The John J. Fahey, MD, Memorial North American Traveling Fellowship (NATF) was first conceptualized at an American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) Executive Committee meeting in 1968. One year later, the committee’s proposal to create a fellowship program for orthopaedic surgeons to travel to orthopaedic centers around the United States and Canada was accepted. The tour’s purpose is to promote clinical and scientific exchange and fellowship at each orthopaedic program visited. Orthopaedic surgeons who have completed orthopaedic training, including residency or fellowship, within four years before the tour year (five years, if the applicant entered military service directly after completion of training) are eligible to apply for the NATF. Forty years later, the 2009 tour was organized by Jeffrey C. Wang, MD (UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine), and was coordinated by Lisa O’Brien of the AOA office and Trinity Wittman of the Canadian Orthopaedic Association office. This trip had the flavor of a homecoming tour for all five of us because it included visits to our alma maters, including the residency or fellowship training programs of four of us, the medical schools of three of us, the undergraduate institutions of two of us, and the current departments of two of us. The 2009 fellows, who all hail coincidentally from sites within the Midwest region, were Ryan Bicknell, a shoulder and elbow surgeon from Kingston, Ontario, Canada (Queen’s University); Robert Brophy, a sports-medicine surgeon from St. Louis, Missouri (Washington University); Gregory Della Rocca, a trauma surgeon from Columbia, Missouri (University of Missouri-Columbia); Wellington Hsu, a spine surgeon from Chicago, Illinois (Northwestern University); and Amanda Marshall, a joint-replacement surgeon from San Antonio, Texas (University of Texas Health Science Center). Our odyssey began on September 29 at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where we were greeted by Thomas R. Hunt III, MD, John S. Gould, …