My 1st Lap Around Indy

Made my first ever trip to Indianapolis this last week. How I’ve been able to avoid this for so long is a mystery, but it is a mistake now rectified. The people there are so darn nice!

The occasion for the trip was two-fold. My BBL’s nephew, who also holds the title of godson, was marrying a vivacious local girl. That made an excuse for both a party and a family mini-reunion. Our twig of the family tree had no responsibility for any duty in the wedding other than showing up. Not a bad way to start a trip.

After duly observing and celebrating said nephew/godson’s acceptance of the bonds of matrimonial prison, I kissed my BBL and kids goodbye at the airport and moved my stuff from the downtown Omni Severin hotel to University Place Hotel on the campus of IUPU (which when you think about it, is a better sequence of letters than IPUP!). This move was the result of my first ever transaction with Priceline. I thought I was bidding on a four-star downtown hotel for $75/night (and hoping that might turn out to be the Omni). The new hotel came within a star of where we had been, but in retrospect, I probably could have gotten it for $50 as the place was that empty. It was here I witnessed the only negative reaction by an individual in this city: a woman checking into the hotel said “Darn It” and frowned when she learned that Celine Dion had canceled an evening performance she had just driven over 100 miles to see.

The reason I had extended my stay was to introduce myself to my company’s distributors in the city (I’m at my best when multi-tasking on trips). Little did these customers know that, through no fault of their own, they were now assigned to my Central Region. To their credit, none of them said “Darn it” or frowned when they met me. In fact, each one I met was as nice, if not nicer, than the last.

As I sat in the IND airport waiting to be one of the very last departures out of their “old” terminal, I believe I hit upon a plausible explanation for the pervasive “niceness” of this city’s citizens: Indianapolis is the headquarters of Eli Lilly, the manufacturers and purveyors of Prozac. Perhaps some of this stuff is getting in the city water supply? That would explain the one frown I saw—she was from Fort Wayne.