Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Driving Indiana


To help keep our minds off of things, Lynn and I volunteered
to drive our nephew Erik back to school at Ball State University
in Muncie Indiana. My brother, John also went to Ball State
but I hadn't been to Muncie since John graduated in 1980 so I
was curious what might have changed along the way. It was
always a long 3 1/2 hour drive and there was no way to get there.
That hadn't changed much since 1980. We drove through lots of
small towns including Frankfort, Tipton, Elwood and Alexandria.
We ooohed and ahhhed over Frankfort's Gym (Home of the Hot Dogs...
yes, that is their nickname...really) that seats 5509 and still
is only the 22nd largest high school gym in the state. Just a
bit of trivia...Indiana boasts 9 of the 10 largest high school
gyms in the world with Anderson's being the biggest, holding
9314 fans. Now isn't that interesting??? Anyway, on through
central Indiana we rolled and eventually made it to Muncie.
BSU is a nice university and has some pleasant architecture.
We dropped Erik off at his dorm, saw his room and took off.
It would have been nice to stay longer, but we needed to get
going. The two lane state highway system of central Indiana
was just a little too slow for us so we took off south on I-69
toward Indianapolis and then up I-65 to Lafayette. My cousin
Diane showed us her new house...really nice and very roomy.
She's a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and she earns her living by
creating works of diffused glass art:

http://di-fusedglass.com

Diane has a small studio in her home where she creates her
art and even has her own kiln. We drove over to the Purdue
campus over in West Lafayette where Diane and I both went to
college and met my nephew Henry for dinner at an Indian restaurant.
Lynn, Diane and I all love Indian food and I think it was
probably Henry's first shot at it. I hope it's not the
last. A short drive home found us back in Hebron. A long
day...a lot of driving...and a nice getaway.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think back to the montage in "Hoosiers" where they start winning and they are traveling by bus to all of the different small towns in Indiana. One of my favorite shots of Americana in all movies.

Tom said...

And to a point, Indiana is still like that...H.S. Basketball is king here.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the "shout out!" Minor point tho' - I retired as a Lt Col.