Thoughts from SC to Indy

As I spent my weekend driving from SC to Indianapolis with my wife I had numerous unconnected thoughts that I wanted to share.

• it's amazing how short 8 hours can seem one way and how long it can seem going back.

• Louisville, Kentucky has the worst interchange known to man. You cannot realistically expect traffic to go smooth when you run your two biggest interstates together and within the space of 100 yards have them split off in every direction causing people to go merge on to a busy highway and cross six lanes of traffic to get to the exit.

• Indy is neat city with some nice museums and a canal running through downtown.

• The NCAA Hall of Champions is a bargin for $3. They have interactive exhibits on several sports. They give you an audio headset for a guided tour at no additional cost. The football area includes jerseys, helmets and footballs from all the national champions in 2007 (D1, D1AA, DII, DIII). The basketball section includes a small, half gym with dots on the floor identifying where memorable shots were made. I made a jump shot from where Christian Laettner hit the turnaround jumpshot to beat Kentucky in 1992 (to be honest the make came after three misses).

• While Indy was smaller than I thought it would be, Louisville was bigger than I thought it was.

• Midwest cities like Indy also strike me as odd juxtapositions. On the edge of downtown you have a large industrial complex complete with billowing smoke stacks, while less than a half a mile away you have cultural museums, ballparks and sky rise buildings.

Cities with "old growth" like that are always interesting to me having grown up in the South where everything is "new growth" in all the large cities. We don't have nearly the mix of the old with the new in our metropolitan areas.

• Drunk people dance funny, especially white guys. (Long story, but just for clarification I was not one of the drunk dancers.)

• It's nice to have a weekend with my wife away from the boys even if it was short with some time restrictions.

• Indy has some odd fascination with stick figures, including some light sign that features one in a miniskirt shaking as if she was part of the world's oldest profession. (Although my wife and I thought that a bit "strange," later on we had to admit that we were "saved by the hoochie" when we spotted the gyrating sign and knew where we were in downtown and how to get back to the hotel.)

• We drove past Versailles and stopped for gas in London during our trip.

• Why do some many old churches have a congregation that matches the age of the buildings?

• Why do old churches have such little use for their beautiful buildings? Sometimes it's almost like they're one of the city's museums.