Indy trip

I'm in Indiana! Have been since Wednesday, for a conference in West Lafayette, on the Purdue campus. Many years ago, when I was very young, I did a summer internship at UW-Madison. Part of the program entailed a conference where students from other such programs in several Midwestern universities got together to talk about their research and listen to career advice. Years later, I'm back as one of the adults, PhD behind me, a success story of the program. It's been fun meeting other who went through the program, meeting program directors, and the little ones, so exuberant and energized. As part of tonight's entertainment, they got on stage and did school cheers. Some of them were amazing, with flashy dances, rowdy cheers, and sassy posing. So fun! Made me think of Blue Steele back home. Sigh.

Indiana has been interesting. It's good to get a reality check of how most of America is. It doesn't have subways. Its sidewalks are not well worn by pedestrians. There are lots of plazas, but not like the ones with fountains and pigeons and cute old men feeding them from benches. No, these plazas have gas stations, Wal-Marts, chain pharmacies, and lots of lots of parking spaces. One has to drive. Everywhere. Much of the area of Indianapolis is suburban, which stretch a mind-boggling amount. There's lots of industry here too. Finally, farmland. Between the farmland and suburbs one does get to see lots more of Nature than back East. In the past few days I have seen rabbits, deer, Canada geese, several types of heron, cormorants, maybe some loons, goldfinches, cardinals, blue jays. A red-tailed hawk nearly shat on me a couple of hours ago. The sky is big here. The people are friendly. The downtowns ghostly, with empty storefronts in the faded beauties of Gilded era architecture, have not yet been touched by urban renewal. There are Mennonites here and there. Mexican laborers. South Asian professors and engineers. Lots of friendly white folk. No recycling.

I did, unexpectedly, happen to eat, two memorable meals here. One was at a sushi restaurant called Naked Tschopstix. I was with my friend Tamar who lives in Indy, and we had some amazing Maui rolls, which contain rice, avocado, cream cheese, tempura shrimp, asparagus, wrapped with a sliver of mango! It was heavenly. We also had other equally delectable rolls. We also lunched in a Belgian restaurant, called Brugge Brasserie. Despite warnings from the friendly (American not Belgian) owner, I chased a delicious crepe with not one but TWO delicious Belgian-style beers. So I was a midday drunk that day. In that state I stumbled into the nearby Indy-indy music store Indy CD and Vinyl. The guy ringing me up was very impressed with my purchase of CDs from Girl Talk, Of Montreal, and CSS, and a DVD of Faith No More. This prompted a conversation with the kid behind me in line. He said Girl Talk was playing next week in Indy. I saw the poster too. He's playing at a gay bar! WOW!

This latter paragraph all occurred in a neighborhood as cute as its name, called Broadripple. This was one of the few places that looked like a city: People were walking, there were bars that opened up to sidewalks, posters advertising concerts stapled to electric poles, bikers. Oh yes, there was a bike path! And the cutest urban bridge I've ever seen. With ducks swimming underneath. I did not have a camera, but others have when passing by, and left the record on Flickr. See for yourself: Broad Ripple.

I also found out, from a certain German fan of his, that Kurt Vonnegut was from Indianapolis. I say that puts this state in the thumbs-up position. Though I dare say it still needs to make up for a certain mistake of the past.