Indy

Like all photos on my blog, I took this one too.

Two years out of grad school, I went from working right beside the worldwide UPS hub to living in the city of the worldwide Fedex hub. I got packages exceptionally quickly, but a lot of my snail mail from out of town lived up to the name. The USPS doesn't know yet how to efficiently route mail into Indianapolis.

Dance for the world, Momma!

The midwest is a great place to live. Tell me this 5 years ago and I say you're out of your mind. A long time back my mom visited Indianapolis on business and relayed to her family what a nice city it was, joking that we should move there; I took her entire statement as a joke, but the first part was true. Little did I know that I would move there in my mid-twenties.

So what's good here? Still got most of that "southern hospitality" I adored in Louisville. That's critical. Some absolutely beautiful and vast public parks. And then the Indy 500. It is the same exact brand of event as the Kentucky Derby, but with cars instead of horses. And 200 laps instead of 1. I didn't know that the 500 was for miles and not laps. I also didn't know that the Indy 500 is IndyCar - headquartered in Indy of course, racing capital of the world for a reason I suppose - and not NASCAR. Clearly I educated myself. It's missing the fancy hats of Derby, but overall I enjoy it slightly more.

Me driving around America.

Indianapolis is home to the best church sign I've ever seen:

Honk if you love Jesus; text if you want to meet him. 

There are a lot of churches around here, so odds are one of them would be clever.

Nobody will believe me, but Indy has the best pizza I've ever had: House Pepperoni from Some Guys. Sorry New York, New Jersey, Chicago (ew), and California. I've had your pizzas, and nothing beats Some Guys. My mom, a snob for Jersey pizza, even admitted that it kinda maybe rivaled her favorite. Perhaps my favorite pizza will change when I make it to Italy, but for now... Some Guys!

World's #1 Pizza

I knocked Chicago's pizza, but I was happy that Indy is close enough to the Windy City for a lot of its cuisine to make it down. And this is for no reason other than the Chicago Dog! It's a hot dog on a poppyseed bun, with mustard, tomato wedges, pickle spears, green relish, celery salt, diced onion, and most importantly sport peppers. I kept sport peppers in my fridge throughout my time in Indy to make spur-of-the-moment hot dogs or to simply pop one plain.

More sport peppers, please.

Within a month of moving here, I was driven by my big-man roommate Jonathan to start working out. I got in the most powerful shape of my life, and I don't expect to let up. And I never had to torture myself! It wasn't so hard when you make your own chicken smoothies. I dropped from roughly 210 lbs, 19% body fat; to 195 lbs, 11% body fat. Jonathan was a tremendous coach and inspiration. Also an excellent cook who showed me the wonders of Chinese food, especially mapo (Meepo) tofu.

Didn't expect this to become a food blog... I always yelled at Jonathan for taking too many photos of food.

As soon as I post this, I get on the road to Cleveland and beyond. No turning back. My car is packed to the brim. Still looking to sell my bed and executive desk though! I'm gonna miss my apartment here. It was perfect and so was the Broad Ripple neighborhood.

Any takers?

Next up: Cleveland, March 15-19

Foreseeable: Pittsburgh, Niagara

Not quite a hot air balloon, but at least I've got Beans.