Recently (April, 2010) I was able to get to Indiana, and had a meal with Ben Avery. This is a rare occurrence to me, and a seemingly rarer and rarer occurrence to those of us who exist in this tech-savvy generation. I was in Indiana to visit another friend whom I had never seen, and to actually be a part of his wedding party! Sight unseen, we made our acquaintances in person the eve of his wedding, and spent a great 24 hours together (punctuated by some much-needed sleep - my flight from Boston necessitated my wake time to be before 4AM that morning) before he and the new Mrs. left for their honeymoon. Being in town (or, at least, within two hours of the town) until the next day, I decided to see what Ben was up to.
Getting together with long-distance friends isn't the easiest thing in the world, unless you send out your feelers early enough that everyone concerned can wrap their lives around yours. This was the case here as well, as I actually tried to squeeze many more visits into my 48-hour stay in the Hoosier State. One friend was in a hospital 4 hours away, and I didn't think I was prepared to sink 20% of my time driving to and from the hospital. He wasn't dying, so I figured it could wait until next time I'm in Indiana. If ever. I toyed with getting to some events while I was there a well, but again, decided against them as they would have been an investment in time that could be used better somewhere else. I soon discovered what that time was for.
Since I had been up before 4AM, not slept on the flight, and hit the ground running once I landed in Indianapolis Int'l Airport, after a three-hour drive, rehearsal (and rehearsal, and rehearsal...), rehearsal dinner, and a boys-night-out to pick up the tuxes and see a movie, I rolled into my hotel room around 11:30 and crashed. Unfortunately, it had to be a controlled crash, as we still needed to do the actual wedding on Saturday. So, up around 8, dress, eat, get to the church, wait for the late-arrivals, get into tuxes, pictures, etc. (I assume you know how weddings work) got me back to the room around 5PM. There I waited for Ben to let me know how our schedules could dove-tail.
When you have a hard-and-fast time that something must happen, you can mark free time by counting backward from the H-Hour that is your must-do time. My 2PM flight on Sunday meant that I needed to be at the Airport by Noon, and a 3-hour drive from the restaurant that Ben chose meant that breakfast needed to be over by 9AM, so 8AM is what I was shooting for for breakfast. A 90 minute car trip to the restaurant and my inimitable penchant for getting lost while driving (even with maps and GPS systems) meant that I would like to have left the hotel around 6AM. Luckily, I was able to really crash this time, as this was my first trip without my family, and after 11 blissful years together with my wonderful wife I no longer know what to do when I'm on my own with no real responsibilities. I had eaten, I don't watch too much TV, I knew no one else in Indiana, Ohio or Michigan that wouldn't require too much time/energy/effort to reach, and to tell the truth I was really tired. So I slept.
I missed my wife and kids. We tried to set up times where I would still be able to interact with them, but their hectic weekend schedules apparently had them at odds with mine. Throw in a wife losing her cell phone and that doesn't leave much of a window for good contact. But we did talk a few times, and wifey and I had a nice conversation by text around midnight between extended sleep-times for me (a few hours-long stretches, ending in a 1AM-5AM mini-marathon at the end) so I was good to go.
Now we get to the point of this post. Ben and I had never really met each other, even after talking for long hours as friends, and as co-hosts of the podcast. I had seen pictures, of course, so I knew at the very least he would be an elaborate hoax on par with Bigfoot flying UFOs around the faked-lunar-landing site. But he is real, if you can believe me, and we finally got together after I was only slightly lost trying to find the restaurant. And it was a good meeting. Somehow, when believers come together to do things, it doesn't seem to matter if you’ve ever actually met. Things just start rolling. We had a great breakfast, but better yet was the camaraderie and fellowship we shared for that brief 45 minutes. The conversation ranged from personal interest to movie reviews, and hopefully won't be the last meeting of the minds live and in person.
As I write this (still in April 2010), on the flight back to Boston, after a great trip meeting two good friends and hours and hours of driving, I am only about a half hour away from seeing my family again, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. But if I was forced to trade them for two days, getting to see my two friends for the first time wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
