When we last left you, we were joining the masses streaming out of the Indianapolis Children's Museum as it closed at 5:00 p.m. for the day. Naturally, this included a stroll through the gift shop where we did our daily battle with the "Buy Me Something!" Brigade. At this point, Sarah had blown her money on her new American Girl, and the boys were saving up for another special item...but that's in the next chapter.
We had to let the van air out a bit, thanks to the temps still in the 90's for the week. Eventually we settled in for the drive to downtown Indianapolis.
We headed straight into the heart of the city. Traffic wasn't too bad, as it seemed everyone else was heading out of town for the end of the workday. As we drove straight down Meridian Street into the city center, we hit
Monument Circle, constructed around--you'll never believe this--a monument! This is a monument to sailors and soldiers from Indiana who have served in various campaigns. There's a museum underneath it that looked interesting. Unfortunately, the entire thing was surrounded by construction fences and undergoing a rehab, so I guess that will have to wait for another time.
Being an experienced road engineer, I'm happy to report that we did not get stuck going around and around the circle while I pointed out various landmarks over and over.
We were on our way to the
Old Spaghetti Factory downtown in order to meet yet another member of the DISDads club, Christopher (stopher1 on the boards). We found it in fairly short order, and a parking lot nearby was offering "Special Event" parking for $5 for the evening. I thought that was nice of them, considering any meeting of DIS Dads is always a special event. After all, we're "special" people.
Just down the road was a view of the Indianapolis State House:
We entered the restaurant and put our names in for a table. We would be a party of 9, so I was worried we'd have a repeat experience of the previous night's dinner.
As we waited, we noticed quite a few women in the restaurant who were dressed in fashions that were, shall we say, maybe a little too young for the women wearing them. This, plus a preponderance of New Kids On The Block t-shirts led us to put 2 and 2 together about that Special Event: nearby was a joint New Kids On The Block/Backstreet Boys concert. And somehow we missed out on this!
I'm going to go out on a limb and say we got the better end of the deal. Stopher and his family (wife Julie, son Matthew and daughter Annie) showed up not too much later and we all were seated soon after. (Whew!) His other son, Harrison, was working at a summer camp and unable to join us.
Here we are. Note that Stopher came properly dressed for the occasion.
He is originally from Southern California and was actually a Cast Member at
Disneyland for a few years. If you ever have a question about Disney Parks, Stopher is the man to answer it. We have yet to stump him on anything, and believe me, we've tried.
We had a great time with their family. I had the "Meat Lovers" platter, because anytime a restaurant has something on the menu called "Meat Lovers", that's usually what I order. It also included spaghetti and I figured I couldn't eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory without having spaghetti in the meal. And the food tasted great. The restaurant itself had a cool, Old World-type atmosphere, even with its own trolley car inside:
This, of course, marked the second time we'd eaten in a restaurant on this trip that had vehicles inside the building.
Matthew was wearing a spacer on his teeth and we talked about how every so often he had to turn a crank on the mechanism in order to spread his teeth properly on his jaw. So I had fun making cracks at his expense over how dental devices haven't really evolved much from medieval torture. Annie and I mostly made faces at each other across the table, so I'm guessing she liked me too. And our wives just rolled their eyes at us, so the bonding was complete.
Christopher is a terrific guy and conversationalist. He and his family have had a rough year with various events, but he's maintained a positive attitude and it was obvious that they had a close family, built on faith and a lot of love for each other. As with all of the folks we met on our travels, it was an honor to have spent the time with them.
Coming Up Next: Another new state! Some historic lumber. And the raw intimidation of facing down a heat-seeking 45 mph fastball.
Sorry you had to deal with obnoxious Jr. High kids.
Sleep is overrated anyway. At least, my kids think so.
Welcome home...I hate having to re-enter reality too. So I reject your reality, and substitute my own.
