This morning we woke up about 8:00 and got ready and were out the door about 9:00. We walked the 365 steps down to the train station to pick up a one-day trail pass. The Cinque Terre are connected by a trail system which I wanted to hike (today was my day to be in charge). To help maintain the trail system, the towns charge for a pass which you need if you want to hike the main trail (it seems as if the less-traveled trails are free). The passes can only be obtained at the rail station, so we walked down there. As we were walking, it started to rain, but Mer had an umbrella, so she was fine (I don’t mind getting wet). We got to the station and got our pass, but then it turned out the trailhead was up in the town. The shuttle bus was empty, even of the driver, so we hiked up the 365 steps to get back to the town. Just as we got to the top of the steps, the bus went by. It seems it runs based on the train arriving, which makes sense.

It was warmer out than we’d thought, so we dropped some clothes off at the hotel. By now, it was 10:00, so we decided to get some breakfast. We walked over to a focaccia store to buy some fresh rosemary focaccia. It was delicious. I then wanted a hot chocolate, so we wandered up the street to a cafe where the hot chocolate was so thick and rich-looking that Mer even decided to get some (which is very rare). It was hazelnut flavored, which was a little unfortunate because I like my chocolate plain; but it did make Mer happy.

We stopped back by the hotel, and Mer asked about the trail, but the man at the desk warned us off the trail, saying it was somewhat dangerous when wet because of all of the exposed rock and mud. So, I decided to see if the rain would stop later, and we made plans to take the train to the first town, Riomaggiore. We rode the bus back down to the station and got on the trail for the ten-minute ride to Riomaggiore. Along the way, we were amused by a funny Italian man who was speaking excellent English to several Taiwanese tourists, and he was quite witty.

We piled out of the train at Riomaggiore and headed into the main part of the town. We took the main street up to a church, where we poked our heads inside. It was simple, but pretty, with a wooden statue of Mary dating back to around 1500. After the church, I saw a narrow set of stairs that went steeply up the hill to one side, so up we went. By the time we got to the top, we were eye-level with the bell tower of the main town church, and quite a ways above the train station. The views were spectacular, especially of the heavily-terraced hills around the town. We walked over toward the ocean, where we discovered a small castle. We went in and up, and were enjoying the views when a gust of wind turned Mer’s umbrella inside out. That broke one of the supporting struts, and while the umbrella still worked some, a slight wind would cause it to collapse. Here, Mer made a very rare (for her) sports joke. Since the umbrella was a Cleveland Indians umbrella, she said she should have guessed it – the umbrella started out strong and then folded. I was quite proud of her.

We headed back into the town a different way, which took us by the main church. It was pretty, and we went inside that one as well. We came out a side entrance and knew we were not in the United States when we came out to a six-foot stairway with no railings and no warning. We made it down fine.

We went back to the station and took another road up to the Via dell’Amore, which is a walking path to the next town. Sadly, it was closed because of rock falls. As we walked back to the station, our train was pulling out, and the next one was not due in until 1:20, about ninety minutes away. So, we walked up a new street and were delighted to find the source of the under-roadway stream at one end – a very pretty little stream. We kept going up the road, which bent back toward the sea, and we stopped to look at the view when our dinner companion from the night before, Caitlin, walked up. She had gotten up early and walked from Corniglia (Town 3) to Vernazza (Town 4), and when she got to the town it started to rain. So, after she grabbed some food, she took the train to Riomaggiore, and she was planning on catching the next train to Manarola. Since that aligned with our plans, we decided to travel together. Caitlin also pulled out a trail map and showed how there was a back trail that connected Manarola to Corniglia, and that sounded fun to me. So we headed back to the station and went to Manarola.

Once there, we headed away from the crowded part of the town by heading up. I stopped off quickly to buy Mer a new umbrella, and then we headed up to the high parts of the town. Along the way, we saw a high path that climbed up and up, over the town and into the terraces of grapes and other crops. That was a great-looking trail, and we wanted to take it, but Mer thought we should find a bathroom first. So, we kept going up and found a small square with another pretty church, and past the church we found the open stream that ran under the road in this town. The rain more or less stopped along the way, which was a happy development. We did not find a bathroom, so we headed back to the main part of town, toward the harbor, where we found a gelato store with a bathroom. We got ice cream and used the bathroom. Before tackling the hilly trail, I wanted to check out the sea, so we headed down to the edge of the ocean. There was a small path along one side, which we took, which led to a very cool isolated dock that was surrounded on three sides by rock. The ocean was rough today, and the waves were very cool. It was a happy find.

We tromped back up through the town and jumped on the trail. It was amazing. I’ll sum up, since the whole hike took about four hours. The first part was seriously steep, and along the way we passed a huge light-up crucifixion scene that was tastefully done (simple and abstract). Much of the first part of the trail was up steps made of rocks, and we were all sweating pretty well by the time we got to the top. The views along the way were amazing. The town below was beautiful. The trail wrapped around the hill, so we lost sight of Manarola, but the terraced hills were pretty to look at, and the sea kept coming into view.

The trail eventually wound through the hill town of Volastra, where we made a quick detour into a church that was built around 1240. The trail in this area was more or less flat and wound through many terraces. Along the way, Caitlin kept identifying plants and insects, since she was a science major in college and loves plants and bugs. It was very cool to see the world through someone else’s eyes, since Mer and I usually do not notice bugs, and many times miss plants.

The trail wound along terraces and the ocean, and at times both Manarola and Corniglia were in view. The landscape kept changing – often it was farmers’ “fields,” but the path also took us into a wooded area that was a lot like the woods of Vancouver or, as Caitlin told us, Seattle. Eventually the path started going down again, and we made our way, triumphant but tired, into Corniglia. The hike was a classic example of good coming from a group – it is unlikely Mer and I would have tried the hike on our own (there was an easier, lower trail we could have tried), and Caitlin also expressed doubts as to if she would have tried it on her own. Yay, us!

We all went back to the hotel to get ready for supper (wash up and drop off my backpack). We all went to supper together back to the same restaurant as yesterday, where we had a leisurely meal that we felt was well deserved. We had great seats outside that overlooked the ocean.

After supper, we tried the second gelato shop of the town. The dark chocolate was so good, I went back for a second one while Mer and Caitlin were still finishing up theirs. We went back to the hotel, where Caitlin said goodnight. I had hoped to take the train to Vernazza (Town 4), but it was 8:00, and I was afraid it would be 9:00 before we could get there, depending on the train. So, I decided we should explore Corniglia more. We walked down the main “road” between buildings, and discovered a beautiful scenic overlook that was over the ocean, and we could see Manarola clearly on one side, and some of Vernazza on the other. We got there as the sun was starting to set over the mountains over Vernazza, and it was beautiful.

After the terrace, I wanted to check out the miniscule harbor, so we hiked all the way down to the water. The hike was pretty, and we saw three or four cats along the way. The actual harbor was very small, with one large dock. We stayed away from the dock because the seas were rough, and often the waves were crashing over the cement on the dock. The exposed rock of the harbor hills was stark and beautiful, and made the walk down and back worthwhile. We hiked back up, and made our way back to the hotel around 9:30 or 9:45.  What had started out as a rainy day with plans in flux turned out to be a magnificent day.

The world we live in amazes me sometimes. Saturday morning, I woke up at around 5:30 am. Saturday afternoon, thanks to the privilege of having a car, Mer and I were in Toronto. Thanks to the modern wonder of large aircraft, by 8:30 am local time (12:30 am Sunday back home), we were in Rome. Thanks to the ability to grab a train, by 5:30 pm local time (11:30 am back home), we were at a hotel in the Cinque Terre. It was not always pretty, being more or less awake for about thirty hours, but one hundred and fifty years ago, none of this was possible (other than the trains, I suppose). Just for added wonder, I made a local call using Skype on my laptop’s wireless connection to my credit card companies to let them know there was no fraud going on for Italian charges. It is an odd thing to make a domestic call over a laptop and have it all work out. What a wondrous world.

In more detail – the drive to Toronto went well, except right at the end. I love Canada in general and Toronto in particular, so I was surprised, disappointed, and very frustrated when we tried to find the remote lot parking at the Toronto airport – there were no signs that we saw. Even after we asked, we still made two wrong attempts to get into the cheap lot. We did manage, and Canada went back to being wonderful and polite again. We got to our gate about two hours before the scheduled take-off time, but our flight left  an hour and a half late, so we had plenty of time in the airport. Happily, Mer had remembered to bring her stash of Canadian money, so we were able to spend that on a late lunch around 2:30.

The flight was very smooth, and Mer loved hearing all the Italian (she studied Italian while in college). I napped a little bit over the first hour or so, and then we were fed supper. The plane had older technology in that there were only a few monitors overhead showing movies (as opposed to one in each seat back), and we had no option on what to watch, so neither of us bothered. Mer read, and I played the computer game Civilization 4 for about five hours (I bought it for this trip for $7.50 online). It made for an entertaining flight for me since the flight was only about eight and a half hours long. Just as my laptop was giving out on the battery, it was time to be served a light breakfast. I spent the rest of the flight (other than the last part, when electronics are not allowed) listening to Car Talk and looking out the window at the mountains of France and Italy.

Rome’s airport was painless. We climbed out of the airplane by a staircase down to the tarmac, where a bus was waiting to take us to the terminal and customs. In the first error we made for the trip, I realized we’d forgotten our bank card at home and only had credit cards on hand. Since I have no idea what the PIN numbers of my credit cards are, we were forced to use a currency exchange, with their higher fees, and we will have to use banks to get cash instead of using ATMs. We got some cash, collected our two checked bags, and breezed through customs – the officer did not even ask us any questions; he waved us through after looking at our passports and stamping them.

We caught a bus from the airport to Rome’s main train station, where we discovered we could not use the automatic machines to buy a train ticket because the machine wanted a PIN number. As such, we had to wait over thirty minutes in a line to talk to a real person so he could swipe our card. We then went to a restaurant to get something to eat for lunch, but no one ever came to take our order, so we left and got a couple of pizza sandwiches instead.

The train from Rome to the Cinque Terre took about three and a half hours, with one train change late in the journey. I nodded off to sleep several times, usually waking up with a start when my head fell forward. We made the change to the new train with no problems, and so found ourselves in the third of the five Cinque Terre towns, Corniglia. Mer had picked Corniglia to stay in because it is the “sleepiest” of the five towns, with fewer tourists staying the night than in the other four towns.

We caught a bus up to our hotel to save us the 365 steps from the train station to the town. We shared the back of the very small bus with an American woman who was quite pleasant, and she even turned out to be staying in the same hotel as we were. Mer and I checked in to our room, and took a two-hour nap, falling asleep to the sounds of a small choir, church bells, and a rooster. It turns out there was a parade in celebration of Mary going through the town, which explained the bells and choir (but the rooster was acting on his own).

After the nap, we walked fifty yards into town, and picked a restaurant overlooking the sea. The young American woman was there, and we got to talking with her and asked her to join us, which she did. Her name was Caitlin, and she was from Seattle. She was in Europe on a lifelong-dream trip for two months. She had worked on an organic farm in France in exchange for room and board, had been to London and Berlin, and was now in Italy. She was a fun and lively person, with a good humorous style in telling her story. We all had great food (Mer’s pesto dish was especially good – pesto was invented in this region).

After supper, the three of us got gelato (Italian ice cream) and wandered the small town. The town has two churches, and we were all amused to see a couple in a passionate lip-lock in the doorway of the smaller of the two churches. We found a scenic overlook of what passes for a marina in the town (it is very rocky), and on the way back to the hotel, I found a narrow path through a tunnel that ran uphill. We followed that to a breathtaking overlook of the ocean, the train station, and the next town down the coast, Manarola. It was dusk, and the lights of the town were all on. To add to the magic, there were fireflies around as well. That is a pretty great evening for a first night.

The three of us headed back to the hotel, getting back around 10:00. We said good night to Caitlin; we have fair hopes of running into her again tomorrow night, since the town is so small.

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.