I’m sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for my connecting flight to LA and pondering what the hell I’m doing. I’m on my way to New Zealand by way of Phoenix, as you probably know, and I have to say that over the past few days reality has really sunk in about this whole thing. At first I didn’t think leaving my friends and family would be as difficult as it’s turned out to be. That sounds really stupid how I say that now, but it’s how things happened. The last week I’ve been saying a lot of goodbyes. I now know that the saying “Goodbyes are always so hard” is really true.

I went up to Anderson, Indiana this past week to see some of my coolest relatives: my Great Aunt and Uncle Marge and Ed, Jody, Laura, Tony, and some others. I have very fond memories of going to visit them when I was younger and I really wanted to see them again before going. This past Saturday I had two going away parties which turned out really nice. The first was with my family and some close friends at my parent’s house and we had a grill out and stuff. I gave my parents a going away gift which was two nicely framed photos. The first is of myself standing in front of the Union Terminal (which is a Cincinnati landmark) and the second was a photo of downtown Auckland but I will be taking a picture of myself in front of an Auckland landmark and then I will send it back to them. The other party was one of those excuse-to-drink parties up at the house in Clifton, It wasn’t really big but it was pretty nice because my friend Jeremiah, who just went through bartending school, was there and he really made it fun. My friend Chip also showed up somewhat unexpectedly. Both of these parties were on Valentines Day, so getting people to show up for the second one was a bit difficult. So I really appreciated everyone who was there. The night after that, Chip, Sean, and Adam got together at the pub downtown and had a relaxing evening and said goodbye and that was a little sad. The following night I did the same with Jason and the other guys at the house in Clifton and then headed home to get my final packing done and head to the airport. Getting on the plane was an absolute nightmare. It was partially my fault because I didn’t have my stuff packed exactly like I should have but the airline staff was entirely unhelpful and could use some classes on communication skills. At one point I was literally talking to two people at the same airline and getting two totally different answers to the exact same question. They heard each speak but continued to contradict themselves.

Anyway, once I got all of that done I had to say a quick goodbye to my parents and brother, which was kinda emotional, and rush to get to the plane, of course, I was selected for extra screening, so I had to sit there waiting for the TSA officer to take his sweet time checking my stuff while I knew my plane was about to depart. I did make it but it was really damn close. Once I got on the plane and sat down I actually started crying for a few minutes because of the combined stress of the baggage issues and leaving for New Zealand. It was pretty relieving. I’m actually in LA now because I’ve been writing this on my way and my plane is about to leave for Phoenix so I gotta go.