On the road again

 Friday 5 November 2021

The plaque at the rest stop Thursday displays the name of the governor and it’s a strange sight. Mike DeWine. Flash to the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and flash right back again. My God, this is the first time I’ve been outside of New York State since the pandemic began.

The occasion? Monica’s nephew Justin’s wedding. It’s in Columbus, Ohio, a place where one might catch sight of Mike DeWine in line at a coffeeshop. To be more specific, though, the nuptials Saturday will be in Dublin, a burgeoning suburb on the northwest edge of Columbus. Although it’s going to be a big wedding, we probably won’t see the governor there.

Getting to this place is simple. Zip west on I-90, turn left just before Cleveland, go south-southwest another couple hours at 70 or 80 mph on I-71 and here we are. A couple times before we turn, the car dings to tell us to watch for ice because the temperature has dropped to 37 degrees. No ice or snow, but we keep running in and out of rain.

Monica proclaims it a boring drive, so she enlivens it with the new David Sedaris book, “A Carnival of Snackery,” on audio, her favorite way to read these days. I take in the scenery, pointing out the bright autumn colors on our corridor through Western New York, then watching them turn back to green the deeper we descended into central Ohio. The rain stops. It gets sunny. Farmers till fields, raising big clouds of dust. October was a wet one in Buffalo. Here, apparently, not so.

We tuck into the sixth floor of the brand new AC Hotel by Marriott on the east bank of the Scioto River and befriend the crew at the desk – a Black porter named Joseph and two guys with accents. Monica asks the fellow checking us in where he’s from. Guess, he says. “Turkey,” I say. Right. He’s pleased. Guess where his sidekick, the other guy behind the counter, is from, he says. “Antarctica,” I declare. No, no, he’s from Turkey too.

For Thursday night dinner, the men and women of the wedding party separate into side-by-side restaurants on the opposite bank of the Scioto – the ladies to The Pearl, the gentlemen to the Avenue Steak Tavern. Although it’s a day short of the weekend, both places are packed. Nobody’s masked.

I sit with the old guys at the end of one of two long tables set up for us at the far wall of the Avenue and get to dine with the man who built both of these restaurants and had a hand in developing our hotel and all the new stuff around it, including the footbridge over the Scioto that connects them all. He’s David Miller, uncle of the bride. We get the best of attention from the servers, the managers and the chef. Appetizers appear immediately and they’re upscale and endless. Steaks are recommended for dinner, but the menu also includes a touch of home. Not wings, the other one. Beef on weck. I can’t resist. Turns out David has Buffalo connections.

There’s an after-party back on the east bank of the Scioto, right across the street from the hotel in a place called Pins – a sprawling bar and pinball game room, the centerpiece being a long wall of automated duckpin bowling games. Here I get a chance to pick up the one article of clothing I forgot to pack – a T-shirt to sleep in. The shirt is black, emblazoned with the head of a tiger with a duckpin in its mouth and a motto: “Always Fast-N-Hard.”

Cheers,

Dale