Why, thank you!
Day 1: Travels
I sat in the same row as a lady from Indianapolis, so I got some tips on where to eat. We'll see if I actually get to Houlihan's, Shapiro's Deli, or St. Elmo's.
The other person in my row was a guy from Temecula whom was flying to Maryland to visit his mom. I told him that he should be careful because they drive backwards there (yes, I explained myself). He was a little worried when they didn't mention at the start of the flight that the plane was going on to Baltimore, because there was a misunderstanding with his tickets in the first place, but they did tell us that this would be his plane once we landed in Indianapolis.
I met up with Bro and he told me to taste what was in his cup, which turned out to be McDonald's Sweet Tea, so I immediately went to the McDonald's in the airport to get one for myself. The staff there was REALLY slow, and I'm not writing that just because I was eager to get my tea. They were S - L - O - W. Augh.
We got to the Alamo rental and the gal pointed out that I could get any car in a particular row. Of 3 cars. But I couldn't take the first one for some reason. Neither could I take the third one, apparently, because somebody started to drive off with it as soon as we walked out the door. So I went back to ask her if I understood right (I liked her and didn't give her a hard time because she loves the Sweet Tea, too)...and she looked out the window and said that yes, I now only had a choice of 1 car. Thankfully, they had just finished washing another car and drove it to our row, so we're now driving a Toyota Matrix for our time here.
Our room is very nice, and we went to the manager's reception, which didn't have much to offer in terms of food, but Bro was able to get a free margarita, so it was worth our time right there. We went to Best Buy and Staples to not purchase a GPS, so for the rest of the evening, we were pretty much lost, since we had also left the map in the hotel room. Duh, us.
Our dinner was at O'Charley's, where they had some yummy bread. I mean YUM! Bro had the Made-From-Scratch Strawberry Lemonade, and I had the Mango Iced Tea, both of which were quite good, and I realized that again, I was having caffeine at a later time that I'm supposed to. But what the hey. We were off to see a movie. Oh, yeah, we enjoyed our food, too. When we return to Indy, we'll probably go there again. The other people in our party will not be allowed a vote. Because I'm gonna want that bread.
We somehow made our way to the IMAX theater after circling around downtown a time or two before going out into nowheresville and into the right direction. They have some kind of $5.00 club at this theater, where you can pay only $5.00 to see movies that are not within the first couple of weeks of release. That's a good deal, man. Oh, and our IMAX tickets were only $12.50 each. Wow.
We watched "The Dark Knight" on IMAX. I was happy. Christian Bale looks even better in HUGE format. The pencil thing didn't actually freak me out as much this time, because I braced myself. However, the whole dead bat guy thing at the window still scared me. Mostly because the sound had our seats vibrating at many times, including that one. Bro enjoyed the movie, especially the score, particularly when he realized that it was a Zimmer work. The panoramic scenes were absolutely stunning in this format, and I cried this time at the end, which I didn't the first time I saw it. I don't think it was the format as much as that I was probably more awake and much more into the movie last night. Probably because Christian was HUGE. MMmmmmm...
Anyway, we got slightly lost again (is that possible? Or is it just "lost" and "not lost"?) on our way home, but eventually found our way. It was still early for our biological clocks, so we didn't actually feel the effects of going to sleep at 2:30 a.m. That is, until our alarm clocks rang this morning for breakfast. Oy.
Up next: DCI Quarterfinals
How did you like the Matrix? It's one of the ones I'm looking at.
ReplyDeleteI'm still debating whether I can handle "The Dark Knight" in IMAX. So do you know why particularly you cried at the end?
Will you be mad if I say that I laughed at you and Bro getting lost a lot? When my brother and I were going to a lot of places together, we'd *always* get lost. No matter which direction we were supposed to go in, we always picked the wrong one, and we often ended up doubling back. Of course, this was in the dark ages, before GPS, and we couldn't be bothered to have a map or really look up directions. We knew generally where stuff was. We never seemed to learn that "generally" is not conducive to getting to a particular location in the shortest amount of time/distance.
Dark Knight made me cry because I was emotional about Batman's sacrifice, as well as what Two-Face was potentially going to do to Gordon's son. I think that the whole experience was just so intense that I needed to cry to release the tension.
ReplyDeleteAs to getting lost, I attribute my part of the lost-ness to the fact that there were no mountains for me to figure out NSEW, and I couldn't use the sun for that either once it was dark.
Bro showed me what happened to us when we looked at the map later that evening. I was still a bit confused throughout the trip, though. I just needed to listen to my navigator a little more closely, I think. ;) He didn't want to be a human GPS, but at times, he did use that tone just to be funny.
Oh, and the Matrix drove fine. The tires were new and wide or something, because they kept squealing in the parking structure when I turned, no matter how slowly I was driving, and that structure called for slow speeds due to the narrowness.
ReplyDelete