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Saturday, July 14, 2007

Escape 2007, Part 2: Bicycling Bloomington

I never did get a connection in Bloomington. While the Motel 6’s idea of Internet access is to provide a “data port” for whatever dialup service you have (WTF?!!??), its upside is that a bicycle route runs right by it. The highway here has bike lanes on either side, but a side road straight across from the motel beckoned. It turned out to be the old highway, and was quite scenic. I rode past a little park, where a creek ran between the park and the road. Bloomington is very bike-friendly, with bike lanes along many of the main drags and people of all ages riding for exercise or transportation.


As I said earlier, this part of Indiana is somewhat hilly, no killer climbs but there’s enough of an uphill to make you notice. My mountain bike has lower gearing than a typical road bike, but I don’t miss the higher gears on these hills. What goes down must go up — and vice versa, fortunately. As I reached the bottom of one hill, I saw what looked like laundry hanging out to dry but wayyyyy off the ground. I wondered whether it was a park craft project until I saw the sign: “Tibetan Buddhist Monastery.” That’s something you don’t see much of on Planet Georgia.


Eventually, I turned back and went most of the way toward the IU campus. DD’s boyfriend told me I could probably find an open hotspot on the square; if the coffee shops don’t cooperate then I can bum a connection at the library. However, I hadn’t carried the laptop with me, so there wasn’t much sense in going that far. I turned back and headed for the hotel (the door marked “206” is ours).

Later on, I rode into town (again sans laptop — I don’t have a bike lock, and didn’t feel like taking Barge Vader) and found a little ice cream stand. Just the thing for a hot day in the saddle. I also hung out at the pool for a couple of hours, then went back to the hotel room and finished off the last two beers I’d confiscated from The Boy’s friends. At no time was I invited to meet his family; Mrs. Fetched reported the same thing and was rather put out by it. I was OK either way, but would have liked to have come along just to fly the banner. (This led to some friction with DD later in the week.)

3 comments:

  1. To me that's kind of odd about DD's boyfriend's parents. It would seem to me that they would have invited you over to just say thanks for letting the boyfriend stay in your house.

    So far I'm really enjoying your vacation. You should take more. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Did you or your wife even ask them to go? I'm sure if you would have said something they would have been happy to let you go and meet them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi folks.

    FM, I agree. The whole relationship is a little strange; DD doesn't seem to enjoy it but I've never figured those kinds of things out. I'll have an Escape 2007.2 week in September, back at the timeshare. I agree, more vacations are a Good Thing.

    Anon, we brought it up, but were ignored (or nobody was listening).

    ReplyDelete

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