This is post number 99 in this blog.  There are already 99 comments in this blog.  The next comment is number 100.

We're back in Akron after about 700 miles in the car.  Going "home" was surreal, for sure.  It felt like we had been on a very long vacation and that we were returning home for good.  It was very easy to forget that we had constructed an entirely separate life some 320 miles away.

There was something very pleasant about being back in the flat, nearly featureless agricultural hinterlands that typify central Indiana.  Honestly, it's some of the most boring scenery this side of western Kansas, but it was very comfortable.  There are no flat plains or corn fields up here, really... and somehow I missed it.  I first got this feeling when I went to Bowling Green for ELDAAG... the flat boring environment felt like home and I had no problem announcing that.  Mary thought I was completely nuts -- of course, she comes from the foothills of the Appalachians in Pennsylvania.  I guess after 23-some-odd years in one environment, you assume that this is the environment you're destined to live in for the rest of your days.  You get attached to it, and become very comfortable there despite the urge of every faculty of your mind through your entire life to that point to get you out of that place. 

I think Tuan called this topophilia, a love of place explained only through examination of experience, and I can certainly buy into that.  It's the inference of this place to my familial experiences that gives it meaning.  Had my experiences happened in the desert, I'd feel that way about the desert.

Something about seeing the moonlit harvested fields, falling old barns, and the clear-sky autumn sunset was just really nice, even comforting in a way.

Weird.

At the same time, being "home" was a bit foreign, and somewhere along the line, Hoosiers acquired a bit of an accent.  I found myself actually having to think about how to get around Muncie... well, at least a little.  I tried to soak as much of it in as I could.  Muncie has gotten a Starbucks, Popeyes, and Cheeseburger in Paradise since we left, and the Ghetto Dolla' got some new digs as well. I felt like I was visiting a place that I wasn't a part of anymore, and rightly so I suppose.  It felt surreal, like a dream where you go someplace you spent a lot of time in the past but had never gone back. 

Weirder still.

When we went to the Muncie Mall with my parents to get Amy some clothes for her birthday, I kept expecting to see people I knew.  I haven't known very many people in Muncie for a very long time.  Almost all of them moved on, and anyone I would know probably wouldn't have been in the mall.  I still kept expecting someone to ask me what it was like to be out of Muncie, and congratulating me for getting out.  How would they know anything about where I lived?  Muncie kids like me have for so long made heroes out of those people who actually got out that I felt like I should somehow be recognized, I guess.  Regardless, I marched around the mall in a triumphant mode.  Somehow, I had gotten out of this town and was now wandering around as an untrapped visitor.  No one there knew me, so how could I, an outsider, be distinguished from any other?  How was I even an outsider?  It didn't even compute in my head, because I didn't do that much besides change my address and move my shit.

Perhaps the strangest yet was when we left.  There was really no emotion for me when we left.  Sure, it sucks that we can't see our families and friends as regularly as we'd like, but that didn't really matter too much.  Driving back to Indiama gave us a better grasp on how far from "home" we really are, which isn't that far.  Perhaps the delays associated with moving our stuff and going in a huge caravan from back in July (totalling a nine hour trip) made it feel farther than it really is (four hours and change with no stops).

We took a newly suggested northern route to go from Muncie to Akron.  It shaved a good bit of time and a number of miles from our journey.  Driving to Akron, though... it was weird.  Going over Norton Road on I-76 and getting that first view of the whole city laid out in the Cuyahoga Valley was a very nice thing.  Driving down the major road that connects to our street, pulling into the driveway and walking in the house... Stuff like that makes you forget about the subconcious love of featureless agricultural plains.  You forget that you're keeping yourself unattached from this area because of that short time you'll be here. 

We forgot about the "home" we'd left as we came into our city, streaking past the little downtown skyline on State Road 8 and flying over the valley.  We certainly forgot all of these other attachments as we checked on the animals, read the pet-sitter's report, opened the mail and then got ready for bed.

We were home.