High in the Middle and Round on the Ends

Ohio is famous for many things. For example, William Howard Taft, the fattest president ever (so fat that the White House needed a new bathtub to accommodate him), came from Ohio. And that is why, out of all fifty states, I chose to be born there.

I typically make it home once or twice a year, but unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll be able to for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. So our road trip made what some believe to be a ridiculous out-of-the-way stop. But at some point in our trip planning, I did some math. According to my calculations, the Ohio stop ended up taking us only 1000 miles out of our way, whereas a straight Orlando-Columbus round trip would have been around 2000 miles. So I win, naysayers.

Once we adjusted our trip schedule to factor in the 9-hours-late start from Orlando, we actually got to my parents' house slightly earlier than expected. This was a great improvement over our previous drive to Ohio, during which I was sleeping at a critical moment and Kacey drove us an hour into Kentucky or something. My own ability to get lost is somewhat legendary in my family, due to a few notable blunders during my first few years of college. My rationale is that I never really drove much until I left Ohio, so even though I'm "from there" and "should know your way around, you idiot," I just never had to deal with it before. In all honesty, I never even knew the route my bus took all through high school. Kacey and I were initially going to buy a GPS system for this trip, but we ended up doing everything with 8 pages of printed Google maps directions and a US road atlas. In an unexpectedly pleasant turn of events, this trip proved to be incredibly successful in that regard. I don't think we lost more than an hour due to navigation errors over the whole trip. So we win, naysayers.

The first night we stopped briefly at my parents' house in Columbus, then went with my mom and my sister Becky to my grandma's house in Mt. Vernon, acquiring some Donatos pizza en route. This was notable in part because Donatos originated in central Ohio, and eventually came to Orlando, but apparently is dying off there, much like myself. It is more notable, however, because Donatos is delicious. But I guess the residents of Orlando don't necessarily agree. So you win, naysayers.

I wrote all of this about a few hours' drive and some pizza. AND THERE ARE TWO WHOLE DAYS LEFT!!!

Oh yeah and I think there is only one picture from this night: