After four months of continual postponement of a weekend down to trip to Cincinnati, I finally made it down on May 30. The original plan was to drive down after work on Friday the 29th, but because of a networking event I needed to attend that night for the 48-hour Film Project: Cleveland, I decided it would be a best to leave the following morning after a full night's rest. Stocking up on a few bags of pizzeria combos, peanuts, beef jerkey and two bottles of green tea, I walked out my front door around 10:00am, diagonally crossed the state of Ohio in the midst of a beautiful and clear summer morning, and arrived in Brent & Chrissy's driveway not long after 2:00pm.
My buddy Dean was actually there to greet me at the door, as he had been helping the two of them hang wallpaper in the dining room for the past few hours. Although I had been there a few times already, this was a relatively new house for Brent and Chrissy. Their old place, a newly-renovated single-family home overlooking the Over the Rhine neighborhood from its location on the side of Price Hill , had sold a little over a year before. They had purchased that home shortly before they were married and spent the next three years completely rehabbing the entire place, guts out. The end result was a spectacular metamorphosis, the interior being almost unrecognizable in comparison to the home they had invested in not so long before. But, with hints of a family on the way, they set their sights slightly north of the city, to where they found an extremely quaint tudor-style home just around the corner from Xavier University.
After Dean had left to accompany his wife to an employee birthday party outside of the city, I spent the next few hours catching up with Brent and Chrissy, helping them prepare dinner, clean up the dining room and get to know their eight-month old baby girl, Eliana. Aside from seeing my old college friends, she was the main reason I had been trying to visit for the past few months, and everything about her made it worth the wait. She barely stopped laughing during my entire visit and seemed (unless I'm just feeling narcissistic and delusional) to take a strong liking to me whenever I was around. She laughed and pointed at me quite a bit, which could've very well been mocking in tone I wouldn't have been able to recognize due to my complete underexposure to the baby population on any sort of regular basis. I'm sure Brent would've pointed this out had he not been distracted with his multiple diaper duties.
The night quickly became a reunion that, although may be a regular occurrence for the Cinci group, was about four years over-due for me. Not long after I started helping Brent and Chrissy prepare dinner, we were joined by our college friends Brian & Sarah with their son Isaac, Adam & Becky with their daughter Riley, Jon & Meredith with their daughter Lola and Jon's cousin from Kent, and eventually Rob & Kendra. It was just like old times with one major difference; their house suddenly became the equivalence of a baby factory. There were kids everywhere. I have to be honest, I knew it was coming. Even so, it threw me a bit off guard. That's not to say I didn't love every second of it, because I did. It was just interesting for me to see all of my friends (whom most of which had been childless and only recently married the last time I had seen them) with all of these new additions. As a 30-year old single man, it was a unique and uncommon glimpse into a lifestyle that I'm sure I'll be sharing a few years down the line. Yup, I was
that guy. It is comforting to be sure that when I actually do reach that point someday, I know I can rely on all of them for advice on getting me through it with my sanity intact. In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy with slipping back into and enjoy my old familiar way of life, if only for a while longer.
After a miserable Cavs loss (can I tell you how difficult it was to watch that premature end of the Eastern Conference Series without unleashing a constant stream of obsenities in the midst of the previously-described baby factory?) and a few late-night card games with the rest of the crew, everyone started to filter out of the house, leaving Brent, Chrissy and myself to finish with the rest of the cleanup. It was still fairly early, and although Dean hadn't been able to stop by due to freak tornado cluster in the area of the party they were attending, he did want to head out for a few drinks in the Mt. Lookout area. So, being unable to convince Brent out of his state of exhaustion to join me, I drove out to meet Dean at the Mt. Lookout Tavern, where we stayed until last call. It was a younger crowd there than I was used to (a staple venue amoung many students from both UC and Xavier) but we had a pretty good time and were able to catch up more thoroughly than we were able to earlier in the day. As the bars shut down, I said good-bye to Dean and took a sudden hit by my all-too-familiar Cincinnati vice; Skyline Chili.
It's been way too long since I've been there, at least to the venue that defined the after-bar menu item for me. Some people crave Taco Bell, others go for the White Castle sliders...I do Skyline Chili. My roommates and friends would hit the Clifton Skyline Chili parlor every single weekend to put the perfect cap on a night that would've otherwise been followed by coma-inducing hangovers and zombie-like lethargy. It was college, after all. And Skyline saved my life on multiple occasions. ...Not tonight, however. For whatever reason that only Loki himself would find humor in, Skyline was closed early. Outrage. The legend that had been open until 4:00am on Saturday nights, where joyful groups of drunken college students would order a plethora of 3-ways, coneys, and bowls of oyster crackers, sat in darkness, with a sad, 30-year old man, desperate to taste just a hint of his days in college, staring pathetically through the plate-glass windows framing the empty stools and all-too desolate kitchen. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, and I wrote it that way purposefully. Why? We've all been there. I was craving Skyline. Its locked doors nearly shattered my world. Funny how one can recover from such a tragedy after simply sleeping it off.
The next morning, I woke up and decided to run off the effects of the night before by going for a 4-mile jog around Xavier's campus. Would you like to know what biggest difference is between running in Cleveland and running in Cincinnati? The hills. Holy crap, those hills. Mile 3 felt like mile 8, but it made for a great workout, and Brent and Chrissy were nice enough to have breakfast nearly waiting for me when I got back to the house. We spent a little more time hanging out in the living room with Eliana before I said my goodbye's, packed up the car, and headed back up north towards Cleveland. I would've like to see a few more friends, maybe have lunch with my old boss Russ, and/or at least seen what new developments have been added to the University, but I'll have to save that for my next trip down, possibly in the fall during Homecoming. Although I'm quite confident that I won't be joining the ranks of parenthood by that time, it'll be exciting to see everyone again, and how much the kids have grown since this last visit. It's still sinking in that we've all gotten to that point, but I'm certain by then I'll be quite used to the idea. I couldn't see it any other way.
Leaving work just after 2:00, I was able to swing by home, pick up Kino, throw a few last minute things together and manage to be on the road towards Youngstown by 3:30. I've done this part of the trip probably close to a million times, so to actually try and write about it is a bit of a challenge. Though this time around, I decided to play it somewhat stupid and slipped onto the Turnpike with less than eighth of a tank left in the car. With thirty miles to go before I got off at my exit, the low fuel light popped on and I made the decision to see how far I can push my car. Needless to say, everything turned out allright, and I was able to make it to the gas station off the exit 33 miles later, but I had never seen that needle drop so low. Those last few miles were surrouned by a few silent prayers that I wouldn't run out of steam on the Turnpike. My parents, who were patiently waiting at the exit to grab Kino, wouldn't appreciate it very much. I did drop him off with them though without incident, gave my thanks and hug goodbye, and jumped back on my way towards DC.
My drive into Washington was fairly uneventful, but extremely beautiful. I've driven through this part of the country in the mid-fall, when the leaves are at their peak, and if I were to come back, I would probably choose that time of year to do it, simply for the scenery. However, this time around I found myself passing through the lush laurel of mid-Pennsylvania and the red soil of northern Maryland, only to descend into DC sometime around 9:30pm. My GPS wove me along a few winding roads around the Chevy Chase neighborhood, through a long series of traffic lights and roundabouts, to finally, the front of Nick's condo in Columbia Heights, just adjacent to Mount Pleasant.
I found a parking spot just outside Nick's building and with his help, carried my bag and my bike up into his apartment. There I met his girlfriend Sarah again, whom I hadn't seen since about 2006 when all of us met in Cincinnati for the famous Labor Day fireworks. About fifteen minutes later, the three of us headed around the block to an English Pub in their neighborhood called The Common Wealth, where indulged ourselves on a basket of chips and a few pints of English ale. About 48 ounces in, Sarah decided she should head home while Nick and I hit up a few more of the local bars in the area. We actually only managed to make it one, a small indie dive bar called the Raven, which was mostly populated by Virginia students and random hipsters. We found an open two stools at the bar, where we sat and drank Yeungling until just before closing.
