Hello Ohio

After arriving in Ohio accompanied by the signature tune of Tim’s favourite band, Over the Rhine, we spent our first day learning about American flying history at the Wright Patterson Airforce base. The Wright Brothers (inventors of the first airplane) came from Dayton, Ohio, and many of the town’s sights are named after the famous pair, including Wright State University, where Barbara works. It is a massive site, and we could have spent all week looking at the exhibits, but we limited ourselves to a few hours and managed to see 4 Airforce One planes, some weird looking fighter jets (early predecessor of B2 pictured), and see an IMAX movie about fighter jet training in the Nevada desert. Later on that evening Carl treated us to a wonderful dinner cooked on his shiny new bbq, including the specialty acorn squash, which looked fabulous and tasted delicious.

The next day we headed south to Cincinnati, via a very important stopover in Indiana as a dedication to our good friend Joe back in London, who is very passionate about his home state. We started off our ‘Cincy’ visit with a trip to the aquarium. After negotiating our way around the various exhibits and the many mums with pushchairs, we came to my favourite section – the viewing tunnel, where there were massive sting rays and 5ft sharks swimming over us (pictured). Tim managed to drag me away from this section only because there was a shark petting area, where we got to stroke many different shark varieties and feel how different their skin textures felt. I loved it! Next stop was the Underground Railroad Exhibition. When Tim first mentioned this, I thought he had been secretly collaborating with Dad, and was going to drag me round an American railway exhibition – yawn yawn. Luckily, there were no trains involved. It turned out to be a fascinating exhibition about the slave trade and the treacherous journeys to freedom. Many people from Ohio assisted escaped slaves in their journey from the south of the US to freedom in Canada. Tim’s friend, Grant, was leading a group of German pastors around the exhibition as part of their visit to Ohio, so we joined them, and then spent the evening with Grant. He took us to Mount Adams, a beautiful area overlooking Cincinnati (pictured), where we had dinner and a few drinks. Then we drove out to Loveland and saw Grant’s church before I was treated to one of the ultimate Ohio experiences – Graeters icecream. We had 3 servings of mint choc chip (the best flavour) and devoured them in seconds - delicious!

Day 3 was spent in Columbus, where Tim went to university. Ohio State University turned out to be a little bigger than Birmingham (surprise surprise), but had a somewhat similar feel to it, with a central quad and many red brick buildings. I embarrassed Tim by insisting I had a photo of him standing on the steps of the chemical engineering building (pictured - I’ll be a great embarrassing parent one day). We went inside and saw his old lecture theatres and classrooms, and left a note for one of his professors. We also saw where Tim used to play the double bass, and visited one of his favourite old lunch spots. He also gave me a tour of the various places he used to live – they seemed very nice compared to Selly Oak! I was treated to a view of the ‘Buckeyes’ stadium (the university football team), and yes, the university has its own stadium, which seats over 100,000 people! (pictured - Tim took this one a few years ago) Quite remarkable when you think that the refurbishments to Twickenham, the home of English Rubgy, only increases the capacity to 82,000, and the new, improved, ‘hallowed ground’ that is Wembley, only reaches 90,000! I am now the proud owner of a Buckeyes t-shirt, so that I can be appropriately dressed in New Zealand at 6am when Tim is watching his team play (perfect). Later on Tim took me to ‘Easton’, a fabulous American size shopping mall on the outskirts of Columbus. Luckily for Tim, we didn’t have much room to spare in our luggage allowance; otherwise I could have easily spent all day there. We finished the day by meeting Konrad for dinner, another friend of Tim’s that he grew up with, who filled me in on a few more stories from their childhood!