From January 15th to January 19th (the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend) I went to Indiana. In my previous post, I was hoping I’d get to go. Luckily all went well with the flight. I left the house at 11:35 and was by my gate a little after 1:15. I was on line for security for around fifteen minutes. Like my last trip, I was able to locate a seat right next to a power outlet, unfortunately only one of the two outlets was working and someone was using the other one. While I was waiting for my flight, I got paged to retrieve a lost article. I check everything and am unable to determine what I lost. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make out where I was to go to get it, so since I was traveling alone, I packed up my laptop, and carried all my luggage to security. The TSA folks were quite nice but they didn’t have my lost item, so I went to the Continental gate. They said that my item is one gate over (a flight going to Richmond, VA). I retrieved my article and she then asked if I wanted to board. I told her I was going to Indianapolis, which left a confused look on her face. This also unsettled me a little bit, so I went to the Continental web site just to double check my booking was correct. The 3:25 PM flight (boarding at 2:55) boarded about 5 minutes late, but it was a full flight (a couple of Continental Indy bound flights earlier in the day were canceled). We pushed back from the gate around 3:30. Since it had snowed earlier in the day, we moved back about 200 yards and then they washed the plane. We then waited in line (typical of Newark Liberty International Airport) and took off at around 4 PM. Other than a little choppiness when we took off, the flight was uneventful. During the flight, I watched “Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana” which I had recorded from HBO and put on my iPod to get me in the “Indiana mood.” We landed at around 6 PM. It was 1° Fahrenheit, much colder than my trip in October. I was prepared, wearing my Merck Hands On Helpdesk sweater and some gloves. You’d be surprised how much room gloves take up when you’re packing in a way to not need to check any baggage.
The new Indianapolis Airport is very nice. While it is designed very similar to the old airport, it is much bigger and very modern. Like the old airport, it is well designed and very navigable. It has two terminals with something akin to a food court/shopping mall between the two. Since this food court/mall is before security, it is a good meeting place and that’s where Neil was waiting. I didn’t take any pictures of the airport, but here’s a YouTube video of the lights that follow you on the moving walkway on the pedestrian bridge.
We grabbed a bit to eat at Cheeseburger In Paradise. We had a snack of 6 mini cheeseburgers and had strawberry margaritas. We then went to Bloomington where I dropped off my stuff and met up with Neil’s friend, Jonathan. The three of us went to The Irish Lion. That restaurant has some great British/Irish food. I had the corned beef and cabbage while Neil had the fish & chips and Jonathan had the leg of lamb. Neil and I had an Irish Shandy (equal Guinness and lemonade) to go along with it. When we left the restaurant it was -4° and windy. Thankfully I was dressed warm and Jonathan’s car has a really good heater. We then went home and watched an Ellen DeGeneres DVD from an HBO special from 2003.
On Friday Neil was going to work half a day since he had been gone for so long, however, due to the amount of work he had, it turned out to be a full day. In the morning it was –9° I spent the day watching stuff on Hulu as well as some stuff I had on my portable hard drive that I pulled from my TiVo. It was good that I was home since the $40 chocolate mousse cheesecake (that only cost me $3.98) from 1-800-Flowers got delivered. It was packed in dry ice in a cooler. The funny thing is that it was shipped from New Jersey. Here is a picture of the cheesecake.
At night we had mushroom pizza from Mad Mushroom and watched “Breaking Away” from Netflix on demand.
Being the early riser that I am, I got up several hours before Neil. I got up around 5 and he got up at 10:30. I spent the morning listening to WIBC which is one of Indianapolis’s news/talk stations to see what’s going on in the state of Indiana. I had a “hearty” McDonald’s breakfast (coffee, steak and egg sandwich and two apple pies) and spent the morning watching stuff on Hulu/external hard drive and chatting on IRC. I also played my first arena in World of Warcraft (WoW). I didn’t do so great, but I did manage to get eight honorable kills. Once Neil woke up, we finally dug in to that dark chocolate covered, chocolate chip strewn cheesy and mousse-y cheesecake. If you think it looks good, then the taste was 10x better, probably the best cheesecake I ever ate. Neil then helped me reconfigure my WoW user interface so that I can be a better player. Afterwards, Neil & I made a 2+ mile walk from the apartment to the IU campus. It was on this walk that he took a picture of me in front of the Sample Gates.
We walked around campus looking for Mark’s car. It’s such a beautiful campus, even in the winter. I texted Mark to tell us where it is. Neil found the car 5 seconds before Mark, who was at work, texted me back. Once we got the car, we headed for the College Mall. We went to the AT&T Store where Neil found out they had the white iPhone. He needed to think about it so we had pretzels and drinks at Auntie Ann’s. It took little convincing on my part for him to get it. We went back and Neil got his new communications device along with a green cover. He is enjoying his new phone very much, despite the lack of 3G coverage in Bloomington. We then started to make our way to French Lick, but decided to go see a movie instead. We caught the 7 PM showing of “Gran Torino” at the ShowPlace 12. The theater was really nice with high backed chairs and cup holders in the armrest instead of in front of you. The screen was gigantic. Afterwards we went to the Alley Bar where we had a few beers and relaxed. Once we were done with the bar, we hit Uncle E’s (short for Elizabeth) which is Bloomington’s gay nightclub. Neil, being the driver didn’t drink much but he got me several more beers and a shot of “something” at the end (vodka maybe). While I didn’t keep track of the number of beers I had, Neil said I had 14 (if my aunt is reading this, she’s hating this right now). Let’s just say I was in a very happy mood by the time we left the club.
On Sunday morning I got up my usual early time and experienced my first, albeit very mild hangover. I went to McDonald’s, got a large juice to hydrate myself and a large coffee to wake me up (which probably undid whatever good stuff the juice did). I came back and had my juice and coffee with some cheesecake for breakfast (it’s what the champions eat, right?). Once Neil woke up, I wanted to go have brunch at The Runcible Spoon. We did the 2 mile walk to the restaurant only to find that it was packed. We then walked to campus (through the Sample Gates no less) and went to the cyber cafe in the basement of the Herman B. Wells Library (don’t confuse it with H.G. Wells, this one is named after one of IU’s chancellors). I had a light lunch of a tuna fish salad sandwich and some soda. The cyber cafe is quite nice. Along the back wall are a bunch of iMacs for people to use along with wi-fi access (which is available through most of the campus). After lunch we went to the Oliver Winery. For a Sunday afternoon, it was quite crowded. When you walk in, they give you a wine list for you to pick from for the wine tasting. At the bar you taste the wine, then eat a cracker to cleanse your palette. Every half hour they have a tour. I’ve been on winery tours before in places like California and France. This was Neil’s first winery tour. While not necessarily as interesting as some of the tours I’ve been on, I still found it enjoyable. One thing I wish they they did show, which I’ve seen in person is the actually bottling of the wine, instead they showed a video of it. After the tour we tried a couple more wines. There was this one honey wine that I liked. Before we left, I bought Neil a bottle of Zinfandel since it was his favorite. I found out a few days later that he liked it very much. After the winery, we went back to the apartment. When we got back, I fought with OS X to get it to print to Neil’s printer. Once I finally found the right driver, I printed out my boarding pass (which Continental e-mailed to me). We ordered hot wings and watched Woody Allen’s “Sleeper.” I think we were about halfway through the movie when the wings finally came. It was cold outside and no one wanted to go to a restaurant so the delivery places were busy. When I say that these wings were spicy, I mean it. I thought my mouth was going to get another hole in it. We ordered 30 wings (boneless) and had plenty left over for Mark. After the movie, we watched “Hackers” from Netflix on DVD. I really should say that Neil and Mark watched it. I fell asleep and probably only saw about 30-40 minutes of it.
Monday was the day I liked the least, since it was time for me to go home. I woke up early that day (around 4 AM) and did some stuff on the computer. Neil came down at 4:30 and I guess he didn’t hear me because I startled the crap out of him when he went to get some grapefruit juice. As he was walking back up the stairs he was like “awww you’re already all set up, go back to sleep.” Then he patted me on the head and went upstairs. I spent a good 40 minutes trying to get everything re-packed (darn hard drive and gloves) and miraculously I managed to do it. I showered and got dressed then went to McDonald’s where I got myself some coffee/juice and an apple pie. I planned to leave for the airport at 11. When 10 AM rolled around and Neil was still sound asleep I got a little concerned. His alarm went off at 10:15. Neil & Mark ate some breakfast and we chatted. We left for the airport at 11:06 and got there a little after 12. Since I had plenty of time for my flight, we got some lunch and chatted in the food court/mall area. While we were chatting, my flight got delayed until 2:30, which meant a little extra time with my friends. When the time came (the worst part of the trip), I said bye to Mark and gave Neil a hug goodbye and headed for the gate. I waited at the gate until around 2:30. The delay was due to snow at Newark, since the plane was already at the gate in Indy. We took off around 3 PM but circled for several minutes mid-flight (probably over Pennsylvania) and for another 20-30 minutes 150 miles away from Newark. We finally landed at around 5:30 where it was snowing. We waited another 20 minutes before we could get to the gate (2 planes ahead of us deicing). I called Avistar Parking who took a good 20-30 minutes to pick me up. I got to my car around 6:30 and was home by 7:19.
In conclusion, as always I had a wonderful time. With a little bit of luck, Neil might come for a visit in April.
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