Nearly a month ago now, Brian and I went to Indianapolis to visit Kim and her family. I got to leave work at noon that Friday, since I invoked the semi-ruined trip to Indy for the Backstreet Boys concert (recall that we ended up missing most of VERY SPECIAL GUEST Avril Lavigne), and we arrived in the late afternoon ready to be fed Fishers’ finest take ‘n’ bake pizza. After that, we went to Culvers for ice cream.
Brian sat next to Tony, who somehow immediately got ice cream all over his head (see behind his ear) but was unconcerned:
After ice cream, we had a firepit fire, and I charmed the children the only way I know how: with several packages of dollar-bin glow bracelets. Jack ended up with many, many bracelets:
We got up the next morning and went to the Indy Zoo, which was super expensive (though Kim and Jamie bought a fancy membership with guest passes, so we didn’t have to pay) because it is not supported by levies.
Here are some notable things from our trip to Indy Zoo:
1) We got to pet sharks. Here is a picture that has nothing to do with shark-petting, other than it was taken in the same building:
2) Indy Zoo has a super cool dolphin theater with underwater viewing and a cool dolphin show. I haven’t seen anything like it since Sea World.
3) There’s a cool desert building with glass dividers they have to put tape X’s on whenever they get new birds. Also, we saw tortoises (trying to?) bone.
4) They have an amazing orangutan center where the orangutans have many choices about where to be and what to do, including climbing on towers and cables above zoogoers. The orangutans chose not to do any of that while we were there.
5) The “Plains” area was the last big area we went to, and it was probably the best part of the zoo. We saw some cool painted dogs:
AND! An elephant penis!!!1! It was definitely arm-sized, but I didn’t take a picture right away, so it’s not huge in the picture I took:
6) We went into some bird enclosures right before we left the Zoo, and a lorakeet pooped on Travis’s Brutus jacket.
7) Indy Zoo admission includes entry into the Hilbert Conservatory and the White River Gardens, which were really cool. I would like to spend some childless time there.
After the Zoo, the timing didn’t really work out to go back to Kim and Jamie’s before the Fever game, so we stayed downtown. We parked and went to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which was cool:
While we were sitting on the steps in front of it, Jamie got a fistbump for having black kids from a black dude who was trying to sell us postcards (?).
It was a weird night to be in downtown Indy, as there was the Fever game, a preseason Colts game, and GenCon. There were tons of dorks in weird nerd costumes all over the place. The kids did not know what to make of it.
Some signage from Bankers Life Fieldhouse:
It turns out Kim’s kids LOVE the Fever.
The game we went to was the last regular season home game, so it was also Coach Lin Dunn’s last home regular season game. She coached Coach Cullop at Purdue, and she is, in general, a women’s sport pioneer. When she was in college there were no women’s teams for her to play on, and she ended her career coaching professional women’s basketball. Crazy. There was some fanfare before the game, where they gave her a new laptop and 2 airline tickets to anywhere in the world, and there is now a Lin Dunn banner in the rafters of the fieldhouse:
A picture of Lin Dunn doing some coaching:
We took some selfies with various combos of kids:
If you’re wondering how attendance is for a WNBA game, here’s a panoramic picture:
Brian and I spent some time looking at various display cases on the concourse. I took this picture of everyone’s favorite non-David West Pacer, Reggie Miller:
We had a fun time in Indianapolis, and we enjoyed our first WNBA game. I met the grandma of Cha Sweeney (MAC freshman of the year who plays for EMU) in line for free t-shirts, which was pretty cool. Kim’s kids were riled up into a feverish Fever frenzy. I actually won tickets on Twitter for 2 different Fever playoff games, so Kim’s peeps really crammed some Fever action in right before their season ended.