Thursday, July 02, 2009
17: A Pig, a Monkey, and a Water Baby
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| Stoker's Log Day Seventeen |
| 7/02/09 |
| From Indianapolis, IN |
| To Terre Haute, IN |
| 89.6 miles |
| 11.0 avg mph |
This morning we woke up at 4. I know that during the school year Kyle frequently wakes up at 4, but I still say no human being should ever wake up that early. We had good reason though; we wanted to start before sunrise to avoid the infamous traffic through Indianapolis. We enjoyed a delicious hotel breakfast before we left, which helped, and honestly crossing Indianapolis as dawn broke was an amazing ride. The buildings and artwork were all lit up and the streets were calm enough that we could take our time through the city.
On the outskirts of Indianapolis we passed through the Spanish Quarter, which I decided to use as an educational opportunity. I had Kyle translate signs and added this new vocabulary to the very limited Spanish I already knew: the words for hello, tomorrow, monkey, water, and 1-10. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but soon I was exclaiming in broken Spanish "Big Monkey not pedal. Big Monkey eat small children!" (I warned you we were becoming strange and easily entertained.)
Mono Grande clearly needed breakfast, so we stopped at a Kroger grocery store to stock up on supplies. We always shop in shifts so that someone can guard the bike, and when Kyle was in the store he got to talking with an employee all about the trip. By the time I took my turn word had spread throughout the store and I kept overhearing conversations about us. "That's amazing! Are they camping do you think? Did you see the bike?" A few of them found me in the energy bar aisle (I assume the spandex made me easy to identify) and I had a fun time answering all of their questions and feeling like a grocery store celebrity. Eventually I said goodbye to everyone and went outside to eat a pig shaped cookie for breakfast. It was a little hard for my taste, but it certainly looked cute.
Our day was full of such encouragement from strangers, including an older woman who reminded us that "life is too short to not take adventures." Well said.
We were following the historic National Road again today, and the ride was mostly more of the same: riding from gas station to gas station on country roads with moderate traffic. I've learned that cities in this part of the country are not like those on the east coast; they don't spread or sprawl, gradually shifting from urban to suburban to rural. Instead, a bustling city is quite often neighbored by a vast field and the line between them might as well be a country border. While waiting in a long bathroom line I asked the lady beside me if there were any other gas stations or restaurants nearby, but she told me "I have no idea what is in this area at all. I'm from Indy." We couldn't have been more than 15 miles out of the city. It was astounding.
We rode on and eventually stopped for lunch at the Cornerstone Bar & Grill. It was a nice little place, which is good since it was the only game in town. We had heaping portions of food and much more soda than was prudent considering how long we'd have to wait for the next bathroom.
Our final destination for the day was Terre Haute, and I was excited because it was enough of a city to have tourist attractions. I had a list of art and history museums that I wanted to visit, but as our ETA became later and later I had to cross them off until the only one left was the Swope Art Museum that was open until 5:00. Even that started to seem unattainable, but we kept pushing as hard as we could. I felt awful when Kyle, who had no interest in visiting the art museum, started having hamstring pain, and I had about given up when we finally saw signs for Terre Haute, proud home of Clabber Girl Baking Powder.
We raced into the center of town and found the museum just in time. Swope isn't an expansive museum -- two small floors of American painting and sculpture -- but that meant I could see all of it in the 20 minutes left before it closed. I discovered a new favorite artist in sculptor Richard Hunter, and the "Water Baby" garden sculptures by Terre Haute native Janet Scudder just made me grin. Most of all I loved having the rooms of art all to myself to wander through in relaxed silence. I wanted to support the museum by purchasing postcards, but sadly they didn't have what I wanted: portraits of disillusioned and unemployed youth who look pretty much the same a century later. Someone should tell those boys to hop on a bicycle, go see some art, and otherwise escape the depressing job search for the summer. It's certainly making me feel invigorated and accomplished...at the moment anyway.
We had one last stop to make before the Comfort Inn Suites: Fat Bikes. We were hoping that the local bike shop could fix our increasingly shaky handlebars. The owner was a bit bemused by our strange headset but hypothesized a crack and lost bearings -- not a good sign, and not something he was willing or able to fix. We'll just have to hope it holds together until we reach the next bike shop on our route, wherever that may be. ("Hear me, baby? Hold together!")
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| posted at: 09:06 |
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