David Rides Cleveland RTA

This may seem obvious, but I've only just realized that the initial legs of my present "2015 Grand North American Overland Tour" are an almost identical backtrack along the same route that I took over summer of last year. When I traveled these same roads from west to east I was leaving the Persian immersion session I was enrolled in over that summer. As I'm retracing those same roads my stopoffs from east to west now place into Cleveland for my second visit.

Tarek and Milana Play Catan

I'm again calling on the same friend I stayed with when last here: Milana. She's still doing a medical residency though is anything but excited to be living in the city of Cleveland. Though, at least one thing has changed that perhaps makes it all the more tolerable for her: not long after I passed through in summer of 2014 she met a fellow doctor, Tarek, who is also doing his residency here. They live just two doors down from each other so kept running into each other on the street and about town. They've now become a couple--which must make working in a city where neither of the two really want to live somewhat better.

I'm not the only guest staying at Milana's. The mutual friend who first introduced us back in Chicago, Jia-yi, arrived into Cleveland not long after I did. She timed her visit to overlap with this same weekend that I'm calling. That's allowed All four of us, Milana, Tarek, Jia-yi, and I to run about town and enjoy spending time together over food, drinks, and games.

Jia-yi and David Play SET

Much of what we've done has been a repeat of how we spent time when first hanging out in Chicago two years ago. Milana got anise, mace, brandy, and red wine to mull up into a beverage perfect for the cold weather. Both Saturday and Sunday night she hosted late night game parties in which we played SET among other games. Milana tried to teach the three of us how to play Settlers of Catan which was a game I had tried to play just once before. It seemed like one of those games that would be really fun once you knew the rules, but those weren't all that simple even after playing two consecutive nights.

David in Cleveland Public Library

There was lots of food. A place in Ohio City, Jack Flaps, had a happy hour on waffles and pancakes. Some hole-in-the-wall Syrian place in the middle of nowhere, Feris, had amazing shawarma. Together we all cooked up a huge Sunday brunch to which I contributed a giant scramble of eggs, mushrooms, cheese, and onions.

When both Milana and Tarek had to work on Monday--our last day in town--Jia-yi and I explored Cleveland on our own. I was happy to return to the grand library downtown, again returning to the Special Collections wing where I scanned a rare book for my academic advisor just over a year ago. I again took in the elaborate chess-set collection but found that there was even more on display than I'd imagined.

Jia-yi Sketches Atrium

There were selected folios from medieval manuscripts sitting on one table for anybody to pick up and flip through. Handwritten pages in Latin dating back to the 12th-century were not something I expected to be laying about casually anywhere.

After touring the library Jia-yi and I came to the grand Atrium connecting Superior and Euclid. I'm updating my weblog while Jia-yi sketches our surroundings. We'll be riding the same bus on to Chicago together at 5:45 P.M., just a few hours from now.

Thanks for hosting, Milana! It's always fun to play the board and card games and I think mulled wine might be a requirement for all future gatherings, even if we don't meet as the weather is turning cold. Maybe meet next somewhere beyond the Midwest?

Again, here are the stats for the inter-city travel time and cost of my current travel thus far:

Arrival from Buffalo to Cleveland

Ticket Origin and Destination: Buffalo to Cleveland
Carrier: Lakefront Lines
Length of Journey: 4 hours
Price: $1 USD + $1.50 Booking Fee
Total Trip Cost to this Point: $29.74 USD

Next stop: Madison