1,300 Miles Later

I just returned home from a quick trip to Clarks Summit, PA where I visited college friends and met with an admissions guy at Baptist Bible Seminary. The trip was about as good and rewarding as I could have hoped for.

I left Wednesday morning at 5:50 a.m. (yes, 5:50 comes twice a day) in order to beat both Detroit and Toledo rush hour traffic. I was successful.

I arrived at The BBC a little after 2:00 and more or less wandered around campus saying hi to various friends. I went to the Draper's home for Wednesday night prayer meeting where I got to see much of the New Life Baptist Church (my former church) crowd.  After prayer meeting I swung over to my old apartment to see my old roommate, Nate, and chat for a few minutes. 

After that I picked up Kari for a late night, tradition-filled excursion to Waffle House. In customary fashion we sat in the far corner booth by the front window and ate breakfast food and talked about life. Shortly before midnight, I brought Kari back to campus and then drove to Greg's apartment where I proceeded to brush my teeth, take out my contacts, take a certain necessary step to ensure that I would not wet the bed, and fall alseep on the couch.

Thursday, I went to BBC chapel at 10:00, Patsel's for lunch with Kari at 12:00, spent time checking my email and reading from Acts in the Underground Cafe from 2:30-4, and then had friends over to Greg's apartment for dinner. I cooked some sweet Fettucini pasta - complete with Alfredo sauce and vodka sauce. We all hung out for awhile and then the friends left because they are college students and, therefore, had homework. This left me and Greg with time to chill, chat, and catch up on life.

Friday, I met with the honorable Ben Hixson at the Underground from 9-10, read Acts for a while, and then swung up to OSD to see if Dean was in his office. He wasn't.  His loss. Next time. Maybe. To fill the time void I spontaneously collaborated with Andy and Becky Giessman to make a ridiculously large, obnoxious, gaudy keychain for Kari because she had told me she had lost her her Underground key because she didn't have a keychain for it. The keychain that Andy, Becky, and I kindly and thoughtfully assembled consisted of an old TLC lanyard, another random lanyard, 4 "Live Strong" style brightly colored bracelets, a foot-long chain of carabiners, an Atlantic City souvenir t-shirt keychain, a laptop style carrying bag, and a candy cane. All put together, the keychain was between 4-5 feet long and should serve as an effective, though minutely inconvenient means of keeping track of an Underground Cafe key. You're welcome, Kari.

Wow, I sure hope people care about my Pennsylvania trip itinerary or this post will be the least read post of all time. 

After the keychain project, I met Matteo for lunch at Panera and then met with Seminary Jason to discuss possible MDiv plans. Then I swung over to say hi to Andy Gillick, a friend from New Life, and then drove back out to Patsel's to say hi to a few folks I hadn't gotten to see on Thursday.  After that I went to JJ Bridges with Greg and some Patsel's friends for dinner and we ended up hanging out there for about 4 1/2 hours. I had the Buffalo wings. No one else did. Their loss. Next time. Maybe.

This morning at 9:45 I met my old roommate, Nate, for breakfast at the Bluebird II Diner. I ordered the blueberry pancakes for $3.50 and hash browns for $1.50. The pancakes were huge. I could only eat two of the three. Regardless, we ate and talked about future ministry plans, his and mine, and then we paid the $11.44 bill and parted ways. He went to the laundry mat and I hit the road to come home to Michigan.

Hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday I'll post more subjective, personal remarks about my trip to PA. This post served simply as a "Here's what I did" post. I'm sure I'll get flooded with comments.