Goodbye Gleason Road
On Friday, March 6, 2026, I drove to Massey’s Pizza and picked up the half meat lovers, half mushroom and banana pepper pizza I had ordered for Shane and I. See, he is moving in with his fiancée Jessica shortly after Paige and my wedding. With wedding stuff picking up, for both of us, Shane and I wanted to get the apartment “send off” underway sooner rather than later.
I walked into the apartment around 7:30, we said hi, and we started to eat and reminisce. “We had some good times,” I said with a smile.
“Yes, we sure did,” he replied, “do you remember the helicopter?”
While I hadn’t forgotten, it wasn’t something that I think about that often. That story begins in July 2022, when Shane orchestrated a meeting between myself, both our parents, and his staff coordinator, Nancy, to help solve the issues that Shane and I were having at the time. After the meeting, Nancy gave Shane and I two tickets to the Ohio State fair.
Now, around the same time of that meeting, I had matched with a girl on a dating app named Lauren. I’ve already written about that entire fiasco, but basically, she and I went on a date, and she orchestrated a weird The Bachelorette situation between me and another guy she was seeing at the time. Then, when that inevitably blew up, my “sisters” convinced me to start working on myself before I started dating again. Shane and I ended up going to the fair, between Lauren and my date and the Andersons, convincing me to work on myself.
Now it goes without saying that Lauren is not my soulmate, but at this point, Paige was just a family friend who I had (what I thought was) a childish crush on. So, at this time, while I already knew my future wife, my anxiety about not finding someone paired with the other guy situation, put me in a very toxic mindset.
We arrived at the fair at around 5:00 on Saturday, August 13, 2022. I had gone to the fair growing up, but all I remembered about it was going down the big slides. After Shane and I walked into the fair, we made our way to the skyride.
While we were in the air, we heard a helicopter above us. We watched as it circled the fair and landed on the side we were heading to. We did a few other things that I can’t quite remember now, but when we had done everything else we wanted to, we got in line for the helicopter.
About an hour later, it was finally our turn. The man who was at the gate let us in, and we watched as it landed in front of us. We climbed in, I sat in the front, and Shane sat in the back, and we took off. As we ascended, I looked at the Columbus skyline. I had seen it before from airplanes, but that was always in passing. I had never flown specifically to see the skyline, and it was breaking!
As I thought back on this experience from Shane’s apartment, I smiled. See, I’m bringing Lauren up for two very specific reasons. 1. I’m planning on using her in a later installment for a narrative purpose (bear with me, that will make sense when we get to it). 2. The Other Guy situation works as a great allegory for my most recent thoughts on the War Of The Roommates. While Shane and I have remained friends, post living together, as I’ve depicted, our time living together was not ideal. I think my biggest problem with writing about War Of The Roommates so openly is now when I think back on my time living with Shane, I view it as overall negative. But it wasn’t all bad. Shane and I still had some good times in the Gleason Road apartment, even though our fights were overshadowing them. Just like how even when I was stressing over the Other Guy Situation, Shane and I were able to see this amazing view from a helicopter!
Have a Greattastic Day and Be Safe
J. Mitchie Ulibarri SBT
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