One Week!

In seven days I'll be on a plane, headed for Philadelphia for two days and then I will be off to South Africa! I cannot even imagine the ways my life is about to change... but I feel as ready as I can be.

Yesterday I was driving around our suburb, through the urban sprawl that even in it's homogeneous anonymity has a familiarity to it, and it was evening and even Target looked a little beautiful in golden light. I was struck by the idea of dusk, when everything is lovely. These last few weeks have been like a dusk on my time in the US. The beauty and fun and wildness of the times I have spent with family and friends has been illuminated by my waning time here. Okay, so this is a little more romantic than I usually venture to be but really, there has been something really special about the last few weeks.

I took the train to Denver to attend the wedding of my friends Matt and Amanda. It was a really fun wedding and a celebration of two really amazing people having a go at married life. I saw friends who I don't see enough which was a good reminder that distance and time do not always cancel friendships. Matt and Amanda are friends from high school and it was fun to look around and realize how a wild group of oddball teenage punks turned into a wild group of oddball adults.

After Denver Matt, Matto and I drove across the middle of the country back to Cincinnati. Before the long haul home we camped in Colorado above Golden and down at the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Both places were beautiful (although notably different). Golden Gate State Park is full of vistas and views of far off fourteeners. We camped in a grove of aspens that seemed to glow in the twilight (I couldn't resist bringing it back to that) and stretched conversation past the limits of the absurd. Great Sand Dunes is exactly what it sounds like. The Dunes are appropriately identified as "great", they are huge and surreal in a basin between two mountain ranges. Matt, Matto and I stretched our bodies past the limits and climbed the dunes in an effort that surpassed absurd. It was sandy and wonderful. The drive back was marked by a visit to an abandoned state park (which was bordered by a non-existent town), being harassed by some very shady police in Kansas (because we were going to OHIO which made us suspected drug runners), a visit to Columbia MO (good times with Matt's friend Steve and a little too much whiskey), and listening to the Clash for hours. I live for these times with my friends, especially good friends like Matt and Matto, especially time on the road.

When I got back to Cincinnati I arrived home to find my maniac aunts cleaning my parents' house. My parents were headed for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to attend my older brother Michael's wedding. My plan was to sleep for a few hours and follow them up. My aunts had come down to be with my mom during her last minute back surgery (there is never a dull moment in the life of a Gannon) and, inspired by the unending need of the women in my family to do SOMETHING to help, they had decided to stay and clean the house so it would be nice when my parents came home from the wedding. Although I had expected to come home to an empty house and a few hours of privacy, it was nice to come home to a very real example of how my family sticks together.

(I know this entry is getting long but it's been awhile since I posted anything and I have a lot to document!)

My brother's wedding was really amazing. It was held at the Hiram College field station in Wetmore, Michigan. It was wonderfully isolated and the whole weekend was full of quiet peaceful moments and raucous times with family and friends. The ceremony itself was really nice, designed by Michael and Julie (my new sister in law... weird) to honor who they are and how they see the world. The reception was punctuated by SIXTEEN total toasts which was a little out of control but fun none the less. My mom, with her back brace and her incredible smile, hardly appeared to be in any pain which is notable for a woman who had been hospitalized for pain for three days and then had back surgery less than 48 hours before the wedding! Although the decision on the "wedding ass" (a distinction given at every Gannon wedding) is still out my vote is for my sister's boyfriend who, at 7:45, was so drunk he tried to walk twelve miles back to the hotel on dirt roads despite the fact that we had shuttle vans available.

On the way home from the UP I picked up my friend Kevin in Cadillac, Michigan and we playfully argued all the way back to Cincinnati. It was a nice trip down and it reaffirmed (again) my guilty love for road trips. When we got back to Cincinnati we met up with Matt and Matto for more good times (always good times).

Roza and Jesse, my friends from Akron, came in for the fourth of July which was not only fun but it gave me renewed faith in my ability to have lasting friendships with my friends from college. On the night of the third we went to a basement show and spent hours "shortcutting" through Burnett Woods. We saw Heart play on the fourth for free they were amazing and kind of crappy and the crowd was old and not very rocking but in the end it was great fun and a hilarious foil to the metal show we went to directly afterwards. It was so good to see the two of them and share some of the craziness of Cincinnati with them.

THEN my dad and I went to Graceland. Yes, Graceland. It was like the ultimate American Pilgrimage. For me it was more about Paul Simon and less about Elvis. We saw crappy country in Nashville, we took pictures at Elvis' grave, we met the "first lady of Beale Street" in Memphis, we stayed in a town called Paris in the middle of nowhere that had a tiny Eiffel Tower, and we had some really good father/daughter time. I would recommend everyone take a road trip to Graceland with their father.

Now I'm back home trying to get my act together and start packing. It's a little bit less exciting than what I have been doing for the last few weeks but I suppose it's important. To take the metaphor too far... the sun is setting. I won't really take it to the "dawn of the new day" next logical step but you can...

My reality is really awesome.