Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Arrival Day

August 8, 2012

Indianapolis, IN

I left my house early Wednesday morning, and I was running late.  Thankfully, I didn't need to check my bags, and TSA opened up another x-ray machine just as I showed my ID and boarding pass.  Score!  When I got to the gate, no other passengers were there, and I thought that they were all waiting for me.  Turns out that several people were still coming in behind me.  Phew!  Made it!  I had a very short layover in Vegas, and then got to Indy and waited for Bro's plane to arrive.

Well, that was an adventure.  While I waited at Bro's gate, I saw that the Indianapolis police officers that were in the area had now come closer to Bro's gate, and it appeared that they were waiting for the same plane.  Uh-oh.  So there I am, tweeting about what was happening, and one of my friend's figured that maybe it was a prison transfer.  The plane is a few minutes late, and all of a sudden I turn around, the police officers had disappeared, so I figured that they had gone down to the jetway to get their prisoner.  It took awhile, then they passed by me with a man in handcuffs.  I thought it odd that the man wasn't wearing any jumpsuit or outfit that would identify him as a prisoner.  When Bro got off the plane, I asked if he had an adventure.  He said that the flight attendant announced that they needed everyone to wait a bit while they got someone a wheelchair.  Then they called a name, and the man sitting RIGHT BEHIND Bro got up.  He acted like he didn't know what was going on, and he certainly didn't need a wheelchair.  People on the flight were teasing him, saying, "Ooh, you're in trouble."  But they were kidding around. Then someone came back to look for the guy's bag, and after they got it, they started to let everyone else (including someone needing a wheelchair) off of the plane.  So Bro had no idea about the handcuffs thing.  I don't think the guy knew about it either, because then wouldn't he take his bag with him?  So they must have had a warrant for the guy's arrest, and took him into custody by surprise.  Thank God that was all without any violent incident.  We checked the news later and didn't see anything, but I hadn't seen any media in the airport, so that makes sense.

We got in line for the IndyGo, and could have split up buses, but decided to ride together on the next shuttle.  The next shuttle that arrived was unmarked, and we were wary of getting on to "Big Bertha", as the guy called her.  She was like a shuttle dinosaur that had no real room for luggage, and had pretty much no kick to her.  The guy amused us because he kept complaining about the bus and the other cars around us.  He dropped us off at our stop, which was across the street from our hotel, the Crowne Plaza.  We decided to try this place for a little bit of a different atmosphere this time.  The hotel is actually built on a still-working train station, so trains still go through.  Yet we saw nobody getting on a train anywhere, so I don't know how that works.  The hotel portion has a bunch of statues of people that look like they're in a train station, which is cool.  I forgot to take pictures with any of the statues, even though I thought of it a lot of times. Maybe it used to be a stop.  Oh well.  We did take pictures of the train cars, which also housed hotel rooms.  We wondered if they ever gave those out to guests in their group packages, but I never did go back to ask Trey the cute reservations dude at the front desk.  He had warned us that there would be some shaking when a train passed through, which was really important to me since I had come from two days worth of earthquakes in SoCal.  He said that he was aware of that, and I thanked him cutely.  Our room, like all of the rooms that were not in train cars, had a view of the atrium.

The only pic I have of the statues, outside our room

Bro, outside the room of a train car

How perfect for a marching arts event!

We were both quite hungry, so after we unpacked, we got some early dinner at Weber Grill, where a lot of other DCI folks were also congregated.  I had a yummy cold grilled salmon with spinach salad and beets.  Bro had a martini burger that was topped with a bunch of chopped olives.

Afterward, we rested a bit and I realized that my netbook had died.  I am quite unhappy about that, and this is why all of these posts are being done when I get home.  But maybe I can buy a tablet when I can find one that's reasonably-priced.  

We went to the Championship Kickoff party because it was in our hotel, wherein they had some stuff for silent auction.  They also had some hors d'oeuvres (I just wanted a cookie for my dessert), and a bar, but you had to pay, so we didn't do any of that.  We listened to the first guy getting inducted into the DCI Hall of Fame, and that took wayyyyy too long because he kept saying, "Bear with me here" and kept saying that his story was going to be a long one.  This could have been cut really short, of course, if he would have just said whatever right at the start and wouldn't repeat himself.  Since the guy we came to see  wasn't the next honoree up, we decided to leave.  We probably would have stayed if the first honoree hadn't taken up so much of our patience.

At least our room was on the same floor and in the same building.  I don't know how that party was going to last until 2:00 a.m., but it probably did.  We needed to rest, so we watched the Olympics until we fell asleep.  Long day tomorrow.

Next up:  Prelims