Hello From Indiana!

Since we are planning to visit with family in Minnesota for Christmas, I ended up with having to perform a training seminar in Indianapolis a day before we were supposed to head out for the holidays. Since I had to drive up here to bring all of the gear that I use, we bought plane tickets (First Class) so Luann & Katrina could fly out here to Indiana and we would pick up our quest from that point. And now... The pictures...

Day 1 - Monday, December 17th - I went to the rental car agency at 8:00 in the morning and they didn't have the car I reserved. Not only that, but the price the car was reserved for was too low. I was up-sized into a Dodge Magnum for an additional $238. After all of this wrangling, I still had to wait another hour before the car finally showed up. I didn't get on the road after packing everything up until 10:00. I was running so late, I knew that I wouldn't make it to the hotel in Indiana at any reasonable hour.

Day 2 - Tuesday, December 18th - The sun comes up over the horizon, and I awaken from a not-so-fitfull sleep in my 'bed' at the

"Hotel - Dodge Magnum".

It seems I ran out of steam at about 1:30 in the morning and decided to park at this combination rest stop/truck stop. This is the forward-looking view out of the front window of my 'suite'... The worst part about this, is that I couldn't simply leave the engine running in the car, because unlike a diesel truck, this thing wasn't designed to idle all night. This meant that I woke up every hour & a half or so from shivering so much, just so I could start the car, get the heater blasting until the inside of the car was roasting, then shut it off and try to sleep. Since it was 22 degrees outside, it didn't take long for me to wake up again to re-do the whole process.

After I got going, I had to stop by the facility and set up the training equipment.

Day 3 - I was able to conduct the training seminar. As you can see, it was a relatively small classroom and from the mess all over the table, very hands-on...

Day 4 - Was spent working on a script for the training powerpoint shows I have created for the seminar, taking 4 troubleshooting calls from Dave Ford, being embroiled in a conference call with GE for hours regarding their documentation procedures and fielding four tech support calls (averaging 20 minutes each) for Schneider - France.

Afterwards, I had some spare time, so can you guess what I did? If you guessed geocaching/sightseeing, you guessed right! This is the first one I found.

And here is the second one. Looks like geocaching is still do-able even in the snow.

This is one of the reasons why we are heading north for Christmas. Katrina hasn't been in the snow, and it reminds me of why I'm a Florida Boy. Today in Indianapolis, the temperature hit a high of 37 degrees. Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Tampa), it was a glorious 76 degrees. Still tee-shirt & jeans weather, even with Kris Kringle fast approaching.

When I first arrived in Indianapolis, everything was covered in a blanket of snow. This Katrina, is what they mean by that...

Some of the sight-seeing I did involved checking out this covered bridge. I had seen a few of them in Pennsylvania, but never got a chance to walk through one. Thankfully, Potter's Bridge offered such an opportunity.

With the posts there, pedestrian traffic is all it handles now.

A monument erected so that the principles of the bridge project could brag about their contributions (see what I did?).

This plaque, inside the entrance of the bridge, explains what a Howe Truss method of bracing is all about, because that is the chosen method of bracing used in Potter's Bridge.

And here is a centerline view of the innards of the bridge. It doesn't look wide, but this bridge was still in use for regular car traffic until 1971, a hundred years after it was first opened. Yes, that is a wooden curb running down the centerline, used to keep the cars in their own lanes as they passed through, once upon a time.

As I walked down the length of the bridge, it had these windows in it, overlooking the river. The vertical line in the middle of the view out the window are a pair of iron reinforcement/tensioning rods.

Move a little closer to the window and off to one side and you are afforded this unobstructed view. I still have to admit, snow on the landscape does make for pretty pictures... But it's still too darn cold for my liking!