Ah, and here we've come to the end of our journey. Please return all trays and seat backs to their upright, locked positions. We'd like to take this time to thank you for reading this stuff and for being there and being a part of it. We realize that in choosing your wedding guests, you have a choice of characters, and we thank you for choosing us. We will be landing shortly.

THE MORNING AFTER: �WHAT TIME�S CHECKOUT?�

Needing to catch the 9 a.m. hotel shuttle to the airport (to eventually make it to Midway) Mindy left early the next morning. I awoke to hear her packing, and meant to say goodbye, but before I knew it, she was opening the door and on her way. I was of no help in my semi-inebriated state. Mia and I slept in, until I got up around 11. She followed at 11:30, with just half an hour until checkout. Having not made lunch plans earlier, I stupidly called up to Courtenay, Cande, Michelle and Jen in 503 and woke them all up. Mia and I went out to eat with the promise we�d say goodbye to 503 before leaving.

After eating at Max and Erma�s (I think), Mia and I returned to the hotel, but 503 had left. Jen�s car was still in the lot, so we knew they were likely out to lunch. An hour later, as Mia and I sat in the shade by my car parked next to Jen�s, they returned. It was 2:30, half an hour after I�d wanted to leave. More importantly, though, I wanted to say goodbye, so I did not mind waiting around. It was my fault anyway, for not planning lunch or establishing a time to meet up before I hit the road. After some chatting, we dispersed the hugs and I got in the car, ready to return east. I immediately set the car�s clock and my watch ahead an hour, so as not to be confused by the time. I was planning on spending the night in Batavia, N.Y., and I wanted to know the time there, not the time in Indiana and Illinois, where I�d soon be leaving.

DRIVING EAST: �ANOTHER $%#@%$#@ TOLL???!?�

I can no longer leave Chicago without a heavy heart trying to slow my exodus as I attempt to flee on the congested interstates. I feel the city pulling me back, trying to keep me there another night or day or hour. It�s not so much the Sears Tower, the Hancock Center, Navy Pier or Wrigley Field. It�s not Adler Planetarium or Meigs Field or Lake Shore Drive. It�s more Northbrook and Arlington Heights, Plainfield and Rolling Meadows. The Chicagoland suburbs have a hold on me despite the seemingly misnamed municipalities (Arlington Heights is decidedly flat; Rolling Meadows had cars cruising along what may have once been rolling fields now paved over). It�s the people there, my friends who�ve made the northern Illinois lakeside metropolis their home after college. The day after Mike�s and Barb�s wedding had me feeling sad and low, dragging my feet to get out of town, not wanting the party to be over, but at the same time wanting to fly eastward and let the highway put distance between me and the city, making the fresh memories of the last two days more distant.

I managed to do that to some extent. The slow crawls at a few points on the interstates had me cursing the Chicago traffic that was keeping me there longer than I wanted to be. Immediately entering the on-ramp for 294, I saw the southern route jammed to a crawl. I cursed, but noticed after two miles that the delay was the result of a minor accident. As I neared, I saw it was a hotel shuttle bus that had hit a car. Both were on the left shoulder. As I passed, I saw the shuttle bus was from the Northbrook Hilton.

The open road as I paid my way into Indiana � $2 for a bridge south of the city? That�s Skyway robbery � blew much of the lingering sadness from my mind. Garrison Keillor on the Sunday repeat of �A Prairie Home Companion� took my thoughts from Saturday�s wonderful wedding events to a fictional Minnesota town, the trials of private eye Guy Noir and the thick accent of the waiter at Cafe Beurf. By the end of the show, I was smiling again, able to enjoy the memory of events not yet a day old. �Sunday All Things Considered� on NPR continued to remove me from the midwest as I pictured the struggles in Israel and Palestine and the northern California valley town of Sunnydale, Apple Computer�s birthplace.

When I neared Exit 77 on the Indiana Toll Road, again I was thrown back two years to my college days � which was the reason I was back in the midwest in the first place. As I flew by the exit, looking south at the tower of Saint Mary�s College and crossing over Juniper Avenue and seeing the Golden Dome through the trees, all the feelings that tried to hold me to the Windy City attempted to pull me off the highway and onto the 160-year-old campus � or even the 10-year-old strip malls of Grape Road.

But I defeated them and continued on eastward, to the straight, flat slab of the interstate. It was the first time I�ve ever driven by Exit 77 without stopping. Waiting in Chicago had delayed my departure, and the crossover into Ohio took an hour from me. It was late, and I had a long way to go to Batavia, New York. I cut down on my stops, trying to make better time. I got gas at the last service area in Indiana and flew across Ohio without stopping. Darkness fell and I whipped through Cleveland and entered Pennsylvania. The highway grew dark and hypnotic, the white lights of oncoming cars and trucks on one side, the red tail lamps of the those ahead on the other. Just past the exit for Erie, I entered New York. It was nearing midnight. I stopped at the first on-highway rest area, an oasis in the middle of the east- and west-bound lanes. I parked in a mostly empty parking lot, with the semis parked for the night along the curbs. I walked into the enclosed walkway over the highway and watched the eastbound trucks shoot beneath my feet. Inside, I stared at the map, wondering if I�d make it to Batavia, still an hour away. The previous hour had been trying, and I wasn�t sure if I should�ve just stopped in Erie and gotten up early the next morning to finish the trip.

I bought a Coke and drank it in the lot while eating some crackers I�d bought earlier. Then I hit the road again. Most of the New York State Thruway is a toll road, but a portion of it around Buffalo offers a free ride. After passing through the free stretch, I went through the E-Z Pass lane of the toll plaza which registered my tag; it would register again at my exit and charge the amount to the account. As soon as I emerged from the initial plaza, the gas light lit up on the dashboard. I cursed and took the next exit, a mile away. Following what I thought was the direction the sign told me to go, I turned south, but passed nothing but closed stations on the four-lane state highway. The frequency of lights ahead on the road kept me going for two or three miles. Nothing. I turned around and decided to try north of the Thruway. A few more traffic lights, and still nothing. The next exit on the Thruway was 15 miles away. I figured I had at least a gallon, maybe two left. I�d easily been getting 20 miles per gallon in city driving, 25 on the highway. I would have had no problem making the next stop, but I was still worried. I decided to at least ask if there were any 24-hour stations in the area before getting back on the interstate. As I approached a light to make a right turn, the beautiful halogen brilliance of a 12-pump Mobil station appeared on the left. I cut across the three empty lanes and pulled in to fill up. If nothing else, the slight panic (brought on by weariness) woke me up and I finished the drive alert without further problems.

Despite it all � all the extensive celebrating and then the lingering melancholy � I feel rejuvenated and refreshed after a trip like this. I laugh and party, talk and catch up. I�m reminded of all the great friends I have and of how important and special Notre Dame is. I long for these times, these reunions. I wish they could happen more often, but I am satisfied knowing they continue regardless of their frequency. We may not know when we�ll all come together again, but we�re confident in the knowledge that it will happen. When it does, we�ll talk of how it has been so long, while at the same time saying we can�t believe how long it�s been.

�SO, UH, WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN AROUND HERE?�

Batavia�s a small town along the New York State Thruway. It was first merely a junction in the old Genesse Road and Tonawanda Creek Indian trails, according to the AAA New York Tourbook. Robert Morris bought more than 3 million acres from Massachusetts in 1797, then sold most of his holdings to the Dutch Holland Land Co., and the town that grew was �named for the Netherlands republic from which the owners originated.� The only points of interest listed in the book for the town of 16,300 is the Genesse County Chamber of Commerce and the Holland Land Office Museum, located in the original 1815 Holland Land Co. office on W. Main St. (allow 30 minutes minimum). Signs on the outskirts tell visitors that the city speed limit is 30, and the two-screen movie theater at the Genessee Country Mall was showing �X-Men� and �Storm.� With a Pepsi Bottling Plant on Main St., it may be hard to find Coke in this town.

Dwyer Stadium, home to the short-season Class-A Batavia Muckdogs, is on Bank St. The park sits at a curve in the road, where the residential sidestreets begin to taper into the open farmland of the Finger Lakes region. It�s a good half-mile or so from downtown and the old buildings and fast-food lights of Main St.

As the slowly setting sun casts long shadows and bathes the ball field in golden light, the stands begin filling. A lot of seats are taken by older people, long-time fans of Batavia baseball, from the days as Clippers, then Trojans, then back to Clippers and, finally, Muckdogs. I asked two people where the name �Muckdogs� came from, and they both dumped the question off onto Linda Crook, who works in the front office.

In her distinctive upstate, Finger Lakes accent, where the vowel sounds all meld together, she explained the history:

Back in 1939, when Batavia got a franchise as part of the original Pony League, the team was named the Clippers because there was a piece of farm equipment manufactured locally called the Clipper Combine. So they were the Clippers for a lot of years, and then sometime in the 50s or 60s, I don�t know when, the OK Trojan company in town subsidized the team, so we were the Batavia Trojans. And during that period of time, Columbus, Ohio � triple-A Yankees � took the name Clippers. And by this time, of course, the lawyers were into it, so they registered the name, and they owned it.

So the Trojan company pulls out of Batavia, and we go back to being the Clippers, but only with the permission of Columbus, and we can�t make any money. And of course, simultaneous with that, was Major League Baseball telling all the minors you�ve got to fix your stadium or we yank your team. So we were the Clippers until maybe 1988 and to try to pay off the new stadium, we�re not making any money on merchandise because we didn�t own the name. So we have a community-wide contest through the local paper and we got probably close to 2,000 entries, most of which had to be tossed because somebody already owned them. But then the local baseball club put together sort of a screening committee, and they came up with finalists, maybe about 10 of them. And those names went back into the newspaper, and we vote again.

Agriculture is the number one industry of our county, Genessee County, and it�s due in great part to the surrounding farmlands, which are known as mucklands. The farmers are known as muckers, and so I guess it just caught the fancy of people locally, with such direct agricultural ties. And, oh, the outcry when it was announced: �You know, the children are going to use �F� instead of the �M,� oooooh.

But once the design was unveiled, everybody just loved it. We�ve got Little League teams from all over the country who pull up minor league logos on the Net, so we have little Muckdogs running around all over the country. We needed a name that we could register, that we could own, that we could make money on, just to be brutally honest. That was another thing in town: �Oh, those horrible, greedy people, all they want is money.� Well, yeah, unless you want your taxes raised to pay for the new stadium, why don�t you let us earn the money.

But the name has caught on, with merchandise selling well and out-of-towners regularly asking the origin of the moniker.

Before the game, the team invited half a dozen youth soccer teams out onto the grass of the outfield to hold scrimmages for half an hour. Friends and families were invited out to sit alongside the playing fields, marked by orange cones. They were coed teams of 5-, 6-, 7-year-olds, which meant that the soccer was �organized� in the loosest sense of the word. The �games� consisted of flocks of kids, in blue and green and red and orange and yellow and purple shirts moving as one after the ball, kicking it downfield most of the time, but not all. As the Muckdogs started coming out of their clubhouse down the left field line, they took seats in the bullpen to watch the games.

�Guess we�re not having infield tonight,� said third baseman Travis Chapman. �Do you know what this is for?�

I didn�t. I was used to Little League baseball teams having promotions before minor league games, but I had never seen soccer played on a baseball field before.

Pitcher Alex Rodriguez sat on the bullpen bench, laughing at the game in front of us, near the left-field line. When Dario Delgado came out and started heading for the dugout, Rodriguez stopped him.

�Mir� numero diez,� he said. (Look at number 10.) A four-foot tall, bleach-blond bespectacled boy was a sparkplug on the field, darting after the ball, always the first to reach it. He came closest to scoring throughout the game for either team, then finally rolled one between the cones before the opposing goalkeeper could reach it. Then �numero diez� stood vigil in his own team�s goal, pouncing on any ball that came his way, scooping it up and wrapping his arms around it in a protective hug.

The soccer games were called off with 15 minutes to go before the scheduled first pitch. I got myself some food and found a seat down the third-base line, just beyond the coach�s box. The sounds of a Little League game came from a field just beyond the left-field fence at Dwyer Stadium: the announcement of each batter, the ping of horsehide on aluminum, the cheer of parents at each play so that it was impossible to guess whether the cheers were for a defensive gem or a scoring opportunity.

While a recorded band played the National Anthem, scattered voices at Dwyer Stadium sang along, including two women up in the third-base bleachers who must spend Sunday mornings in the church choir. After the song ended, scattered applause rose from the seats, not for the anthem itself, but for the women who sang along.

�She was better than most people that do it live,� one man in front of me said to his buddy.

�Yeah, just sing the song, and get the words right,� his friend said. �Don�t try to jazz it up in your own way. I hate when people do that.�

The game carried on as minor league games do. Every fly ball hit by a Muckdog brought a gasp from the crowd, but it was evident early that baseballs don�t carry well in Batavia. I�ve heard that�s the case at a lot of New York-Penn League parks. I�ve seen three now, including Augusta, N.J., and Staten Island, N.Y. In the five games I�ve attended at the three parks, I�ve seen one home run, at Staten Island. The lull between innings was filled with various on-field games and promotions, standard at minor league games these days. Also unique to the bush league ballparks is the small field, often nestled in with its surroundings. The street lay just behind the third-base stands, and the parking lot came right up to the first-base bleachers. Every foul ball hit straight back cleared the press box and hit the roof of the administrative offices and concession stand behind it, then fell to the concourse unexpectedly, inciting a mad rush for the free souvenir. A few that sailed over our heads near third base cleared the stadium gates, bouncing off the sidewalk and into the street. One landed with the distinctive thud of a baseball on steel, and in unison came the scattered response from the crowd: �It hit a car,� with �car� pronounced with the drawn-out �arrr� of the muddled vowels.

There was a distinctive gap in the ages of the Batavia fans. Along with the many retirees who�ve spent their lives in upstate New York were young couples and families, with their own kids and various others as well. And there were a lot of high schoolers too, but the thing I noticed was what seemed to be a surprisingly high number of teen-aged parents. Either people in their early 20s look like the rest of us do in our mid-teens, or there�s just not a lot to do in Batavia when you�re home from school or out on a Friday night. One girl looked like she might be about 14 (but was likely older), pushing a stroller, the wedding band on her left hand. Her husband had the distinctive look of a guilty boyfriend who would rather be out with the boys than a married father at 17 or 18. He wore a NASCAR baseball cap of some racing team or another, and had the characteristic patchy facial hair of a blond high schooler.

After my pre-game interviews were done, I had no need to stay at the ballpark, but it wouldn�t be a trip to a baseball game without seeing some of the game. I watched as the Batavia pitcher, Dan Adams, allowed five runs to score in two different innings after which he�d gotten the first two outs, then started walking people. The Muckdogs were able to cut the score to 5-4 in the bottom of the seventh, but the night grew cold with the setting of the sun and the oncoming storm, that I left in the top of the eighth and returned to the hotel.

The next morning, I rose early, showered, and headed out of town on a two-lane farm road, passing over the rolling hills, through Greigstown and Danville on my way to I-395. I went down through Corning, nestled in a river valley below the surrounding hills, and came to NY 17, which is designated on the maps and by signs every 20 miles or so as �Future I-86.� One stretch of NY 17 already had the I-86 designation, but eventually the freeway ended in spots where traffic lights stood in the road. At one stretch of construction, I was diverted onto one of the westbound lanes because the eastbound side was torn up, construction crews busy building the interstate and a bridge over the traffic lights and crossroads. East to Binghamton, then south again into Pennsylvania, past Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. A few miles beyond Wilkes-Barre, I merged with I-80 and flew east, crossing the Delaware River and entering New Jersey once again.