Indianapolis

Lisa and I are in Indy right now on our Winter Break road trip. Originally we were going to see three cities on our trip: St. Louis, Chicago, and Indianapolis. On Friday we drove up to St. Louis to see Wicked at the Fox Theater and had a wonderful time. The play made Lisa happier than I've ever seen her (including when I proposed), and we had a good time wandering around the city. This morning we took a few pictures of the arch and Busch park and then hit the road. While we both would have liked to have seen Chicago, we would have had to drive an extra 300 miles to spend a few hours in the city. Lisa pointed out that it might be better to leave the Windy City for a later trip and spend more time in Indianapolis and I agreed.

On getting into the city, we first tried to find a hotel and stumbled upon a seedy but well placed Day's Inn. While the outside looked like the work of a drunk 70's architect (the hotel sits on stilts over the parking area), the lobby was ok and the rent was cheap. We got what I hope was the last room which turned out to be a "suite." In this case this meant that it used to be part of the work out room, but was converted into a gigantic studio with almost no furniture other than the jacuzzi in the back of the room. On the other side of a divider wall was the rest of the bathroom, which looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in a couple of weeks. The absurdly cheap, vomit pink wall paper is peeling from the walls in a few places, and there's some sort of trap door into the ceiling. The equally cheap carpet clashes with aforementioned wallpaper and doesn't fit all that well with the green tile around the jacuzzi. On the upside we have a door directly into the workout facilities in case we want to work out in the middle of the night. However, Lisa assured me that this would be a fun adventure type memory to share and promised that we wouldn't be murdered in the night by vagrants or the hotel staff. I eventually decided to take her word and agreed not to ask for a refund or just run screaming across the city.

After begrudgingly acclimating myself to our lodgings, I asked Lisa if we could go wander aimlessly around the city and suggested we check on getting tickets for the Pacers game. We were already going to the Colts game tomorrow, but we both like sports and decided to give it a try. Luckily the coliseum is only like a half mile from our luxurious abode, so we walked over and were able to get pretty good tickets for $25/per. I was surprised both by how nice the Conseco Field House is and how empty it was. Despite the empty seats (by my guess about 50% attendence), the people around us proved interesting. Lisa's favorite was the emo-kid sitting directly in front of me. She noticed him first when he was trying to straighten the curled ends of his unshorn hair, but it was his later text messaging that really make him noteworthy. Lisa noticed his attention on his phone at some point in the second quarter and was easily able to read, "I want our mouths to make love when you get back." He later followed with the breathtaking metaphor, "I want our tongues to dance like two lovers in the night." If only he could have been wearing a Fall Out Boy t-shirt, the image would have been complete. I was worried the kid was going to catch onto the fact that Lisa and I couldn't stop laughing at him. My favorite person of the game was the fan who walked out onto the court during the 3rd quarter. After meandering between a few confused players, he jumped to try to touch a rim, and then spent an impressively long time evading security before being tackled and restrained.

After the game, we rushed back to our hotel to try out the jacuzzi and were only marginally surprised to find the jets didn't work. C'est la vie. (Lisa shouts La vie!). Tomorrow, I'm hoping to get up early, check out, and go wander around the city. I'm thinking that if we check out by 7 we can minimize our hosts' time to attempt murder. The Colts game should be great and make up for our poor choice in hotels.