Westerville

Last year M went to Nationals on her own, but this year I decided to tag along. Partly to celebrate her birthday in person, partly to see D, and partly because I just wanted to go. It was a full weekend - we flew to Columbus on Friday and flew home Sunday evening. We spent time on four 737s (Southwest Airlines), at Midway Field (Chicago), at the hotel (Fairfield), and in restaurants (Max and Erma's and Wendell's).  But we spent most of our time at the Westerville Sports Complex, watching the top Division 3 teams in the country play Ultimate.

We were there to watch Carleton's GOP (Gods of Plastic), with whom D has been playing for three years. I'll add the sports photos to the subsequent post - this is more about the sidelines and the family.

Saturday was cool and saw a series of rain squalls move through, but Sunday was gorgeous.  We hung out on the sidelines with other other parents and with Fruit Pooch - who travels with GOP to most of their tournaments.

Westerville is a suburb north of Columbus.  It probably has more history and character than our weekend allowed us to see, but mainly it looked like a Midwest suburb where character-free malls and business parks and housing divisions have taken over all but a few remaining farms. The sports fields were in the floodplain of Alum Creek - a couple of miles downstream from the Alum Creek Dam which I visited very briefly on Sunday afternoon in an effort to track down the only local beach I knew about (perhaps a later post on the other blog).