Part I of III: Cleveland to Parts Unseen.
September 24, 2005, was the wedding date chosen by my cousin Francis and his bride-to-be. The location: Mary, Star of the Sea, a modest parish in La Jolla, California. Any point west of Chicago is an unlikely place to find me — the other side of the country, you say? This was to be the longest jet flight I had ever taken, soaring above terrain of which I could conceive as depicted in a book — but not before my own eyes.