East Coast

"I'll spread my wings and I'll learn how to fly
Though it's not easy to tell you goodbye
I gotta take a risk, take a chance, make a change
And breakaway."
-Kelly Clarkson

Forgive me if this is a longer entry. I got home from South Dakota a week ago, and I meant to update right away, but I got distracted; and then the past week has been devoted to mindlessness and enjoying the end of the summer and the last I'll see of my friends for a while. Also--as you might have guessed from the above lyrics--this is, once again, a bit of a sentimental post. I'm still sort of embarassed about the fact that I have a blog at all, but I was pleased to find out this week that I lot of my friends read it pretty closely, and I am going to miss them, so this might get a little cheesy.
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Flying home was strange. Usually I find going home depressing, which is not to say that I don't like being in West Hartford--but it usually means I am leaving something exciting behind, and saying goodbye to someone important. Last week, though, I was very excited to be retracing my steps from eight weeks before and to come back to somewhere familiar. What I realized, though, is that I've never really been away from home for this long. Haverford isn't really so different from Connecticut; the landscape and the culture are pretty much the same. Besides my infamous first three months in Chicago, I've never spent as long as these eight weeks off the East Coast, at least as far as I can remember.

Not that everything is so wonderful out here. As soon as I got the Minneapolis airport, still a long way from home, obviously, I was already a little bit overwhelmed. This is a bastardization of the Fredric Jameson I read this year--and it's also very pretentious--but the airport reminded me of the commercialization that sprawls everywhere out East. Everything seemed to be just a surface with no depth, meticulously designed to sell an image and an idea. For example, the Ranch-themed bar I passed seemed ridiculous after flying out of South Dakota. Maybe I was just creeped out by the talking trashcan in the food court, but it seemed bizarre to step back into a world of surfaces. That didn't stop me from enjoying some airport sushi, though.

Stepping off the plane was refreshing. I've never thought of Connecticut as mountainous, but at this point that is what I would call it. There were trees everywhere and I felt like I could step outside without having the whole world stretch out, overwhelmingly, around me. I've always loved the landscape out here, buried as it is under developments, but coming home it struck me as particularly beautiful. I got a ride home from the airport from Anthony, and we ended up spending a rather random night in New Haven. That night highlighted another one of the East Coast's shortcomings--there is traffic everywhere--but it was also fun to cruise around home, enjoying some pop radio.

I've spent the last week hanging out down at school with the Goats. It was for the most part an uneventful week: a little bit of running, a lot of sitting around and listening to music and remembering the old days (the one thing I will claim to be leaving behind with the track team is good music. Zach, Golden, and Trouble: Don't forget your duty to keep hipness alive). Thursday night was our last night all together, and at one point I was walking out in front of Apartment 22, and ended up tripping on the curb and slamming my chin into the pavement. So I ended up at the Bryn Mawr Hospital Emergency Room at 1 AM, where I got a solid nine stitches. I still have a chipped molar that needs some work, and I will be rocking a pretty nasty beard for the next few weeks, until things heal up for me to shave. I was in pretty good spirits at the hospital and found the whole thing pretty funny, which is probably a testament to my happiness at the good company I was keeping. I've been contemplating the goat tattoo for a while, but I didn't end up getting it--but now I'll have a more personal memento of all those good times for four years, and I'll get to think about every morning when it's that much more difficult to shave my chin.

Good-byes this morning were brief; a lot of people took off on Friday, so the apartments starting feeling increasingly bare as the day wore on. It wasn't too big a deal to most people since most everyone will be back together in four weeks. I tricked myself into thinking that I would see everyone again before too long, and I hope that's true, but it's hard to be sure. I do know that when I was pulling out of the apartments and out onto Lancaster, I felt very much like I was closing out an era of my life; I know when I'll be back to Connecticut again, but I have no idea how soon I'll make it down to Philly. If wandering the country this summer has changed me at all, it has helped me to appreciate the friends I have, and strengthened my resolve to keep everyone in my life, no matter where I end up. It's time to get cheesy, but I'm going to steal from Jossi here and repeat that I love my teammates. I am going to miss a lot of things, but mostly it will be the simple pleasures: listening to Golden wail along to his music across the hall, watching VH1 on the satellite, getting pounded by Grant on long runs. And plenty of other people and moments that I wish I had the space to mention. When I was flipping through the radio on the car ride home, I settled on "Breakaway" for my theme song for the ride. Seems appropriate; I probably won't ever be able to listen to Kelly Clarkson without thinking of all of you. So I dedicate the incredibly cheesy lyrics at the top of this post to the Goats; I'm going to miss you guys.