, and it was much fun. We had agreed to meet the girls again to ride the Magnum at 3:30, so we left the guys still at the table to go back into the park.

Sadly, the Magnum was closed for some reason (it opened later), so we got in line for the Gemini coaster, which is usually a racing coaster with two tracks and two trains. For some reason, only one train was running, but it is still a fun coaster. We finished the evening off by watching the girls ride a spinning ride (Mer and I no longer like spinning rides). We then all headed back to the buses, where I left Mer to go back to my car. I had a dull ride home, and Mer got home about forty-five minutes later. I went to bed soon after (Mer stayed up to grade a little), where I proceeded to sleep for thirteen hours. I guess I was a little tired.

I woke up at 7:00 or so, which was amazing considering that I did not fall asleep until 2:00. One of the other guys was already up, starting to get breakfast ready (the cabin was responsible for one breakfast and one lunch on day two). I went out onto the enclosed porch to do my morning devotions, and I was joined there by another student. We talked some – he is about to head off to Taiwan until Christmas, so we had some good discussions about travel.

Maumee Bay has an amazing boardwalk walk though the woods and a marsh, and there was a scheduled nature walk there at 9:00. I wandered over there and waited for a few minutes, until I was eventually joined by three other chaperons and three girls. That was not surprising, since most students were still waking up, and a group of seven was a good size for the walk. The boardwalk is about a mile long, in a loop, and it goes out to an observation tower in a marsh at one end, which is a very pretty spot. We saw a ton of birds and about a half dozen deer along the walk, and Booch and I got to chatting for much of the walk. It was a quiet way to start the day.

I headed back to the cabin, to arrive just in time for a breakfast of pancakes and eggs. It was good, but a bit light on fare (there were six teenaged guys in the cabin, after all), so after breakfast I headed to the lodge with Mer, where I bought a hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll. We wandered over to the edge of the bay, where I ate the food fairly quickly because of the cool temperatures and the strong wind. We headed back to the cabins to make sure we could be ready for the afternoon activities – students could have free time, or go paint-balling, or go to the Toledo Zoo (Mer and I were going to the zoo).

I got back to the cabin and had time to make chocolate peanut butter bars for the guys. I had brought along the (simple) ingredients, and I wanted to do something nice. I whipped those together in about twenty-five minutes, and then I headed back to the lodge so I could get ready for the zoo trip.

The zoo trip was mostly fun. Toledo’s zoo is really modern and well designed, and we saw pretty active hippos, seals, polar bears, and otters. We saw lounging tigers and snow leopards and wolves, and saw super active and entertaining leaping and jumping lemurs. The only downside was the weather – it kept trying to rain, and when it finally did rain for about fifteen minutes, the temperature dropped quickly, and a strong wind sprang up. I was not dressed for that in a t-shirt and shorts, and I finally told Mer I was miserable, and I retreated to the main gift store, where it was warm and I could get a hot chocolate. Mer joined me a few minutes later, and we got some cookies and brownies for the trip back.

Once back in the cabin, I crashed in bed for over an hour just to get warm again. I don’t think I slept any, but at least I got warm. We again had a dinner at the lodge, and this one was (sort of) formal – no jeans or t-shirts. I sat with my cabin, and we had a good meal and a good time. After supper, we heard from two more speakers – LT Newland and Rick Lyons. I’m afraid I did not process much of what they had to say, as my poor sleeping and eating caught up with me and I started feeling a little ill; I even had to spend a fair amount of time in the restroom during Rick’s talk.

After the speakers were done, the tradition of “senior share night” continued. Each year, we open the microphone up for any senior who wants to say something positive. This year, about twenty-five students spoke for about an hour total, and it surprised me that about a third of them were members of my Royal Fools improv club. Some of the seniors were silly, but most were genuine. The only thing I would have liked to see were some more specifics – it means more to thank individuals than entire groups, but that is the way of it some years. It went well, and that is what matters.

The seniors had free time until curfew at 12:30, and I played a student, Skyler, in racquetball. I used to love racquetball, but it had been at least twelve years since I had played, and it showed as I blew shots and misjudged the ball. Skyler built up a five- or six-point lead before easing off a bit, and that gave me time to come back. I eventually won, 21-19, but I have no doubt that Skyler could have beaten me if he had wanted to.

After the game, I went back to the cabin and showered and waited for the guys to get home. They were all in the cabin on time, but then stayed up until about 2:00. Since the walls of the cabin are thin, I was up until 2:00 as well, but that was okay, as I knew I’d be back in my own bed Friday evening.

At the end of each year, CVCA sends seniors and about twenty chaperons off for a few days on Senior Trip, a trip designed to bring the class together one last time, celebrate their impending graduation, enjoy general fun and goofing off, and take an opportunity to help the students with some good advice about their futures and their faith as they move ahead apart from the fairly protected environment of CVCA. This year, Senior Trip went to Maumee Bay State Park near Toledo, which is a beautiful state beach and associated lodge, resort, and cabins.

I drove Mer’s car to Maumee Bay; we both find it useful to have a car on site, and school bus seats destroy my back if I have to be on them more than an hour (it is about a two-hour drive). I got to the beach side of the park, where everyone was going to meet, and I beat the buses there, although the school vans were already there. The buses showed up about fifteen minutes later. We all assembled in the handy amphitheater for a general welcome session, at which team shirts were handed out (cabins were organized into informal teams of twenty students), and general rules were gone over; the gist was “have fun, but behave yourself.”

Since the CVCA chaperons were supposed to provide a grilled lunch and the grill had shown up late, we kicked in Plan B, which took the form of a tug-of-war contest on the beach. Jay Peters, a social studies teacher and basketball coach, did a magnificent job of running the tug of war between various teams for about forty-five minutes while the food cooked. By then, lunch was ready, and everyone sat around and ate before proceeding back to the amphitheater for the start of the “Senior Games.”

The “Senior Games” was the brainchild of Jay and the other coordinator, Booch. They wanted the kids to have fun, but it also never hurts to make the kids a bit tired as well. So, Booch and Jay came up with six stations, widely spread apart, through which teams had to rotate to finish certain competitions. Puzzles had to be finished, basketball shots had to be made on the basketball court, tennis had to be played, a five-gallon bucket had to be filled with Dixie cups, a hill had to be climbed, and once everyone was at the top, trivia questions had to be answered. In the amphitheater was the event of which I was in charge, with help from Mer and another teacher, LT. For us, the kids had to dance an Irish dance called The Walls of Limerick. The way the dance is set up, it allows for any number of couples, so everyone on the team had to dance for us. The kids were super-game souls, and really seemed to enjoy it; a few even said it was their favorite competition. Mer and LT and I had a blast.

The Senior Games took us until about 3:30 in the afternoon. We then all assembled again, and we were given our cabin keys and headed over to the cabin side of the park. I had a cabin with six guys, five of whom I knew already. Supper was at 5:00, so the guys spent the ninety minutes or so unpacking and then lounging around playing video games on their phones while talking. That was okay – the Senior Games had been pretty taxing.

Supper was in the lodge, and was excellent – it was a Southwest evening with regular and soft-shelled tacos. After supper, we went over to the next room, where Jay delivered a good message – he stressed to the kids that as they moved on from CVCA, 1) they had choices, 2) they always had options, and 3) they were responsible for the consequences of their choices. Jay fleshed it out with examples from his own life and from the lives of people he knew, as well as backing things up with Biblical passages. It was a good and timely message.

After that, students either had free time, or were to pile on buses to go go-carting and mini-golfing. I went with that group of about 120 students – I had not been go-carting in over fifteen years, and I was eager to try it again. Sadly, it rained some on the way over to the Toledo area, so we had to wait about forty-five minutes for the track to dry before we could drive. The batting cages and mini-golf were open, although the batting cages were a bit wild while the balls were still wet. Once the track opened up, I got in four or five runs, and it was an absolute blast. The carts’ center of gravity was so low that you could floor them and not have to use the brakes, although it took some nerves on some of the corners to go in at twenty to twenty-five miles per hour. We did not finish up there until about 12:45 in the morning, and so we did not get back to the cabins until almost 2:00 am. I was a bit tired, and I fell asleep almost instantly for my five hours of sleep.

On Sunday, Mer and I headed up early to Cleveland. Really early – we left the house at 5:00. I was on my way to run the 2013 Cleveland Marathon, and Mer insisted on coming to cheer me on, even though it is not a great spectator marathon since it is shaped like a bow tie, so spectators only see runners at the start, in the middle, and at the end. For comparison, Mer saw me five times in Birmingham last February.

We were supposed to meet my friend and running partner, Nate, near the starting line between 5:45 and 6:00, but we got snarled in traffic. Happily, Nate waited patiently, and we met up around 6:15. I guess last year I must have left the house nearer to 4:30, because I never hit traffic last year.

We wandered through Browns Stadium, and Nate used the bathroom. It amazed me how long the lines could be at a stadium that can seat eighty thousand people, but Nate guessed there were other bathrooms on other levels that were closed to us. We walked down the ramp from the stadium, and Nate and I squeezed into the starting chute just as the wheelchair racers were taking off at about 6:45. Mer watched us from the ramp until a race official cleared it of spectators, probably to help out with traffic flow. She found a spot higher up on the walkway and watched us start from there.

It took me and Nate a little over a minute to get to the starting line, and then the running lanes were still quite crowded. I was dodging runners even up through miles four and five, and the field did not really clear out until the marathon broke off from the half marathon around mile twelve. I had to stop and use the bathroom between miles two and three, and Nate kept going. He said he would stay on the right side of the road if I could catch him, but I figured out that I would not be able to, and I never did; Nate finished his half-marathon one minute ahead of my reaching the halfway point of my race.

The day started out humid, and when the humidity began to go down, the temperature went up pretty quickly. Most of the second half of the marathon was on streets with no shade, and the sun was out. I tried to run smartly – I was running the race as a fundraiser for a woman with cancer, and finishing the race was more important to me than getting any particular time. So, when I started to feel myself overheating, I started walking some, right around mile eighteen. By my best guess, I walked about one-and-a-half miles of the last eight miles of the race. I think it was the right call – I stopped to help three other runners who were tending another runner who was clearly suffering from heat exhaustion – he was staggering and panting. I jumped back in the race when a nurse showed up and took over and a police car was visibly on its way. Still, it was a hard reminder that the day was hot.

Mer was near the finish line cheering me, and that was a huge boost. One of the reasons to run the marathon is the rush at the finish, and the spectators were really into it. Mer had found a spectating friend based on the other woman having a map, but not being sure where she was. They had a good time chatting and moving a couple of times to get into place to cheer for me and the other woman’s husband. I was very happy Mer had found someone with whom to be companionable, and she was also smart to remember to bring a collapsing chair to sit on while grading while waiting for me.

I got through the finish area and worked my way over to sit in the shadow of the Great Lakes Science Center’s windmill, where it took me about thirty minutes to cool down to somewhere near normal. Meanwhile, Mer had gotten there just ahead of me and had not seen me, and had settled down to grade on the other side of the windmill. The result was that we missed each other until I felt well enough to get up and look around, about an hour after I finished. The extra rest time was not a bad thing.

So, I finished marathon number eleven. Nate is already taking about running the Akron Marathon next September, so that might be number twelve if I can manage it. Here are my 2013 Cleveland Marathon stats:

26.2 miles
3:44:32
8:34/mile
Finished 422 out of about 2800 finishers (top 15%)
Finished 45 out of 227 men in my age group (40-44) (top 20%)

I had promised a man at church that I would bring him one of CVCA’s retired computer projectors, and I knew I was not going to be in church on Sunday because of the Cleveland Marathon. So, I used it as an excuse to take Mer to Hartville to go to the Hartville Kitchen, a huge and hugely popular Mennonite restaurant. We got there about 7:15 on Friday, and they close at 8:00, so the supper rush was over and we got seated right away. We both thought about ordering lighter meals, but in the end both went for a full meal, which is hearty. Mer got pie for dessert, and I tried the brownie sundae, just to see how it was. It was good, but the Kitchen is known for its pies, so I’ll stick with those in the future.

After supper, we headed over to church, but it was locked, since it was after 8:00 on a Friday. I thought we could drop the projector off at Pastor Ken’s house. Ken’s wife, Janet, was home, and she invited us in. We chatted until after 9:00, when Ken got home. Ken and Janet love games, so they invited us to play Gang of Four, a card game based on Chinese hierarchies. We love playing Gang of Four with Ken and Janet because all four of us keep a running commentary going. Ken is really good at the game, and he kept winning hands. And winning. And winning. It took us eight hands before Meredith’s score went over the top to end the game (low score wins), and Ken had won all eight hands and scored no points. He asked Janet if he could frame the scorecard. It was a really fun time, even though Mer and I both ate too much by continuing to much on snacks at Ken and Janet’s.

On Saturday, we got together with a former student whom Mer and I had both had (Mer in class, me in Ceili Club and Royal Fools), and her friend John. Sarah wanted to join us to see The Great Gatsby, and John had never seen it or read it, so it was set up to be an interesting evening.

Mer and I were both impressed with the film. We both thought the film did a fantastic job of displaying the opulence of wealth that the book portrays, and the cinematography was amazing. The parties were huge, and the representation of the Valley of Ashes was great. Both Gatsby’s house and Tom and Daisy’s house were jaw-dropping in size and splendor, and it was well cast and well acted thought out. Sarah and John seemed to enjoy it as well, and it was fun to be part of a party to introduce someone to Gatsby.

We wandered next door from the theater to go to supper at an Italian restaurant called Jimmy Dadonna’s. Mer and I had been there once before, and Sarah and John were game for Italian. The food was plentiful and quite good, and we had a good time getting caught up with Sarah and getting to know John a little.

Sarah and John are both slim young people who decided to pass on dessert. Mer and I are not those people, so we headed home via Handel’s. My compromise with having to run a marathon the next morning was that I got a medium ice cream instead of a large. How stoic of me. Gatsby would have gotten a large….

Last Saturday, Mer and I discovered a new (to us) section of Cleveland. Shannon and Jolene had strongly recommended a play called There Is a Happiness That Morning Is – a play inspired by some of William Blake’s poetry, even to the extent that the play was written in rhyming meter. The play was being performed at Cleveland Public Theater, of which we had never heard. It is on the west side of Cleveland, in an up-and-coming arts neighborhood called Gordon Square. It was pretty great, and we had no idea it was there.

We started the evening by having supper at the Latitude 41 N cafe, which is cozy and comfortable and casual, with huge helpings of great food. I had asked Mer to dress up, and I was in my suit (why not?), but we still felt comfortable there. What a great place.

Cleveland Public Theater has at least two theater spaces, both relatively small. Happiness was either sold out or close to it, and it probably seated 150 people. Mer and I claimed front-row seats.

How to quickly sum up Happiness? The play takes place at a small Eastern liberal arts school, the morning after two English teachers have been caught having sex outside on campus. The two teachers are either husband and wife, or long-time lovers (they have been living together for fifteen years or more), and they either need to apologize to the student body or be fired. The man lectures from Blake’s Songs of Innocence, while the woman lectures from Songs of Experience, with each teacher viewing events in those lights. Later in the play, the college president shows up and reveals that he has done everything he could to provide an ideal situation for the two teachers, and the play wraps up from there.

The play was excellently acted. Most of the time I forgot the play was in verse, since the actors were speaking in such a natural way. Since I like idealists, I got a little tired of the woman’s (“experience”) tirades against love and officials and such, but that took quite awhile, and I expect we are supposed to get a bit tired of both of the teachers’ views.

The only slight downside to the play was that Mer and I both felt strongly that there was a lot of evidence pointing to the college president being a God figure. If that is the case, the play’s solution to a semi-perverse God is that God should be either ignored or actively spited. That clashes pretty directly with our worldviews, but it was still thought-provoking, if only for us to figure out why we disagreed with it.

We finished out little exploratory evening out with dessert. We wanted to try an ice cream place down the street, but it was packed to the point that there was nowhere to sit, and a long line, to boot. So, we found a nice coffee shop called the Gypsy Bean and Bakery, where we each got a piece of cake and talked about the play for some time. It was a great introduction to a pretty cool neighborhood.

Last Friday was the last Royal Fools improv show of the year at CVCA. We had a really good and active crowd of about 150 people. They were a high-energy crowd for whom to play, and they stayed into the show, even though we went an hour and a half, which is long for an improv show.

The show went off very well, with no slow skits and lots of laughs. I heard back through students that they were being told it was the best show of the year. I always take that with a grain of salt, since primacy has a way of coloring memory, but it was a good show.

Every year I end the season by playing a game called “Party Quirks,” where I host a party for all of the senior Fools. Each Fool is given a strange quirk or personality trait or such, and I need to guess what it is. This year we had fourteen seniors, so there was no way I could give a “party” for that many students. Happily, Clarice (my assistant director Fool) came up with a solution whereby I hosted a party for seven pairs of Fools, who were matched up in some way. So, we had good and evil, black and white, cats and dogs, a couple obsessed with shoes and socks, and so on. It worked really well.

After the show, we headed up to Hudson to Cold Stone Creamery, where we met up with our friends Nate and Rachel, as well as a friend of theirs and her two kids. With Nate and Rachel’s two kids, we were quite the merry little party. We spent a long time chatting, and I went for a walk with the three kids old enough to be mobile. I have a theory that kids like me because they see me as one of them. At any rate, we had a good time on our walk around the new square and library in Hudson. We met up with everyone again at Cold Stone, where the last of the ice cream was being finished, and we wrapped up a fun evening.

Friday – CVCA prom at Sheraton, after-party at Tallmadge Rec Center
Saturday – Hike Herrick Fen Trail in the afternoon, La Dolce Vita in Little Italy in Cleveland for supper

Tuesday (23rd) – Rich Girl in Cleveland (Educators’ Evening)
Saturday – Fiddler at CVCA with Aunt Mary, Dale, Carlene
Macaroni Grill (outside)
Short walk in Bath Hill Park
Handel’s