3 Aug 2008
From Norwalk, the most rocking town in all the Ohio Valley
Well, hello, folks.
Greetings from Ohio. This morning, we’re fraternizing with Tyler Walter, my really good friend from college. And of course, we went to church, as any good Christian should. A young guy studying at Moody Bible Institute shared about the differences between crowd followers and genuine followers. Of course, somedays, I’m a little of both.
Moody Bible Institute happens to be situated in Chicago, which is where we’ll be this evening. But before leave this rocking town for the world-renowned city of wind (and once upon a time, fire), we’ll be chowing down at a pizza buffet with Tyler, his girlfriend, and his parents.
But now to look back to where we’ve come: Having hung out in the backwoods of western PA, enjoying the calm quiet of the Bryant home and the expansive beauty of a sunset, we shot up to Presque Isle State Park. There we journeyed on foot (Jared wore flip-flops) until we stumbled across a magnetic compass tower built by Friedrich Von Stubenhoffer in 1870’s, or so Jared told me. Other folks think it’s a lighthouse. The “experts” say it’s a Gear Tower that pumps water or something. Anyway, we continued on to a marsh and sat on a bench there, waiting for who knows what. Well, some wonderfully nice old people “from near Pittsburgh” came by (one, we hear, was exactly 55 years old. Being an amazing photographer in her own right, she hit it off with Jared right away.) and they showed us an eagle’s nest up in a pine tree across the way. We chatted with these three folks for some time, and learned about some house boats and a real lighthouse that were up at the tip of the peninsula. So we boogied back to our car and hit the road…at 20 miles per hour, until we reached the site. And we took pictures. (It’s where we saw this amazingly bright orange step ladder that sank down into a sea-green sea. And Dan, I thought of you.)
O, but I forgot, sometime in there, we ate lunch. And so I wanted to give a shout-out to my mom for her amazing zucchini bread (it felt like communion.) and to my Nana who provided some scrumptious dried figs and finally to Mrs. Coyle for buying us juice.
Yes, about that juice. Yesterday, we broke into the Tropical V8 Splash. Mangoes and Apples and Pineapples and Kiwis …and Carrots dancing along our tongues and down our throats. Mmm, delicious. And so we were drinking straight out of the container, passing it back and forth, and then at one point on I-90 (parents, read no further) I was chugging down this wonderfully orange nectar, with both hands and my mouth all engaged, while Jared took care of the wheel, and hey, we didn’t even steer out of our lane.
Anyway, we arrived safely here last night. A visit to the Norwalk reservoir to see the sunset, and to the local Wal-mart to get some soap and AA batteries along with some seriously sophisticated Scrabble in which every word on the board was 4 letters or more, except for the following, all of which owe their existence to Jared’s ingenuous mind: “no,” “win,” and “sex.” Some other examples, to show our more sophisticated side, were “candor,” “fiat,” and “gnome.”
Which reminds me of the travelocity gnome, which reminds me that this is a road trip, which reminds me that we’ve got to keep moving. A la prochaine fois, whatever that means.
