Cincinnati

It really hasn’t registered upstairs that I am about to leave the developed world for over two years. I haven’t really given myself time to savor my time home. Instead I have been running around the state visiting friends, tying up ends from my Turkey trip, and planning out my next 30 days at home.
One of the big things pressing on me right now is that my Grandpa Westendorp is sick. He was diagnosed with kidney cancer last week. The cancer appears to be aggressive and grandpa has been weakened by a heart problem so he has been suffering allot lately. Grandpa Alphenaar died almost a year and a half ago and I was forced to leave the country before the funeral for school in Paris. Now with Grandpa W in uncertain waters I feel bad leaving the country for so long.
This weekend I made the long journey down to Cincinnati to finish up some paperwork from my Turkey trip and say goodbye to my college friends. My mother, being the dear that she is, left me her tank of a van to take down to Xavier. Although driving 6 hours through rural Indiana and Ohio sounds about as much fun as having a foot amputated, I got my driving directions from NPR.org which came attached to a list of every NPR station along my driving route; transforming my drive from a boring labor to an introspective educational experience.
After getting slightly lost and nearly causing a head on collision in suburban Fort Wayne, I made a pit stop for dinner at Aunt Kim’s house. Kim is my dad’s sister and it had been a long time since I had seen the Fletcher family because of college and my summer travels. Though over half the family was away from home, Kim, my cousin Ryan, and I enjoyed a home cooked meal and updated each other on our lives. Ryan loves baseball and after dinner he wanted to go downtown to see the Ft. Wayne baseball team play and invited me to come along. The Fort Wayne ‘Tin Caps’ were bucking 17 years of truly terrible baseball by making the minor league playoffs. The three of us journeyed downtown to enjoy a few innings of baseball during which the Tin Caps scored and took the lead. Unfortunately I had to leave before the game finished in order to make it to destination before it got too late.
Unlike quality NPR stations like 104.1 in West Michigan which broadcasts the BBC World Service all night long, all the stations in Indiana and Ohio play classical music until the early hours of the morning. This did not make for good listening music so I preoccupied myself by arguing with the commentator on an AM conservative talk show.
Upon my arrival I quickly fell into my comfortable habits when I was back at school with my friends. We wasted 3 hours on Friday playing Frisbee golf through a park, watched long hours of college football on Saturday, and made frequent trips to Chipotle for burritos. On Friday night we had a great quantity of people over to the house I was staying at for a party. I spent so much time talking with my old friends about Turkey and the Peace Corps that by the time I went to bed at 2:30 I was exhausted and completely hoarse.
I had to leave Cincinnati at 7:00AM on Sunday to make it back to Michigan on time for Cousin Bethany’s birthday celebration. My absence at this festivity in the past has resulted in excessive chastisement directed to me by Bethany. Since I was not planning on flying back to Michigan in September of 2010 or 2011 my attendance at this event was essentially mandatory. Additionally, Alphenaar family parties are one of the biggest things I am going to miss when I am away so I really wanted to make it. I also used this opportunity to give my grandmother her 75th birthday present: a 6mm air soft handgun. She has been having trouble keeping deer out of her bird feeders so we are hoping a few bruising air soft pellets will scare them off. This also means my grandmother is going to be stalking her backyard with a pistol, something I would pay good money to see.

I got my staging information today and booked a flight out of Grand Rapids at 6:45 on October 20, 2009.