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Ice Storm The day we left Bloomington, we woke up to discover there had been an ice storm—a rare event for the city—overnight. And there were many pictures taken. After we left Mammoth Cave we stopped only once before getting to Bloomington and my Aunt Harriet and Uncle James's house. Where did we stop? An outlet mall. Our official line is "it was a bathroom break," but there was also some question of whether or not I could find my favorite jeans (no) or if Claire wanted to look around very briefly (yes). But despite the stop, we made it to Bloomington in time for dinner. And I feel I should mention that on the way, we drove through Gnaw Bone. Gnaw Bone. A weensy little town that, I found out from a professor at UF is actually a corruption of a French place-name—Nabarre or something like that—that was borrowed from the original Nabarre in France and used on this little Indiana hamlet. But the natives couldn't pronounce it, so it became Gnaw Bone. Gnaw Bone. Okay, we thought it was funny. The next day, Sunday, we visited downtown Bloomington, guided by Aunt Harriet. It was a warmish sunny day, good for being out-of-doors. We stopped to pick up some Thai rice at an Asian foods store (my family is all addicted, and when we finished our last twenty-pound bag in January, we were much saddened), looked in on a game store that sells a fantastic variety of puzzels (including a five thousand piece one of Rembrant's Night Watch for people who wish to hurt themselves with puzzles), and saw parts of the campus (so Claire and I would be oriented for the next day). That evening we were treated to an amazing multi-course and multi-wine gourmet dinner courtesy of my aunt and uncle who were celebrating Derrick's birthday. Who is Derrick? He's a friend of my cousin Giancarlo's, and he and Gianco and Gianco's wife, Jamie, and their baby, Megan, drove down from Indianapolis for the occasion. I will probably never eat as well on a road trip again. Monday Harriet and James went to their jobs at the university and we walked over to IU, specifically the Journalism Department, so I could talk to some real live people. The proffs I spoke to seemed very nice, and afterwards we got lunch at the labyrinthine student union, which thiety-two year resident James says he is capable of getting lost in. The buildings at IU are generally huge, big limestone blocks. James calls the education building the Education Fortress. The library looks like a gray version of the Borg cube, but bigger. However, using the map, we found the union's food court area, and even navigated around campus, with our chins tucked into our coats, because it was a freezing, drippy day. The weather was playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That evening we went to a Chinese take-out restaurant with Harriet and James and then to the IU box theater, courtesy of free unused tickets from friends of Harriet and James. The play, Scapino! was a modern adaption of Molière, which means it was a farcical comedy that was a lot of fun to watch. The production concept was a cross between "mime" and commedia del arte, and we enjoyed it. The next morning we woke and found the ice storm. We wondered while watching the Weather Channel whether to leave or not in the incliment weather, but trips outside found the road un-icy, so we packed the car and then I looked outside and noticed...it was snowing. Well, it wasn't really impressive snow, I don't believe. There were only tiny icy flakes, and that didn't last for more than ten minutes before the weather changed over to sleet mode. Tiny balls of ice fell and coated the car and left patches of white on the ground and brown slush on the road before the skies switched back to plain old freezing drizzle. I took the opportunity to scrape some sleet and snow off the car and make a snowball, which I threw against a tree. It disintegrated most satisfactorily on impact, but afterward my hands were so cold they hurt. After a little more waiting, we decided heck, we may as well leave, and the roads weren't bad at all as we drove back over hilly Route 46. The biggest trouble we got into was when we stopped at a gas station. I pulled the lever to open the fuel door, and nothing happened. Ack! Was it broken? Had we busted my dad's nice car? No, the door was just frozen shut. I poked at the ice around the door with a key until it was all chipped through and the door popped open. On the interstate I had great fun running over chunks of ice that had blown off the tops of eighteen-wheelers, and our own ice harvest remained with us until southern Kentucky. I feel while mentioning the interstate, I should bring up that the theme of the road trip was: roadkill. We saw an unusual number of dead animals, and in an unusual variety. We had raccoon, opossum, armadillo, alligator, vulture, cat, dog, chicken (two, actually), rabbit, rat (maybe; it's hard to see something that small), deer, squirrel, and jaguar. No, really, driving back south through Kentucky we passed something that could only have been a large, spotted animal. Something strange is going on in Kentucky. The quick and dirty conclusion to this quick and dirty trip summary is that we made it back to Cleveland that night, stayed with Katie and got to Gainesville the next day. On Thursday I visited the UF English Department and then hightailed it home. Because I had pictures of ice and snow to develop.
Ice on a Tree A tree in Harriet and James's yard, covered in ice.
Ice on a Shrub A shrub (forsythia, I believe) in Harriet and James's yard, covered in ice.
Me and Ice Me among the ice.
Close-up #1 I really like this picture.
Close-up #2 And this picture, too.
Snow! The ground after the dusting of snow.
Snowmobile Claire displays the snow-covered Four-Runner. We had to use an ice-scraper to clear off the windshield.
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